This is a German soup, which is called "out of nothing". Probably, he could have become that very famous "axe soup", if not for one small thing - even an ax was not cooked in this soup. Water, sour cream, potatoes, a little flour, a bunch of aromatic herbs - and that's it! And it turns out a chic and thick potato soup. Very fragrant and very tasty. The zealous Germans came up with it not in the easiest times for the country's economy, when meat could not be afforded even for the holidays. A recipe for those who are interested in how tasty and satisfying to eat "for two pennies." We will cook the soup in the Panasonic multicooker.
Ingredients:
- 3 glasses of water
- 250 g sour cream
- 0.5 kg potatoes,
- 2.5 st. spoons of flour
- 1 garlic clove
- 3/4 tsp spices (original recipe uses cumin as a seasoning, but I am indifferent to cumin, so I replaced it with nutmeg and thyme; you can use any seasoning that you prefer),
- salt, pepper to taste (if you like spicy soups, add a pinch of chili).
Cooking method
Potatoes for this soup are best to take one that boils well. We clean it, cut it into cubes, put it in a multicooker bowl, add a clove of garlic, fill it with water and set it to the “Baking” mode for half an hour. During this time, the potatoes should have time to boil well. Meanwhile, mix sour cream with flour until smooth. When the potatoes are ready, we catch the garlic, put the sour cream with flour into the bowl, mix. Without closing the lid, wait until it boils (literally five minutes) and, stirring, let it boil for a couple of minutes. Salt, pepper, that's actually the whole recipe. So this dish is for those who not only love to save their money, but also their time. It is customary to serve the soup without any additives. Just sprinkle with some green onions. But if you prepared the soup not for the sake of learning German cuisine, but for your own pleasure, then you can sprinkle it with grated cheese on a coarse grater. Your satisfaction is guaranteed!
Soups are versatile and healing (especially in dank autumn, in the rain and during seasonal colds), and there are hundreds of them. There are soups for every day, there are for special days, there are simpleton soups and aristocratic soups, grandmother's stews and restaurant celebrities ... Which one will we cook today?
I suggest trying mashed potato soup - in the spirit of those amazing recipes that French chefs create like works of art. The set of ingredients is simple and inexpensive, and the pleasure is like being in a restaurant. Somewhere in Gascony.
Are you with me?
Ingredients
- Potatoes - 2 pcs.
- Onion - 1 pc.
- Bacon - 200 g
- Milk - 1 glass
- Cheese - 150 g
- Butter - 50 g
- Black pepper
- Greenery
Cooking
Bacon cut into small pieces. Pour it into a deep saucepan, add butter there and put on a small fire.
While the bacon is frying, cut the onion into small cubes. We don't cry! No need! (hint: in order to cry less, do not forget to whistle while slicing the onion). How long do you fry the bacon? As much as an onion is chopped. It just works fast.
Put the bacon on a plate, and throw the onion into the empty pan. We let it fry in the same oil (5-10 minutes), making sure that the onion does not burn.
While everything is cooking, peel the potatoes and chop them into small slices.
Pour potato slices into a saucepan with onions, pour water so that it slightly covers the potatoes.
Bring the soup to a boil, then pour in a glass of milk.
Grate cheese on a fine grater.
And now the whole mass of the finished soup is slightly cooled and transferred to a blender, add cheese and grind well until smooth. Return to the saucepan and if the soup seems too thick, add a little boiling water.
Salt and pepper. Important: when grinding pepper, we try not to turn it into dust, it is much more interesting when small fragrant pieces of pepper come across in the soup.
Don't forget to put a tablespoon of fried bacon on each plate.
You can decorate the mashed potato soup with parsley.
ON A NOTE. It is not forbidden to add a couple of tablespoons of fat sour cream to this soup when serving or while whipping with a blender. Instead of sour cream, you can use thick Greek yogurt - a little sourness will not hurt the soup at all.
However, it seemed to me that my mashed potato soup had enough calories even without sour cream, and I did not add anything.
This German potato soup is the most unusual potato soup recipe I know of in Europe (South America has one even weirder - the one with melon). In no case should you think that the Germans cook potato soup in the same way and only as in this recipe - they cook it in very different ways, and most of the options are generally similar to what any Slav is familiar with. But in several regions of Germany, this dish has a special flavor direction, the so-called "broken sweetness".
"Broken sweetness" is when elements that are absolutely contrasting in taste are combined in one dish, for example, sweet and sour or sweet and salty. Moreover, the whole point of “broken sweetness” is that both of them should be not a little sweet and a little salty, but very sweet and very salty, but at the same time the overall taste of the dish still remains balanced.
So, this German potato soup is traditionally prepared with meat broth and various types of salted or smoked meat or sausages. But for a taste contrast to this salted meat, prunes, fresh plums or pears are used, and in some cases, plum or apple pie. Yes, a special fruit pie in addition to potato soup. And like this! No need to think that German cuisine is just a knuckle with beer and sauerkraut ... There are very refined delights there.
In general, I can say that all dishes with "broken sweetness" in a person without a habit cause an explosion of the brain with their composition of ingredients at the first moment, but they are all absolutely edible and tasty. I will show the strongest version of this type of German potato soup in terms of taste contrast - Mecklenburg, with bacon and prunes. Pie is not supposed to go with it, pies are only for soup with fresh fruit.
We cut the onion.
Fry the onion in vegetable oil over low to medium heat until translucent.
While the onions are fried, we clean and cut the carrots (you can still have some other root crops) and potatoes. We cut the potatoes into small pieces so that they cook faster.
After the onion reaches transparency, pour in the broth to it, pour in the potatoes and carrots and add the bacon. Bacon must be in large pieces so that it is easy to catch them later. Cook the soup for 20 minutes (until the potatoes are soft).
Approximately 5 minutes before the end of cooking the soup, we catch the bacon and cut it into large cubes. It is convenient to press it with a spatula.
We send about half of the bacon back to the pan with the rest of the soup. Lightly fry the other half in a frying pan.
At the end of cooking, puree the soup. Now they do it with a blender. Previously, they were made either with a fork in plates or a potato masher in a saucepan. This is me to the fact that you do not need to try to achieve the consistency of a homogeneous puree soup! On the contrary, an authentic recipe is more consistent with the presence of unground large pieces in a thick soup.
Well, now - a solemn moment! Each serving of German potato soup is served with prunes, fried bacon and green parsley. And it's delicious, honestly!
About vegetables, and I remembered that I had not made a very German and very tasty vegetable dish for a long time - potato soup.
In general, in Europe, soup is most often referred to as mashed soup. Soups like ours, where pieces of vegetables and meat float in the broth, are called Eintopf in Germany - which can be translated as “all in one saucepan”. Only this dish is much thicker than ours, something between a soup and a stew. Therefore, if a restaurant lists asparagus soup or onion soup, one hundred percent will be mashed potatoes. The traditional German potato soup belongs to the same type of soup.
The recipe was given to me by my mother-in-law, it is very easy to prepare, and how useful this soup is can be seen already from the composition of the products.
We will need:
700-800 grams of potatoes, 300-400 grams of other vegetables (carrots, leek celery root, parsley roots or parsnips).
Spices: bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, lovage, sage, marjoram, ground black pepper, salt.
Bouillon cube (vegetable)
Garlic
Cream
We cut vegetables into cubes, pour diluted vegetable broth (vegetables should be completely covered), add all spices except marjoram and cook until softened for about 20-30 minutes. When the vegetables are cooked, remove from heat, take out the bay leaf and grind with a blender into a puree (do not drain the broth). At the end, add a little cream, crushed garlic and marjoram. We warm up again. You can do without cream, but they give a very pleasant, delicate taste and texture. It is not necessary to overdo it with them, just a few spoons.
Serve with sausages. There is a special type of German sausages here - Bockwurst, they are lightly smoked and sold in jars filled with special juice and ready to eat, they only need to be burned in water. Delicious and perfect for this soup.
