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Polish · Soup

Żurek na Zakwasie

  • Intermediate
  • 35 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

rich · earthy · warm-spiced · aromatic Leads with richness that coats and comforts, an earthy, grounding base, opening aromatic and staying there.

Ingredients

  • 500 ml rye zakwas, shaken to lift the sediment
  • 400 g biała kiełbasa, raw white sausage
  • 150 g smoked boczek or streaky bacon, in lardons
  • 1.5 litres water
  • 300 g waxy potatoes, in 2 cm dice
  • 1 onion, 1 carrot and 1 parsley root, diced
  • 4 garlic cloves, grated
  • 2 tsp dried marjoram, crumbled between the palms
  • 5 allspice berries and 2 bay leaves
  • 150 ml soured cream, 18 percent
  • 4 eggs, boiled 8 minutes and halved
  • Salt and black pepper

Equipment

Grater / zester

The skills inside

Tempering a custardRendering fat: and cooking in what runs outThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Render the bacon in a dry pot until the fat runs clear and the pieces are amber, then add the onion, carrot and parsley root and let them take colour at the edges.
  2. Add the water, allspice, bay and the whole sausage and hold at a bare shiver for 25 minutes, until the sausage is firm and the broth tastes of more than water. 25 min
  3. Lift the sausage out, cut it into coins, and cook the potatoes in the broth until a knife slides through without resistance.
  4. Pull the pot off the heat. Shake the zakwas until the white sediment is suspended, stir it in, then return to the barest simmer for 8 minutes so the raw rye taste cooks out. 8 min
  5. Temper the soured cream with a ladle of hot soup, stir it back with the garlic and marjoram, and serve over the halved eggs and sausage without letting it boil again.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Tempering a custard 59 recipes

  • The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
  • The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
  • Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
  • Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
  • Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.

Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.

Rendering fat: and cooking in what runs out 73 recipes

  • It started cold or low and came up slowly: fat that met a hot pan seizes and scorches before the inside can melt, and there is no recovering it.
  • The fat in the pan is clear and clean-smelling, pale to golden, with no dark sediment on the floor and nothing acrid in the steam.
  • What is left behind is crisp and deep gold with no soft pale fat still clinging to it and no black burnt edges.
  • There is a real volume of it: enough to film the pan floor and be poured off and kept, not a dry smear that never ran.
  • Whatever cooks in it browns in it and takes its flavour, rather than sitting in a greasy pool that never gets hot enough to colour anything.

Where it goes wrong The heat was raised to hurry it along, so the outside seized and browned before the interior fat could melt; very little runs out, and the solids come out burnt on the outside and rubbery within.

At the Table

The Pour
Riesling or Grenache
Also Right
Cru Beaujolais
From the Taps
Farmhouse saison
Zero-Proof
Cloudy apple juice, chilled

Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Żurek na Zakwasie Technique: Tempering a custardThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Polish kitchen