Sauerkraut Soup
Jan. 24th, 2022 01:03 pmToday on "Cooking With Plonq":
In this special "using up stuff in the fridge" edition, I present sauerkraut soup. This was inspired by a cooking video we watched yesterday where the host made a cabbage-based soup, and he mentioned that there was a traditional Polish version made with sauerkraut.
We had a couple inches of kielbasa in the fridge left from a dish we made last week, and I had about ½ a jar of vintage sauerkraut that I keep forgetting about at the back of the fridge. I moved the jar to the front of the fridge before I went to bed last night as a reminder, and this morning I ran over a mental check-list of what might go well in a soup.
I started off by coarsely chopping a stalk of celery and a handful of baby carrots. I peeled and cut up the sausage into bite-sized pieces, then tossed the three ingredients into a pot with a bit of olive oil. I sautéed it until the sausage was starting to brown and then dumped in a couple tablespoons of dried red onion flakes.
I shook in about a half-teaspoon of caraway seeds and cooked it a bit longer to give them a hint of toastiness before adding about ½ tsp each of white pepper and sweet paprika and ¼ tsp of dill weed. I followed those with the half-jar of sauerkraut, liquid and all (this stuff did not have a lot of liquid, so I felt pretty safe adding it).
When that was all combined, I stirred in about a teaspoon of chicken bullion paste and then dumped in the remaining ~700ml of water left in the tea kettle after breakfast (I turned on the heat under it when I started on the soup). I followed that up with a bay leaf. Then, once the soup came up to a boil, I turned it down and let it simmer for another fifteen minutes.
I served it with a grind of fresh pepper on the top. It was really good. I know that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
atara won't eat this, but I'm keeping this one in mind for future reference. When I finished this, I filled a container for the fridge so that I can have it again for lunch tomorrow or Wednesday. While I had the fridge open, I spotted the sour cream, and it occurred to me that it would probably go well with this soup.
There was about half a bowl of soup left after I had packaged up my lunch, so I gave myself another serving and added a good dollop of sour cream. Good call. That pushed it to next-level good. Not as photogenic as the first bowl, but it made up for that in flavour. Two thumbs up.
In this special "using up stuff in the fridge" edition, I present sauerkraut soup. This was inspired by a cooking video we watched yesterday where the host made a cabbage-based soup, and he mentioned that there was a traditional Polish version made with sauerkraut.
We had a couple inches of kielbasa in the fridge left from a dish we made last week, and I had about ½ a jar of vintage sauerkraut that I keep forgetting about at the back of the fridge. I moved the jar to the front of the fridge before I went to bed last night as a reminder, and this morning I ran over a mental check-list of what might go well in a soup.
I started off by coarsely chopping a stalk of celery and a handful of baby carrots. I peeled and cut up the sausage into bite-sized pieces, then tossed the three ingredients into a pot with a bit of olive oil. I sautéed it until the sausage was starting to brown and then dumped in a couple tablespoons of dried red onion flakes.
I shook in about a half-teaspoon of caraway seeds and cooked it a bit longer to give them a hint of toastiness before adding about ½ tsp each of white pepper and sweet paprika and ¼ tsp of dill weed. I followed those with the half-jar of sauerkraut, liquid and all (this stuff did not have a lot of liquid, so I felt pretty safe adding it).
When that was all combined, I stirred in about a teaspoon of chicken bullion paste and then dumped in the remaining ~700ml of water left in the tea kettle after breakfast (I turned on the heat under it when I started on the soup). I followed that up with a bay leaf. Then, once the soup came up to a boil, I turned it down and let it simmer for another fifteen minutes.
I served it with a grind of fresh pepper on the top. It was really good. I know that
atara won't eat this, but I'm keeping this one in mind for future reference. When I finished this, I filled a container for the fridge so that I can have it again for lunch tomorrow or Wednesday. While I had the fridge open, I spotted the sour cream, and it occurred to me that it would probably go well with this soup.There was about half a bowl of soup left after I had packaged up my lunch, so I gave myself another serving and added a good dollop of sour cream. Good call. That pushed it to next-level good. Not as photogenic as the first bowl, but it made up for that in flavour. Two thumbs up.
