National Dishes of the World

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Żurek (sour rye soup)
Photo: Maksym Kozlenko, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

soup

Żurek (sour rye soup)

żurek

A sour soup made with fermented rye starter, with white sausage, egg and marjoram – an Easter must.

Eaten in: Poland

Prep
15 min
Cooking
45 min
Total
1 h
Servings
4

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About the dish

Żurek is cooked with a starter of rye flour and water that ferments for a few days and gives the soup a distinct, pleasant sourness. The base is a broth of white sausage and smoked pork, seasoned with garlic, marjoram and often horseradish, then enriched with soured cream. Each bowl gets slices of sausage and halves of hard-boiled egg, sometimes potatoes as well. Żurek is a fixture of the Easter breakfast but is eaten all year round, and restaurants like to serve it in a hollowed-out loaf of bread. In parts of Poland a similar soup made with a wheat starter is called white borscht.

Main ingredients

  • rye sour starter
  • white sausage
  • smoked bacon
  • eggs
  • garlic
  • marjoram
  • soured cream

More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)

Recipe

Żurek (sour rye soup)

https://foodmap.ominuvo.com/dish/zurek

Ingredients

4 servings

4 servings

Method

  1. Cover the sausage with cold water, add the bay leaves and allspice and simmer for 20 minutes. Lift out the sausage and slice it.

  2. Dice the bacon and onion and fry them in a pot until the bacon has rendered and the onion is golden.

  3. Pour the sausage broth over the bacon, bring to the boil and slowly add the well-shaken starter, stirring all the time. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the crushed garlic, the marjoram rubbed between your palms and the horseradish, then season with salt and pepper.

  5. Temper the soured cream with a few spoonfuls of hot soup and stir it into the pot; do not let it boil again.

  6. Hard-boil the eggs. Divide the sausage and halved eggs between bowls and ladle over the hot żurek.

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