Zupa Ogorkowa — Polish Cucumber Soup Recipe

By JimMac

Although Polish cuisine seems to has an inclination towards time-consuming and laborious recipes, there are also some Polish foods that are both tasty and simple/fast to prepare. For example - the ogorkowa soup, or in other words: cucumber soup. Neither refined nor festive this Polish soup is quite ordinary and everyday, but very much liked and popular.

Ingredients

• 0.5 kg of meat or meat with bone
• 0.5 kg of vegetables (carrot, parsley, celery, leek) or wloszczyzna mix
• half medium onion
• spices (a few peppercorns, bay leaf, black pepper and salt to taste)
• 7-8 large dill pickles
• 1 medium onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tablespoons of white flour
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 100 ml sour cream (or tart yoghurt)
• 3 medium potatoes

Preparation

Step 1

Prepare a broth using meat and vegetables. Wash bones and meat thoroughly in hot water and put them into the pot. Add six cups of cold water. Cook it on high heat, covered. Then lower the heat and cook gently for about 1 hour. Of course as usually you can simply use stock cubes making all simpler and faster (but with some loss on a quality of food, as some say).
In the meantime wash and peel vegetables and put them into the broth. Boil all together. At the end of cooking add spices: a few peppercorns, bay leaf, black pepper and salt to taste.
Melt some butter in a frying pan and fry 1 medium, diced onion. When onion begins to brown add chopped or crushed garlic and fry on a low heat for about 10 minutes.
Wash the pickles, peel and grate them on a grater with big holes, so that what you get are stripes that aren't not too small. Add pickles to garlic & onion – fry all together for a few minutes. Then add this mixture to your broth.
Now, peel potatoes, cut into small pieces (dices) and throw into the ogorkowa soup.
Cook everything on a rather low fire until potatoes are soft and edible.
Make a suspension of flour with sour cream to (as they say in Poland) 'whiten' our cucumber soup. To do so simply mix 2 tablespoons of white flour and 100 ml of sour cream. You can also use tart yoghurt. Now slowly pour it into the soup, constantly and vigorously stirring. Mix thoroughly.
Cook your soup for a few more minutes, but do not let it boil. Season the ogorkowa soup with salt and black pepper according to your taste. Serve!