Famous Solyanka Thick Soup Recipe.

What is Solyanka meat soup? This famous thick soup has an unusual sour-salty-spicy taste. But despite the variety of the culinary palette, it really tastes good. It is common on the territory of the former USSR (mostly in Russia and Ukraine).

How to cook Solyanka thick meat soup? You will need a casserole with a volume of 3 liters.

Ingredients for Solyanka soup:
• Beef for broth - 600 gr
• Onions - 1 pc (for broth)
• Carrots - 1 pc (for broth)
• Salt and pepper
• Pickled cucumbers - 300 gr
• Onion - 130 gr
• Carrots - 120 gr
• Olive oil - 1 tablespoon
• Tomato paste - 30 g
• Smoked meats - 300 gr (neck, beef tenderloin, beef sausages, smoked turkey, etc.)
• Black olives - 15 gr (portion per plate)
• Lemon - 1 slice (portioned)
• Sour cream - 1 tablespoon (portion per plate)
• Greens

Cooking Solyanka soup:

Cover the meat with water, put it to boil on low heat, cook for 1.5 hours. ⁣⁣ ⠀

Cut pickled cucumbers into small strips, put them into a small pot, add some water. Put on low heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the onion and carrots and fry in olive oil. Add tomato paste 2-3 minutes before the vegetables are cooked. ⠀

Put coarsely chopped onions and carrots into the broth 20 minutes before it gets ready. Then remove these onions and carrots from the broth. ⠀

Put fried onions with carrots, stewed pickled cucumbers, bay leaves, salt and pepper in the strained broth. Add all the smoked meats, cut into strips. ⠀

Boil for another 2 minutes and serve with black olives, lemon, sour cream and herbs.

Many recipes for traditional Russian cuisine have remained in the past, but some of them have survived to our time and are still popular today. As a rule, the recipes for these dishes have many variations, since almost no one knows the original version. One of these dishes is Russian Solyanka (hodgepodge, as some people put it).

The dish appeared in Russia around the 14th-15th centuries, Solyanka was a thick soup, which was usually cooked based on fish broth with hot spices. Later, other options appeared: meat or mushroom broth; only one thing remained unchanged - the richness of the broth, the sharp salty-sour taste and the strong aroma of seasonings. Each region has its own recipe for Solyanka, but the constant ingredients are traditionally pickled cucumbers, broth, black olives and meats. Many people add lemon to the soup before serving to soften the spiciness a bit.

For the first time the name “Solyanka” has been mentioned in the literature since the 15th century. Solyanka was a spicy and fatty soup that served both the first and second courses, as well as an excellent snack for vodka. They made it sharp and oily so that the soup helped people drink for a long time and not get drunk. Also, the villagers also called it a hangover soup.

Already in the 18th century, the aristocracy recognized solyanka exclusively as a dish of the poor and drunken peasants.