Ukrainians have many tasty recipes for main dishes using seasonal veggies and herbs. In spring and summer, Ukrainians like to cook soups using sorrel that is called in Ukrainian schavel (щавель). Schavel is a garden plant with a sour taste and pleasant flavor resembling spinach.
In Ukraine, the soup with schavel (sorrel) is called green borscht. If you love the red Ukrainian beet soup but just slightly tired of it, why not cook a tasty green alternative – sorrel soup?
This soup can be cooked with any kind of meat but today we are going to use as a base a light chicken broth. If you are vegetarian or simply want to cook a lighter version of the soup, you can cook this soup without any meat.
By the way, we’re going to share with you some secrets on how to make your sorrel soup heartier and show you how to reach that perfect sourness.
Ingredients:
- 300 g (10,5 oz) chicken
- 300 g (10,5 oz) fresh sorrel
- 100 g (3,5 oz) fresh dill
- 3 big potatoes
- 3 chicken eggs
- 1 medium carrot
- 1 bulb onion
- 2 tbsp sour cream
- 2 tbsp flour
- 2 bay leaves
- vegetable oil (for frying)
- ground black pepper – to taste
- salt – to taste
Cooking
First, let’s make a broth using chicken. Pour around 3,5 liters of water in a pan and bring it to boil. Add chicken, bay leaves, salt, and black pepper. Stir everything and boil the broth for around an hour – to get a thick clear soup. Do not forget to skim the broth from time to time. At the end filter the broth and cut the chicken finely.
Wash potatoes and peel them. Dice one potato and add it to the pan. Do not cut the remaining two potatoes and put them in the pan.
Boil the whole potatoes until done and then smash them with a fork until smooth. Add the potatoes again to the broth (the starch in the potatoes will make our soup denser).
Boil eggs separately, cool and peel them. Leave 1 egg for decoration (cut it into 4 parts).
Peel, rinse, and chop a bulb onion finely. Preheat vegetable oil in a frying pan. Brown the onion for 15 minutes until translucent and then add grated carrot. Add some water and stew the ingredients for around 20 minutes. Add 2 tbsp of sour cream, 2 tbsp of chicken broth, and 2 tbsp of flour to make the mass dense and rich. Season it lightly with salt and pepper. Add the mass to the soup and mix everything together.
Then add eggs to the soup.
Rinse sorrel and dill thoroughly. Chop the dill and cut sorrel into medium pieces.
Tip – it’s better to buy sorrel with little leaves since they don’t have leaf ribs. If your sorrel has big leaves then it’s better to take only the upper part.
Add sorrel and dill in 1,5 minutes before the end of boiling to preserve the health properties and color of the herbs.
Piece of advice – if you want to enjoy sorrel soup in the autumn-winter season as well, you can freeze sorrel in advance.
You should also take into account that right after cooking your borscht won’t have the final desired sourness. In a couple of hours, the sorrel will enrich the soup with all its sourness so don’t hurry to add more sorrel. If after all, you feel like some sourness is still missing, you can add a couple to tablespoons of lemon juice.
Serve a hot bowl of this comforting soup with a generous dollop of sour cream. For a more piquant taste, you may add some squeezed garlic on top. Decorate the green borscht with egg slices.
Enjoy your meal!
Have you liked the recipe for green borscht?
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