WHITE BORSCH

Main ingredients:

2 carrots                  

1 root parsley                                

1 or 2 onions (optionally: might be chopped and fried before)

1 to 2 cloves garlic

4-6 polish white sausages

2 pieces of pimento

1 or 2 bay leafs

2-3 spoons of dried majoranae herb

4-6 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of pepper

6-9 potatoes

1 small box of cream (18%-22% fat)

1 bottle of  “Żurek” (it is a unique polish ready-made acidified rye based on water, which of course can be also home made)

4 liters of water

Additional ingredients (not obligatory):

2 dried mushrooms, preferably boletus or badius

2-3 boiled eggs (cooked separately)

Preparation:

Clean and rind the vegetables, cut up only potatoes. Onions might be either chopped and fried firstly or just input whole as it is. Put everything in the pot together with sausages, mushrooms and all the condiments apart of the majoranae herb. Fill the pot with water and cook it. Boil it all together for around 30 minutes, then pour in “Żurek” from the bottle and add majoranae herb, keep boiling it for next 15-30 minutes. Take off the sausages, slice them and throw back into the soup, take off the gas. In the meantime, fill one cup half-to-half with both: hot soup and cream, mix it up well and pour back to the pot. After that you can fill up the dishes with a soup. We usually serve it with halves of boiled eggs dropped into the soup.

CHICKEN OR BEEF SOUP

Main ingredients:

3 or 4 carrots                  

2 root parsley                          you can buy all vegetables together

½ stalk of celery                     in a pack called: “włoszczyzna”

1 leek

1 onion

1 chicken leg or 1 beef flank

1 stock cube (if it’s based on chicken you can use just any cube, but if it’s made based on a beef then use veal or beef cube only)

4-7 teaspoons of salt

a bit of pepper (1/2 -1 teaspoon)

4 liters of water

Additional ingredients (not obligatory):

1 spoon of oil/olive oil

1 bucket of parsley leafs

Preparation:

Just clean and scrapp/rind the vegetables, put them in the pot with a meat and fill the pot with water. Only the onion mustn’t be rinded, because the main reason of using onion is to get more yellowish colour of the soup. Boil it all together for less then 1 hour (around 40 minutes) and then add a stock cube, salt and pepper (additionaly you can add 1 spoon of oil/olive oil) and keep boiling soup for another quarter. After that it is ready to serve.

Polish serve this soup with pasta or small dumplings with meat called “uszka z mięsem”. Usually we spread some chopped parsley leafs on the top.