Zurek (Polish soup)

Zurek (Polish soup)

Ingredients

Snow-white sausages – 500 g

Smoked sausage – 300 g

Bacon (brisket) – 200 g

Onions – 3 pcs.

Garlic – a couple of cloves

Salt and pepper - to taste

Bay leaf – 2 pcs.

Greens - for serving

Chicken eggs - 1 per serving

Vegetable oil - for frying

Sourdough zhur – 400 g

For the starter you will need:

Boiled water – 500 g

Rye flour – 10 tbsp.

Garlic – 3-4 cloves

Bay leaf – 2 pcs.

Allspice – 4 pcs.

Rye bread - slice

• 190 kcal
• 40 min.
• 120 hours
• 120 hours 40 minutes

Photo of the finished dish

Step-by-step recipe with photos

First you need to prepare the starter for the zhurk. Naturally, at the moment it can be purchased in any Polish hypermarket, but preparing it at home is very simple and straightforward, especially since there is simply nowhere to buy it here. By the way, the Poles also prepare snow-white borscht using this same starter for us.

Place a slice of rye bread broken into pieces into a liter jar and add rye flour.

Crush the garlic directly into the husk, put it in a jar along with a bay leaf.

Add aromatic pepper, pour in cool boiled water, stir everything well.

Cover the jar with gauze folded in half and tie with twine. Place in a warm space for 5 days. The starter needs to be stirred every day. On the 5th day, strain the starter along with the flour through a sieve and you can start making soup. If you don’t plan to prepare zurek yet, then the starter must be transferred to the refrigerator to prevent mold, etc. from forming. She smells absolutely great!

Prepare all the ingredients for making Polish Zurek soup. Snow-white sausages in soup usually come in the form of wieners; here I found them only in the form of sausages, but they are also of a very respectable quality. Peel and rinse the onion and garlic. Be sure to boil the eggs in advance for no longer than 10 minutes, cool in cool water, and peel off the shells. Remove the casing from the smoked sausage.

Polish zurek soup is prepared both in broth and in water; I don’t even see the point in arguing about this in the comments. It all depends on the region and housewives. It’s like ours - every housewife has her own borscht.

Pour water into the pan, place the sausages in it, and place on the stove to cook over moderate heat.

While the sausages are boiling, pour a little vegetable oil into the frying pan and add the diced onion. Fry over low heat until translucent and soft.

Place the onion in a saucepan and add the bay leaf, garlic and marjoram. Cook over moderate heat for about 10 minutes. In total, it takes about 15 minutes to make snow-white sausages, look at the instructions on the package and calculate the time for cooking them in the soup, otherwise they will explode.

At the same time, fry chopped smoked bacon (brisket) and sausage.

Stir the starter well, pour it into the pan along with the flour - it will give the soup thickness and make the broth velvety. The sausages should have been cooked by this point, put them on a plate and let them cool slightly to make it easier to peel off the casing. Place the fried smoked meats into the pan and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add good quality sour cream to the soup, stir vigorously so that it does not curdle. Now you can add salt and pepper to taste and collect foam from the surface. Be sure to let the soup sit before serving: the longer it sits, the tastier it will be. In particular, zurek is not bad for the next day.

Cut the peeled snow-white sausages into pieces, place in a deep plate, add a boiled egg. Usually it is cut in half or into quarters.

Pour a couple of ladles of soup and sprinkle with fresh herbs.

The most delicious, very nourishing and fragrant Polish zurek soup is ready. You can invite your family to the dinner table and serve soup with your favorite bread.

Soup “Zurek”

Preparation time: 3 days

Production time: 1 hour 20 minutes.

Number of servings: 6 pcs.

Ingredients

How to cook Polish soup “Zurek”

Żurek is a regular Polish soup. There are a huge number of recipes for making this soup. Therefore, anyone can choose the ingredients that they like best. But there are certain conditions without which “Zurek” will not be itself. These conditions are certain ingredients that must definitely be in the soup. The first and fundamental product is zhur - sourdough made from rye flour. The soup should also include marjoram and garlic.

In addition, there are some tips regarding serving soup on the table. Each serving must contain half a boiled chicken egg; it is also better not to forget about sour cream and herbs. And for those who want to follow the traditions of serving “Zurek” one hundred percent, you will need to take the bread, cut off the top of it, remove the soft inner part so that the plate comes out, and fry it in the oven. And serve “Zurek” on the table in such a bread plate.

As for the taste of Zurek. The soup, due to the content of sourdough, is somewhat sour and resembles hodgepodge. The content of two types of meat products in it makes the soup hearty and typical. I would also like to warn those who decide to cook Zurek, the sourdough does not have a very pleasant smell, but don’t let this scare you away - it’s completely normal.

How to prepare “Zurek Soup” step by step with photos at home

Main ingredients: rye flour, rye bread, smoked brisket, sausage, potatoes, carrots, chicken eggs, onions, garlic, boiled water, black peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, dill, sour cream and parsley.

First you need to prepare the starter. To do this, add boiling water to the rye flour. When adding water, the flour must be stirred constantly so that there are no lumps.

Then add a piece of rye bread to the flour with boiling water.

Next, add 1 peeled clove of garlic and cover loosely with a lid. For the starter to prepare, you need to put it in a warm space for 5 days.

Strain the finished starter.

Now let's start making the soup itself. To do this, put sausage, unpeeled onions, peeled carrots, bay leaves, cloves and peppercorns in a saucepan. Then add water and cook for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, while the sausage is cooking, we chop the onion.

Then sauté the onion in sunflower oil for 5 minutes.

Zurek

Zurek is the Polish state soup. It is traditionally made for Easter, but it is so delicious that I cook it much more often and on various occasions. So, a real recipe for zurek according to Polish traditions!

Manufacturing Description:

Ingredients:

• Bacon – 500 G
• Ham – 250 Gr
• Onions - 0.5 pieces
• Chicken broth - 4 cups
• Water – 4 glasses
• Carrots – 1 piece
• Parsnip – 1 piece
• Celery stick – 1 piece
• Celery root – 1 piece
• Potatoes – 2 pieces
• Horseradish - 1 teaspoon
• Boiled eggs – 4 pieces
• Sour cream - 1 glass

Number of servings: 5-7

How to cook “Zurek”

Rate the Zurek recipe:

Please enter the characters from the pictures

Zhurek is only made with rye sourdough, but it’s just soup

I agree, no zhur – no zhurek.

Where is the recipe for zurek? Zurek gets its thickness from sourdough on black bread made from rye flour, and not from potatoes. Instead of zurek you have potato soup here

Fat! But guys really like it :)

In fact, the most basic ingredient for zurek is the leaven, thanks to which it acquires its own unique taste, thickness and smell. Another essential component is marjoram. So write “So, a real recipe for zurek according to Polish traditions! " wrong.

Polish soup zurek

Soups in Poland are eaten willingly and a lot. The first mentions of Polish soups abroad can be found in French cookbooks by Babinski or Escoffier. Modern Poland tries not to deviate from ancient culinary traditions, because its recipes have a very old and rural history. We will tell this story for you using the example of the famous zurek soup.

History of zurek soup

Soup made from flour - this can only happen in Poland. It is believed that Poles do not like and do not prepare thick creamy soups. Zurek is perhaps a small exception. Its thick mixture is completely different from classic meat or vegetable broths.

Catchy, but zurek has never been a soup for the rich or the poor. It was constantly prepared by different segments of the population, also by people of different ages. Such popularity does a lot of credit to this dish, in contrast to French onion soup, which was known as a poor man's stew.

There is a legend associated with the origin of the zurek recipe. In a Polish city, the name of which is difficult to remember because of how long ago it was, there lived a harmful and greedy baker. He often shortchanged clients, was rude to them, and weighed them down in every possible way. When the residents of the town got tired of this attitude, they hired a brave man to make a bet with the baker. If the baker succeeds in preparing a soup so disgusting that it makes the guy feel sick, he will receive a bag of funds, but if on the contrary, the baker will give the bakery to the daredevil.

The greedy shopkeeper agreed to the bet. He poured the bread leaven into a saucepan, added a spoiled onion, garlic, and some old bacon. The baker served all this to the table. His opponent grabbed the soup on both cheeks and asked for more. This is how the townspeople survived the stingy baker from their own town, and also received a recipe for soup, which they are proud of even now.

The Poles have a huge number of regional recipes for this soup. From time to time, potatoes are put into zhurek, from time to time only eggs and smoked meats, but the basis of everything is sour rye sourdough, which can be prepared at home, or purchased as a base in the store.

Personality of Zurek soup

Sourdough for zurek is a natural fermentation process of flour, salt and spices, as well as water. In addition, such a starter is very easy to create at home. Just put the flour in a clean glass jar, fill it with water and add spices. Then this mixture is covered with gauze and left in a warm place for two or three days. Half a glass of flour, half a glass of boiling water - this is the base of the starter given to us.

It is permissible to add smoked meats with boiled eggs, potatoes, and meat with dried mushrooms to zhurek. From time to time, horseradish, pickled mushrooms and herbs are added to the Christmas version of zurek.

A soup similar to zurek is called “snow-white borscht” in Poland. It is made from fermented white flour. The ingredients in this version are also different.

Traditional recipe for zurek in Polish

The Polish first course is considered “yesterday’s soup”, like borscht or okroshka. Zurek acquires velvety notes in taste only on the 2nd day after production.

To make something similar to this soup, you will need the following products:

• Half a liter of rye flour starter;
• Boiled sausage, 330 gr;
• Bay leaf;
• Dried parsley or dill;
• Meat or brisket 200 g;
• Garlic, a couple of cloves;
• Carrot;
• Lukovka;
• Half a liter of heavy cream;
• Chicken eggs;
• Spices, salt.

If you want to cook traditional zhurek, you can use the following method:

1. Peel the vegetables and cook in a saucepan over medium heat;
2. Fry the sausage and meat into cubes in oil;
3. Place meat, spices, bay leaf in a saucepan;
4. Add the starter to the broth;
5. Then add cream, remaining products, for example boiled eggs;
6. After adding the starter, the soup is practically not cooked, but is allowed to boil and left to steep for a couple of hours under the lid.

Zurek has a special taste with sourness. This soup is good at any time of year and in any weather. It is full of beneficial substances and promotes good digestion.