“Żurek” is the Polish name of a traditional soup with a pleasantly sour taste. It’s called sometimes “white borscht,” although it actually has no relation to that beet soup. Its typically sour flavor is due to a fermented rye base, and it’s usually served with a white Polish sausage and a hard-boiled egg.
Ingredients for 2 people:
To prepare the broth:
1 pork knee bone
1 piece of bacon (preferably smoked)
Vegetables according to availability (carrot, onion, garlic, leek, etc.)
Laurel
For soup:
1 bottle of żurek concentrate
2 Polish sausages (white or smoked)
2 hard boiled eggs
A little cream (optional)
A little grated horseradish (optional)
Marjoram
Salt and pepper
The base of this żurek is a meat broth, ideally prepared one day in advance. It will give a powerful flavor to the soup, which will be rounded off very well by the sausage. It can be replaced by a vegetable broth, for which I recommend to use carrots, garlic, bay leaves, as well as parsley and/or celery roots.
The other important ingredient is “żurek concentrate”, very common in Polish supermarkets, and which can also be found in shops which import products from Eastern Europe. But it’s also possible to prepare it at home, following the following instructions (although in that case, we must start the preparation a week in advance):
How to prepare żurek (fermented rye) concentrate:
Wash a glass jar with boiling water in order to sterilize it. Add a small cup of rye flour and twice as much lukewarm water, which has been previously boiled. Boiling the water is a safety measure against any bacteria, and it’s advisable to wait until it’s lukewarm, so that it mixes well with the flour without forming any lumps.
Mix until dissolved and add 2 cloves of garlic, some peppercorns and allspice, bay leaf, marjoram and salt. Cover the jar with a kitchen towel but without the lid, the preparation will need to “breathe” during the fermentation process.
Reserve in a warm place. After about 4 days it’s possible to “feed” the preparation, adding a little more rye flour and water. After 7 days, the concentrate will be ready. Eventually, a layer of mold might appear on the top, that’s perfectly normal. Just remove it and use the rest of the preparation.
It’s also normal for solids to settle to the bottom of the jar. Simply mix or shake until blended again.
Keep the concentrate in the refrigerator if you do not use it completely. Eventually we can repeat the “feeding” process to obtain more.
Having already the fermented rye base, we can prepare then the meat broth:
Put the meat and vegetables in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Remove the skim that will appear in the surface, reduce heat to low and cook for about two hours. Then reserve the meat and vegetables for another preparation (they can be served as a second course, accompanied with chrzan tarty -a horseradish-based dressing, very typical in Polish cuisine- or mustard). Keep the broth in the refrigerator so you can later remove grease with ease.
At this point, we already have all the ingredients to prepare the żurek:
Boil the eggs for 10 minutes and set aside. Cut the sausage into bite-size pieces. It’s possible to cook it later in the soup, but I like to boil it separately for about 20 minutes, in this way the żurek will be leaner.
Mix the meat broth with the concentrate in a pot and heat. The proportion is approximately double the first compared to the second, but there is no exact amount. It’s advisable to add the concentrate little by little, to adapt to our palate how sour we want our żurek. It’s also worth noting that if we use the concentrate liquid without the flour, the flavor will be milder. But on the other hand, flour helps us thicken the soup. Knowing this information, we can adapt the result to our liking.
Adjust the salt if necessary and serve the resulting soup on a plate. Add a few pieces of sausage and the hard-boiled egg (cut into 2 or 4 parts). Some recipes call for adding a little cream at this point, but this is optional. Season with a little marjoram. Those with a taste for stronger flavors can also add a little grated horseradish.
By the way, in many restaurants in Poland it’s very common to serve żurek inside a round hollowed out loaf of bread.
Bon appetit, or as said in Polish, smacznego!