Soldier’s Shchi with Sauerkraut
These shchi come straight from the field kitchen, and the ingredient list says so: sauerkraut kept without refrigeration on the march, salo (cured slab pork fat, close to unsmoked fatback or bacon) replaced cooking oil, and tushonka — tinned braised meat, much like American canned roast beef — stood in when there was no fresh meat. Shchi is the East Slavic cabbage soup family, and the sour cabbage supplies both tang and vitamin C in a season with no fresh vegetables.
The signature move is the flour: toasted dry, thinned with broth and stirred in at the end, it gives the soup a velvety body and a faint nutty taste, while frying the carrot, onion and tomato puree in salo rather than oil adds color and a savory depth vegetable oil never delivers.
Three things to get right
- Rinse and squeeze the sauerkraut — 300 g, about 10 oz — if it is aggressively sour; the recipe specifies it rinsed for exactly this reason.
- Add the potatoes at the same time as the cabbage: acid all but stops potato from softening, so later is too late.
- Toast the flour only to a cream color, then slake it with hot broth in stages, working out the lumps.
Serve with smetana (full-fat sour cream), dill and crushed garlic. Like every cabbage soup, it is better on day two.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 447 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Boil the meat until half-done, skimming off the foam so the broth stays clear.
Shortly before the meat is done, add the rinsed sauerkraut and the potatoes cut into large cubes to the broth.
Fry the carrot, onion, and tomato puree in salo and stir them into the soup just before it's done.
At the end, add flour toasted to golden and thinned with broth or water; it will thicken the soup.
Season with salt, drop in the bay leaf and pepper, and simmer a few more minutes. If you have no meat, replace it with canned stewed meat.
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