Central Europe · Volume 21, Rye, Smoke and the Kitchen Beside It
Żurek
Poland-wide, with real regional variation
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- 10 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Poland-wide, with real regional variation: Kraków, Kujawy, Kashubian, Świętokrzyskie and Silesian styles differ in their finishing and their zakwas grain.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 1 hour, plus 3 to 5 days for the zakwas.
Ingredients
For the zakwas (make ahead)
- 1 cup rye flour
- 1 litre warm water
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1 bay leaf
- a few a few allspice berries
- 750 ml pork or chicken stock
- 500 ml zakwas, as above
- 200 g smoked kiełbasa, sliced
- 2 potatoes, diced
- 2 hard-boiled eggs, halved
- to taste marjoram, garlic, bay leaf
- to taste soured cream, to finish
Method
- Make the zakwas ahead: combine the rye flour, water, garlic, bay leaf and allspice in a clean jar, cover loosely and stir daily, at 20 to 22°C, until it smells strongly and cleanly sour with light surface bubbling, in 3 to 5 days.
- Simmer the stock with the potato until nearly tender.
- Add the sliced kiełbasa, marjoram, a crushed garlic clove and a bay leaf, simmer 10 minutes.
- Stir in the zakwas off a hard boil, warming through gently rather than boiling it hard, which flattens the sour ferment character.
- Finish with soured cream and serve with a hard-boiled egg half in each bowl.
What a modern chef changes
A judged, not clocked, ferment, and a schmaltz-enriched finish across the two traditions
Rung 1
Method
- Taste the zakwas daily from day 3 rather than trusting a fixed day count, judging readiness by smell and a light, even effervescence, exactly as rung 1 argues, and hold it in the fridge once it reaches the character you want rather than letting it run past its best out of habit.
- Finish the soup with a spoonful of rendered schmaltz stirred through at the table, alongside, not instead of, the traditional soured cream, a genuine, honestly-flagged crossover from this chapter's other table, adding a savoury depth neither cream alone nor butter would give.
- Smoke your own kiełbasa per the ferment bench below rather than buying pre-smoked, since the soup's whole character depends on real wood smoke rather than a liquid smoke flavouring, which several named UK-sold "Polish style" sausages substitute.