Fish Soup with Shrimp and Salmon – Step-by-Step Recipe

Many people, in fact the vast majority, barely notice the difference between ukha and fish soup. They are far from the same thing. Ukha is considered a dish of Ukrainian cuisine, one of the many kinds of first courses. The word ukha itself most likely comes from the ancient word juse, meaning a broth or decoction. The word “yushka” is still used in modern Ukrainian. Other European languages have similar-sounding words too: juse (a meat soup) in Old Prussian, ius (broth, juice) in Latin, jucha (soup) in Slovenian and jicha (sauce) in Czech.

But only in this cuisine is ukha a broth made from fish. It is perhaps one of the oldest dishes of Kyivan Rus'. You often come across more specific names, too: ukha with rooster, mixed-fish ukha, ukha with pearl barley and so on.

Almost any fish works for fish soup. The essence of any soup, fish soup included, is the stock it is cooked on. Any fish will do, sea or river, and so will seafood. The stock is often made not from prized fish but from “trash fish” – small, unmarketable fish – or even from fish scraps (bones, fins, heads).

In some recipes the stock is made not from scraps but from proper fish, most often salmon or trout, and then the soup is cooked on that stock with seafood, vegetables and herbs added.

Today we are making fish soup with shrimp. The base of the soup is a stock made from pieces of salmon or trout; we will leave the fish in the soup and add shrimp for variety. Essentially, the base is a salmon ukha.