Creamy Salmon Fish Soup with Potatoes and Carrots

Name: Creamy Salmon Fish Soup with Potatoes and Carrots
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 60 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Salmon 250 g; Onion 1; Carrot 1; Parsley 3-4 sprigs; Cream (20%) 100 ml; Butter 50 g; Salt, ground black pepper to taste

Fish soup with cream has a lot in common with many other fish soups. Take ukha, for instance: what angler hasn't tasted it by the campfire on a fishing trip? Probably only the armchair kind, and there are plenty of those.

Of all the fish soups out there, perhaps only classic ukha truly deserves the name, since everything else fits the idea of a “soup” better. And homemade ukha can just as well be cooked on the kitchen stove – and it turns out delicious.

Modern ukha is a very strong, spiced fish broth and doesn't look much like a soup, although the fish is often simmered with root vegetables. There's a popular belief that ukha needs the meat of an old rooster. Others say ukha with rooster is absurd and makes no sense. Pollock fish cakes are made without any rooster either – there's only fish in them, yet they're still cutlets.

That said, world cuisines have plenty of dishes built on fish broth with chicken added. Yurma, for example, is an old hot dish that mixes ukha with game broth. There are lots of dishes around the world called fish soup that are nothing like ukha. The most famous of them is bouillabaisse, the Marseille fish soup.

Bouillabaisse is a French soup typical of the Mediterranean coast, made by simmering fish and adding sautéed vegetables. Cossack shcherba is a fish soup with flour and salt pork. Halászlé is a Hungarian fish soup.

Some fish soups bring together the very best of traditional recipes from around the world. Fish soup with cream, very tasty and popular in Mediterranean countries, is one of them. It borrows a little from bouillabaisse, a little from traditional Ukrainian ukha, and a little from American seafood chowder.

Ingredients

2 servings

Salmon 250 g
Onion 1
Carrot 1
Parsley 3-4 sprigs
Cream (20%) 100 ml
Butter 50 g
Salt, ground black pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

It's important to clean the piece of salmon thoroughly, removing all the scales and every bone. You only need the fillet. A boneless portion fillet is much handier here than a steak, which is cut through the bone. Cut all the fillet off the fish and pick out the small bones.
Bring 1 liter of water to a boil in a pot, add salt and pepper. Make a broth from the fish trimmings (fins, skin, bones, backbone).
Strain the broth to remove any bits of bone. Prepare the vegetables for the soup.
Add the diced potatoes to the broth. It's best to cut the potatoes really small so they cook faster and more evenly.
Simmer until the potatoes are almost done but still a little firm. Add the salmon cut into large cubes. Cook until the fish is completely done, about 10 mins.
While the potatoes and fish are cooking, make the second part of the soup – the dressing.
Peel the onion and chop it very finely. Peel the carrot and grate it finely. Melt the butter in a frying pan and sauté the onion and carrot until soft, when the pieces of onion no longer have a firm center.
Add 1/2 cup of fish broth and keep simmering, covered, over low heat for 10 mins. Then add the cream, salt and pepper. Simmer for another 3–4 mins.
Combine the fish broth and the sautéed vegetables and stir well. Add more salt and pepper if needed, but experience shows that less salt and spice makes a tastier fish soup.
Bring the creamy soup to a boil and let it simmer over very low heat for 5 mins.
The creamy fish soup is ready. Ladle it into bowls, making sure each one gets some pieces of salmon, and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.
Serve the fish soup with fresh white bread.