Rich cabbage soup with sauerkraut or fresh cabbage

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Ingredients for a three-liter pot:

• 500 g of meat on bone;
• 300 grams of sauerkraut or fresh cabbage;
• 3 small bulbs;
• 2-3 potatoes;
• 2 tomatoes;
• 1 small carrot;
• 1 tablespoon of tomato paste;
• vegetable oil for frying;
• bay leaf, salt, peppercorns, sweet pepper and other spices - to taste;
• dill, parsley, sour cream for serving on the table.

Cook the broth

Traditionally, meat soup is cooked on chicken broth, while choosing a brisket, a brisket and other parts of the carcass with a bone.
Pour the meat in water and cook over medium heat. When it starts to boil, watch the foam. Otherwise, the broth will have to be filtered.

Add the cabbage

This is the main component of cabbage soup. Most often sauerkraut is used. Even add to the soup its brine. Thanks to sauerkraut, cabbage soup acquires that sourness, for which many like them so much.

Sour cabbage soup - this is not soup, but a kind of kvass. So in ancient times they called honey-malty drink, which was treated with a hangover. Now many people mistakenly call acid cabbage soup with sauerkraut.

When the soup boils, add cabbage to the pan. If it is too vigorous, then it must be washed beforehand.

If you cook soup from fresh cabbage, do not forget that, unlike sauerkraut, it should be added at the end of cooking, before potatoes.

Turn down the fire and try the broth for salt. Usually, the salinity of cabbage is quite enough, but if desired, you can pour a little. Cabbage with meat should be cooked for about an hour.

We make a roast

Shchi - refueling soup, which means that you can not do without roasting. Fry the finely chopped onion in vegetable oil, then add the chopped carrots and chopped tomato to it, and at the very end still a tablespoon of tomato paste to make the soup full color.

Previously, the onions were put into the soup twice. The first time a whole onion together with the meat during cooking broth (then it was removed). The second time the onion was added finely chopped together with cabbage.

Collecting the cabbage soup

After an hour and a half cooking, take the meat out of the broth, and when it gets cold, separate it from the bone and cut it into small pieces. Then return it to the soup along with the roast and potatoes.

Initially, rye flour was added to the soup for density. With the spread of potatoes the function of starch broth took over this vegetable.

Add spices

Approximately 10 minutes before the readiness, send the bay leaf, pepper and other spices to taste in the pan. Try shchi. If they seem to be under-salted, add salt.

Shchy are ready! As a dressing, sour cream and fresh herbs are usually used.

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