Sorrel soup is one Polish soup I have never put on this site, mostly because sorrel is so hard to buy here. Peter at Peter’s Food Adventures has a version I like, so I went through his green borscht and checked it as a chef: what works, why it works, and a couple of things I would add.
Green borscht is a light soup of potatoes, carrot and onion in stock, finished with a big handful of sorrel, dill and spring onion, and served with a hard-boiled egg and soured cream. In Poland we call it zupa szczawiowa. The sorrel is what makes it: sharp, lemony and green, with no lemon in sight.
Who Is Peter?
Peter writes Peter’s Food Adventures from Perth, in Western Australia. He is the cook, the photographer, the videographer and the editor, and his wife cooks alongside him. His site covers Eastern European and Russian food next to everyday dinners, and his idea is a simple one: food made with love tastes better.
What I like is that he writes for people who did not grow up with these dishes. He explains what sorrel is, where to find it and what to use if you cannot, which is exactly the question most readers outside Eastern Europe have.
More from Peter’s Kitchen
Peter has been writing for a long time: there are over 400 recipes on the site, and about a third of them are Russian. He writes them the way you would cook them at home, with the stories and the Russian names alongside, and some come with a video.
If you like the sour side of Eastern European cooking, start with his Russian sauerkraut, and his solyanka, the meaty soup sharpened with pickles and olives. For a weekend project there are Uzbek manti, the big Central Asian dumplings, and kholodetz, the set meat jelly made for Russian holidays.
He also makes his own drinks, including medovukha, the old honey drink, and he cooks for the holidays in a big way: his Russian-style roast goose is worth a look if you have ever wondered what to do with a goose. The rest of the site is everyday food from Perth, from smoked meat on the barbecue to quick weeknight soups.
Where Sorrel Soup Comes From
For centuries zupa szczawiowa was a poor people’s soup in Poland, because wild sorrel cost nothing. You picked it from the meadow. The richer versions written down in the nineteenth century cooked the sorrel in butter, then finished it with egg yolks and a lot of soured cream on a chicken broth, and served it with croutons or pearl barley.
Soups like this, made with sorrel and often spinach, beet leaves or even nettles, are a form of the green borscht Peter writes about, and it is still a favourite in Ukraine. So his soup sits right in the middle of that family. If you want the other Polish soups, my barszcz is the red one, and my krupnik is the hearty barley one.
Peter’s Recipe in Brief
He simmers cubed potatoes in stock with bay leaves for about ten minutes, then adds onion, carrot and garlic softened in butter and simmers it another ten. The chopped sorrel, dill and spring onion go in off the heat, the pot is covered for fifteen minutes, and it is served with a halved egg and soured cream. His full method and photos are on his page.
What Works, and Why
The sorrel goes in off the heat. This is the best decision in the recipe, and he explains it in his notes. Sorrel is soft and falls apart into a puree with only a little cooking, so a long simmer turns it to sludge. Stirring it into the hot soup and covering the pot cooks it just enough.
Sorrel instead of lemon. Sorrel is one of the few leaves cooks use mainly for its sourness. It brings acid and a fresh green smell at once, which is why the soup needs no vinegar if you have enough of it.
Softening the vegetables in butter first. Onion, carrot and garlic cooked gently in butter until golden give the stock a sweet, rounded base that stands up to the sharp sorrel.
Egg and soured cream to finish. Both soften the sourness, which is why so many versions of this soup end with one or the other, and often both.
What I Would Add
Keep a handful of sorrel raw. Sorrel’s own acid turns its green to a dull olive as soon as it warms through, even off the heat. Chop a small handful very fine, or blend it, and stir it in just before you serve. The soup comes back bright green and tastes fresher.
Put the butter and soured cream in the ingredient list. His method fries the vegetables in butter and serves the soup with soured cream, but neither is in the recipe card, so anyone shopping from the card will be missing them.
Go easy if you eat a lot of it. Peter is right to mention oxalic acid. A normal bowl is fine, but sorrel is very rich in it, so anyone who has had kidney stones may want the spinach and sorrel mix he offers.
My Verdict
This is a well-judged green borscht, and the decision that matters most, keeping the sorrel off the boil, is the one he gets right and explains. Add a little raw sorrel at the end for colour, put the butter and soured cream on the list, and it is a recipe I would happily send people to.
A Few Words from the Chef
Sorrel soup tastes of the start of summer, and it is one of those dishes that cost almost nothing once. Peter’s version is a good one to start with. If you make it, tell me in the comments whether you went hot or cold. Smacznego!
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