Polish Housewife

Polish recipes served up with tidbits of folklore, customs, and history

7 Best Polish Soup Recipes for your Winter Menus

by 31 Comments

Soup plays a huge role in the gastronomy of Poland. Popular yearround, here are the seven best Polish soup recipes to see you through the winter. A week’s worth of soup with no repeats!

Soup is the go-to first course in Poland rather than salad, and this time of year that makes a lot of sense. It’s a delicous, comforting way to work some veggies into your diet.

It’s worth the effort to make a big pot of soup on a Sunday afternoon. You’ll have lunch or dinner for the coming week.

Pair it with a good bread and you have a satisfying meal. I love the “brown and serve” baguettes. They’re warm from the oven and wonderfully chewy with a crisp crust.

I’ve bought them at Sprout’s and also in the grocery section at Target. I’m sure there are other places that carry them. They keep well in the freezer, so you can always have delicioius bread with very little notice.

 

1. Sour Rye soup or  Zurek – is a very popular Polish soup, unlike anything else I know. The base for the soup is water that has soured with rye flour, so if you’re making it from scratch, you need to start days in advance. Add in the standard soup veggies, herbs and spices, white sausage, and hard boiled egg for garnish and you have Zurek. It was the first Polish food that I ate in Poland, an order that I repeated many times.

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2. Tomato Soup or Zupa Pomidorowa – there is no comparison between canned tomato soup and the real thing. A homemade tomato soup has a complexity with layers of flavor that set it apart. In Poland it’s often served with pasta, rice, or potatoes in the soup.

3. Sour Pickle Soup or OgĂłrkowa – I think my sister, so used to make pickle sandwiches as a child would like this soup. The idea is that you use some of the summer cucumbers preserved in brine and the usual mix of veggies to make this soup. It surprising to put pickles in soup, but the flavor it great!

collage of Polish soups

4. Sauerkraut Soup or KapuĹ›niak – this is one of those soups that would have never occured to me in a million years. To my American mind, sauerkraut was something that was occasionally served on hotdogs, and was a key ingredient in a Ruben sandwich, but soup? It you haven’t had it before, be prepared to be surprised. It’s fantastic!

This recipe calls for the addition of pork ribs, but many people used pork neck bones instead. Remember Poland was into nose to tail cooking long before it was trendy.

5. Borsht or Barszcz – Beefy soup bones with beets and other vegetables are simmered to create Barszcz. Although if this is a Christmas Eve dish, the broth will just be veggies. Before serving, the red broth is strained and served as a clear soup. It’s full of flavor, very garlicy and very tart from the addition of lemon juice. Some recipes may call for vinegar or take advantage of a little lacto fermentation to achieve a sour broth.

The hot barszcz is often served with krokiety, Polish croquettes, which are something like an eggroll, alongside. Another popular accompaniment to barszcz is a little dumpling called uszka which means ears because of the way the dumpling is shaped. The uszka are usually filled with a dried mushroom mixture.

6. Tripe Soup of Flaki – this soup is rumored to be a reliable cure for a hangover. It’s also been in the Polish reptoire for centuries. It’s rumored to have been eaten by King WĹ‚adysĹ‚aw II JagieĹ‚Ĺ‚o in the 1400s. The flavor is marvelous, but those who didn’t grow up eating it might be bothered by the idea of a tripe soup or by the texture of the tripe. I recomment slicing the tripe very thinly and cutting it in to small pieces. It’s high in selenium and vitamin B-12, but like other organ meats, it’s high in cholesterol.

7. Chicken Soup or Rosół – I never understood recipes that talk about skimming the foam when making a broth. It seemed like busy work, until I learned to make rosół. It’s the patient skimming of every bit of foam that removes the impurities and gives you a beautiful clear broth. That’s the key feature of rosół.

Veggies are added to the boiling process and they may of may not be added to the finished soup. Many times they are just to flavor the broth. The noodles which are commonly added are cooked separately and put in the bowl before the soup is ladled over. This keeps the broth clear, and keeps the pasta from soaking up all the broth if you have leftovers. This is a classic recipe for Sunday dinner in Poland. One chicken can feed the extended family.

These are my top soups for winter, but given Poland’s love of soup, I’ll bet there are some you would add to the list. Let us know in the comments below.

Smacznego!

Lois

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Elizabeth Beaudoin

    What perfect timing for soup recipes. We will have lows of -24 Celsius and highs of -18 on the weekend so the slow cooker is coming out for soup. Happy New Year Lois.

    Reply

  2. Carla Huber

    My polish aunt always made a spinach soup, probably with chicjen stock base but think might have added little soyr cream mixed in at end, it had a tang to it, does anyone jnow if this recipe, would be greatly appdeciated

    Reply

    • Danuta I Gajewski

      Carla, the soup you’re thinking of is actually sorrel soup (zupa szczawiowa). One of my favourites! Especially when served with a hard-boiled egg, quartered, in the soup! I remember going “sorrel hunting” with my grandparents as a child in the spring time (when sorrel is at its most tender). I’m sure Lois must have a recipe!

      Reply

    • Margaret Szczeblewski

      Hi Carla , what you probably remember your aunt cooking was sorrel soup . It looks lot like spinach . Sorrel is a leaf growing wild in meadows that get plenty of moisture, I used to pick it when I was growing up in Poland , every time we had taste for it . You can also get seeds and grow it in the garden or big pot , it has to have plenty of water ,it’s 2 year plant . When you want to make soup , clean the leafs and cut it finely , then sauté them in butter and add chicken or beef stock/ broth , then yo can add cream ( I substitute it with 1/2 & 1/2) , tast it maybe add little salt pepper or if it’s not sour enough , you can add little sour cream to tast . Serve it with either potatoes , rice, noodles or hard boiled , cut up eggs( my personal favorite) . If you live where you have Polish deli you can get ready to use sorrel in the jar , makes it easier , much easier . I hope , I’m helpfull with this info . Oh , and one more thing , why I think it was sorrel, because in 70 years of my life I’ve never heard of spinach soup in Poland , it may have to be added to some , but it was mainly used as side dish with 2nd course, in inlets . Also , spinach is not sour , anyway spinach and sorrel look very similar, you can also use fresh sorrel in salads , has nice soury , lemony taste

      Reply

    • Anna lidzbarski

      She was making Sczaw soup i think. It’s a nice potato soup with sorrel leaves, very popular with us polish people. In a pinch, spinach with lemon juice for tang was what we used in Texas because there was no sorrel available.

      Reply

  4. Kelly Pekalska

    My my mother in law cooks The best grzyby zupÄ… (mushroom). She dices 500g mushrooms. A heap of potatoes, carrots etc and a chook goes in too. At the end she mixes a small amount of sour cream into it (as she does with tomato soup and vegetable soup). Bardzo Dobry!!

    Reply

  5. MaryAnn Barnett

    On your website you had a reciipe for a soup that had a meat filled type perogies. you suggested making a beef broth with beef bones, celery, onions, carrots. I think the Polish word for this recipe started with a “D”. I can’t find it now on the site and really want to make it. My Polish mother used to make something very similar but didn’t really have a name for it. She just called it perogies in broth. I was very young when she passed and she never wrote the recipe down. I sure would appreciate your help. Mary Ann

    Reply

  8. Don Jarzambek

    Gotta put prunes in the czarnina…rode the bus to downtown St. Louis with my mother…bought the duck back home on them bus and turned the duck into soup. But used to be at Easter…

    Reply

  10. Sarah Morey

    I grew up eating “Easter Soup” made by my grandmother (dad’s mom). It was only served at Easter. She also called it Borscht I guess, but I have since learned that isn’t right. It was the broth from a ham strained and then everyone cut potatoes, kielbasa, ham, boiled eggs etc. Into their own bowl of broth at the table from separate bowls of previous ingredients. What was that and do you have a recipe? Thank you if you can help!

    Reply

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