Baked Sauerkraut and Chicken Casserole
Solyanka here isn’t the soup you may have met in restaurants but a baked dish of the same name: a kilo (2 lb) of sauerkraut braised a full hour with onion and butter until its sharpness settles into a soft tang, then layered with poached chicken. Olives, marinated mushrooms, and chopped brined cucumbers — the salt-fermented dill pickles from an Eastern European deli, not sweet vinegar gherkins — are scattered on top just before baking, so they stay firm and punctuate the mellow cabbage. Forty-five minutes under a lid lets three kinds of pickle trade juices without drying out.
The fussy step is the flour. Dry it in the oven until it smells faintly nutty before stirring it into the cabbage; raw flour leaves a pasty taste, while toasted flour quietly thickens the liquid the kraut throws off. If your sauerkraut is aggressively sour, rinse and squeeze it first. Fresh cabbage works too, in which case two or three tart apples or salted tomatoes go in after boiling to supply the acidity you’ve given up. Like most kraut dishes, it eats better on day two.
Part of Eastern European cuisine — 65 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Lightly fry the finely chopped onion in butter.
Add the sauerkraut and braise for about an hour, until soft. Stir in the flour that you've dried in the oven.
Finely chop the boiled chicken. Grease a baking dish with butter and layer in the cabbage and meat.
Scatter finely chopped salted or pickled cucumbers, olives, and mushrooms over the top, and pour over the sauce or broth.
Cover the dish with a lid and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.
If you like, the solyanka can also be made with fresh cabbage, adding 2-3 small apples or salted tomatoes after boiling.
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