Soups

Chicken Noodle Soup (Kuracia Polievka)

Ingredients: few carrots, parsley root, few small onions, one small chicken, oil
Prep Time: About 30 minutes

My grandma makes, hands-down, the best ever chicken noodle soup. Part of her secret are her hand-made noodles. The other part is the recipe, which is posted here. As you will see it’s quite simple.

The Slovak version of chicken [noodle] soup (kuracia or slepačia polievka) is bit different from the American variety. First of all, it is whole lot more “brothy”. Second, we use slightly different ingredients. While celery is an integral part of the American version (at least the canned version I buy in the supermarket), celery is not used in Slovakia. Instead, we use parsley (petržlen). The root that is. While in America parsley is used almost exclusively for its leaves, in Slovakia it is used as a root vegetable. For those unfamiliar with this vegetable, parsley looks like a small carrot, but is white.

Besides parsley, you will also need carrots (mrkva). My cooking started on a bit interesting note. I prepared this soup with my grandma. She is now living in a house built in 1886 in which my great-grandmother (from the other side of the family) grew up. I spent many summers in this house as a kid. It’s customary for Czech and Slovak people to live in a city, but keep a cottage (chalupa) in a village to escape to on the weekends. This house was our chalupa. I thought I knew the house well, and hence I was quite surprised when she asked me to go to the cellar (komora) for the veggies. I did not think this house had a cellar. To my surprise, it does.

The cellar is located underneath the living room. It is a small dugout which is accessed by lifting up the carpets and then pulling on one of the wooden boards making up the floor. Even more surprising was finding out that this hole was used by the partisans (guerrilla fighters) during World War II. During the War, Czechoslovakia was split up. The Czech Republic got annexed into the Third Reich and Slovakia became an independent state under a puppet government installed by Berlin. There was a large homegrown opposition to the Nazi presence. These guerrilla fighters were known as the partisans or partizáni. The center of this Slovak national uprising (Slovenské Národné Povstanie) was my hometown of Banská Bystrica, which features a large memorial dedicated to this historical event. Anyway, turns out that, just like in the movies, Nazis came by the house to look for partisans. It’s good they did not find them, since I am sure my great-grandparents (and thus my predecessors) would have been dealt with quite fast on the spot had the cellar been discovered!

In the cellar, I found the largest carrot (mrkva) I have ever seen. Besides the carrot, you will need parsley (petržlen) and onion (cibuľa). You can also use parsley leaves (petržlenová vnať) and kohlrabi (kaleráb). Peel the root vegetables and the onion and fry for about 2 minutes on oil (olej).

Add a small chicken (kura) and top off the pot with water (voda)

Cover and let cook for a while. Once the soup starts boiling, lower the heat, otherwise the soup will end up muddy. Once the soup is done, i.e., the vegetables are getting soft, take a small strainer and scoop out the brown muck that formed on the surface. Also add salt (soľ) to taste. We used two of these small spoons.

Let the soup go through few more bubbles, so the salt has a chance to dissolve. Serve by placing cooked noodles in the bowl and then topping off with the soup. Enjoy! It goes great with the home baked flat bread and rolls.

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Sauerkraut Soup for Hundred (Kapustnica pre Sto)

For one 4-gallon batch (~50 servings)

Ingredients: 8 lb sauerkraut, 1 gallon water, 3 lb of pork neck, 16 peppercorns, 4 spoons caraway, 8 cloves garlic, 8 whole cloves, tablespoon crushed nutmeg, handful dried mushrooms, 7 onions, 7 apples, 3 lbs sausage and bacon, 4 tablespoons paprika, 4 tablespoons red pepper, 1.5lb tub of sour cream, few tablespoons flour
Prep Time: 4 hours

Regular Size (~12 servings)

Ingredients: 2 lb sauerkraut, 1 quart water, 0.8 lb of pork neck, 4 peppercorns, 1 spoons caraway, 2 cloves garlic, 2 whole cloves, bit of crushed nutmeg, smaller handful dried mushrooms, 2 onions, 2 apples, 0.8 lbs sausage and bacon, 1 tablespoons paprika, 1 tablespoons red pepper, small container of sour cream, tablespoon flour
Prep Time: 3 hours

Here is a recipe for the traditional Slovak Christmas sauerkraut soup kapustnica, for 100 people. This recipe will come in handy next time your 99 closest friends ask to come over for dinner…

Ok, you may be wondering why on Earth would I be posting a recipe for such a large quantity of soup. Well, the funny thing is that because of this website, I got asked if I could prepare a dish for the St. Nicholas Day celebration at the Slovak Embassy in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Slovak American Society of Washington. I had doubts about this, given that I had never before cooked so much food. But my friends persuaded me to take this great opportunity. The recipe posted here is more-or-less identical to the kapustnica recipe posted earlier. The difference is that photos are better (my new kitchen has much more light) and that this time I used the right kind of meat, krkovička (pork neck).

This is what the ingredients for a 100 person soup look like. Everything all together cost roughly 90 dollars.

For this soup you will need dried mushrooms. Dried mushrooms taste bit different from fresh ones, since the flavor is more concentrated. If you don’t find any in your grocery store, you can dehydrate mushrooms at home by leaving them uncovered on a paper towel for several days. Or you can lay them out, single-file, in an oven turned to low heat (warm or 200F). Dehydrated mushrooms will keep for a very long time. In Slovakia, it used to be common to go mushroom picking in the fall and then dry the mushrooms for use in winter soups. My family would dry them by hanging them from strings attached between beams in the kitchen. Kind of like drying laundry on a clothes line.

Let’s start cooking. Take a large pot (I used a 16L stock pot for each of the two batches), and add your sauerkraut (including the juice) and the water (voda). You don’t have to be too specific with the water, you can always add more later. You simply want to add enough to at least cover the cabbage (kapusta).

Wait for the soup to come to boil. With a large quantity of water like this, this may take a while. Once the water is boiling, add the pork neck meat (krkovička).

Add peppercorns (čierne korenie), caraway (rasca)…

…cloves (klinčeky), bay leaves (bobkové listy),…

…nutmeg (muškátový oriešok), shredded garlic (postrúhaný cesnak),…

…whole onions (celé cibule), with the outer skin removed and ends chopped off, and whole apples (celé jablká) with stems removed.

Add a handful of dried mushrooms (sušené hríby, more the better!) and some salt (soľ).

Cover, and let cook for a while. I cook it until the apples start cracking open on the outside. For a big batch like this, this will take at least an hour.

Then, take your favorite sausages (klobása) and bacon (slanina). There is a Polish sausage store in Rockville, MD, which supposedly sells the smoked, dried up and shriveled up Slovak sausage that should go in here. But it was bit out of my way so I used various typical grocery-stocked smoked sausages. I obtained the bacon (two kinds, regular and peppered) from Laurel meat market. This is also where I obtained the homemade sausage, which I cooked the previous day.

Slice the bacon and sausage into pieces and fry. I like to fry the sausage for a bit because I think it improved its taste. Add to the pot. Strain the fat from bacon before adding it.

Also add paprika (sladká červená paprika) and red pepper (štiplavá červená paprika). I used 3 spoons of whole red pepper and 1 spoon of powder.

Add more water if you need to. Roughly speaking, the soup should be half liquid, half “stuff”. Cover and cook for additional 30 minutes.

Finally, take the sour cream (kyslá smotana) and mix in few tablespoons of flour (múka). Add in small batches, stirring in between and letting the cream dissolve.

Finally, boil for another minute or two. Also scoop out as many bones as possible. Manually pull off whatever meat didn’t fall off.

And there you have it, the traditional Slovak sauerkraut soup, kapustnica. Besides the soup, I also prepared whiskey “rum” balls. Dobrú chuť a Veselé Vianoce (Bon apetit and Merry Christmas)!

Here are just few other pictures I wanted to share. The day when I was making this soup was the first time it had snowed here in Washington, D.C., this winter. And it was quite the snowfall! The snow created a beautiful backdrop for preparing this traditional winter soup. Here is a photo taken out the backdoor in my kitchen. Cooking is also a great time to let your friends try your creation. Here is my friend Nicole tasting (and testing) the soup. I think she approved. And finally, me serving the soup at the Slovak Embassy.

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