Okroshka with Kvass

Name: Okroshka with Kvass: Cold Ukrainian Summer Soup
Prep time: 1 h
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 1 h 15 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Bread kvass 3-4 l; Cucumbers, young and green 3-4; Boiled sausage or ham 150-200 g; Radishes 12-15; Dill 1 bunch; Green onions 0.5 bunch; Eggs 3; Potatoes 2-4; Table mustard 3 tbsp (47 g); Sour cream to taste; Salt, pepper, sugar to taste

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1 h 15 mins

Homemade cold okroshka, made with fresh vegetables and juicy ham and topped up with homemade bread kvass, is my favorite summer dish. Soon the unbearable heat will arrive, when no amount of water quenches your thirst or cools you down. A hot soup that is great in winter, for example meat solyanka, is something you have to force yourself to eat in summer.

Any liquid you drink evaporates through your skin right away, and you are thirsty again. In such heat, a bowl of ice-cold kvass soup does you a lot of good. It is healthy, given all the vitamins in the vegetables, and tasty, especially with fresh dill and bread.

Nobody doubts that the word “okroshka” comes from the verb “to crumble” (kroshit’). Finely chopped vegetables, herbs and meat are all covered with kvass or beet broth and served very, very cold. The Bulgarian cold soup tarator, made from cucumbers and dill and mixed with sour milk or ayran, is an excellent alternative.

Many people don’t chop the vegetables but grate them on a coarse grater. And that is a mistake. You get a “grated mash”, not okroshka with kvass. With all the variety of ways to make okroshka, everyone surely has their own. In the East, mainly in Turkey, they make their own cold soup, cacik, similar to tarator but quite different in spices.

To be honest, I love okroshka, but I make it only once or twice a summer so that I don’t get tired of it.

People don’t eat homemade cold soups like this, and they keep trying to add some “salad” and dress it with mayonnaise, which gives you an improvised Olivier salad. To each their own… Salad is one thing. Okroshka with kvass is something else entirely.

11 ingredientsTo the recipe

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Ingredients

8 servings

Bread kvass 3-4 l
Cucumbers, young and green 3-4
Boiled sausage or ham 150-200 g
Radishes 12-15
Dill 1 bunch
Green onions 0.5 bunch
Eggs 3
Potatoes 2-4
Table mustard 3 tbsp
(47 g)
Sour cream to taste
Salt, pepper, sugar to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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Bread kvass: since draft kvass has been banned where we live, I bought a good one that is not too sweet, in 2-liter bottles. You need 3-4 liters of kvass, and that will be enough.
The hardest part of making a tasty okroshka, unfortunately, is the quality of the sausage. You need ordinary boiled sausage, such as “doctor’s” sausage. I said it and laughed. It was a long time ago that sausage was made from meat and toilet paper. But as a friend of mine says, soy with emulsifiers is also useful sometimes. So I bought ham, hoping that the soy in it would at least be decent.
Actually, the ingredients for okroshka are up to you. You can add anything you like, for example chicken, mushrooms, fresh herbs, and so on.
First, boil or bake the potatoes in their skins. Then cool and peel them. Hard-boil the eggs, then cool and peel them too.
Finely chop the green onion tops, salt them well and mash with a fork so the onion releases its juice.
Cut the hard-boiled eggs and separate the whites from the yolks. Finely chop the whites and put them into the pot where you will mix the okroshka. Mix the yolks with 1-2 tsp sugar (5–9 g), prepared table mustard and 1 tbsp good sour cream (15 g). Mash thoroughly with a fork and stir.
Set the salted onion and the egg dressing aside for now. Cut the sausage or ham, the cucumbers (peeling them or not is up to you) and the radishes. Cut them the size you would cut vegetables for vinegret, or a little smaller. Finely chop the dill.
Peel the potatoes and chop them, or better yet, grate them on a coarse grater. Actually, potatoes are the only thing worth grating rather than chopping.
Mix all the ingredients in the pot.
Pour in the kvass. Add the mashed green onion and the egg dressing. Season with salt and pepper, and add some heat if needed. You can add more mustard to taste, especially if the kvass is sweet. The soup should be sharp and tingle your tongue slightly.
It is important to chill the okroshka thoroughly, so put the pot in the fridge. The soup should be ice-cold.
Okroshka is served only cold, sprinkled with dill and with sour cream.