Traditional Bulgarian Chicken Soup

3 comments

1. Translation:

   Boil the chicken with spices ( black pepper 2 – 3 grains , allspice 2 grains , 1 slice of celery and 1 whole onion )

   When the meat is boiled you take it out to cool off

   In the pot you stir fry with a bit of oil , on low heat , (all fine chopped ) 1 onion , 2 carrots and 2 peppers , when they soften up add the broth from the chicken (straining the onion , celery etc.) Add the chicken , broken down on pieces and 4 – 5 potatoes (chopped on small cubes )
   . Add finely chopped celery and parsley. Let it boil .
   After that you make застрйка , wich is woth 1 egg yolk , the juice of 1/2 lemon and 5 table spoons of cream , in there you add a bit of the boiling sout to temper it , after that you put it in the soup .

   This is the recepy on the left , on the right there is another recepy for chicken soup , but you add tomatoes.

2. Here is my grandmas’ recepy that I do regularly and it’s Delicious.

   The ingredients are (in my own measurement, I cant use standard grams of whatever):

   Chicken legs with the bone about 500 gr

   2 onions – white and as big as possible.

   about 5 big potatoes

   2 carrots

   Parsley

   Soup noodles

   ​

   Now first you take the chicken legs that must be with the bones otherwise the soup will not be oily or fatty enough and wont taste a lot like chicken. So you take the chicken and put it in boiling water. You take one of the onions, clean it, and without chopping it you put it in the water to boil with the chicken.

   Then while the chicken boils it’s really importaint to remove the foam that starts to appear on top of the water regularly. It’s also your indicator when the chicken is ready – when there is no more foam appearing and the chicken meat is white and easily removed from the bones.

   Meanwhile you chop your carrots and the other onion and the potatoes however you like but put them in a separate places.

   After the chicken is boiled you remove it from the water with the onion that you throw away, you need only the chicken.

   You must have a great chickeny broth by now. While it boils you put the vegetables and whatever spices you like – salt, pepper and red pepper in my case. The vegetables must be put in this order – so that they will be evenly boiled: First the carrots, in 15 minutes you put the onion, then in 15 minutes you put the potatoes with the noodles at the same time.

   Meanwhile you clean the cicken – remove the bones and all the stuff that is gross, leave only the tasty meat. And when the vegetables are boiled in the broth – you remove it from the stove and put the chicken back – DO NOT COOK IT WITH THE CICHICKEN AGAIN. after it has cooled a bit – you add fresh parsley on top.

   My grandma thaught me this recepy and I make it every week at least once and it must be given to other people so that thy can make great soup, So when people are like – HEY This is the best soup I have ever tasted – you teach them how to make it and tell them it’s from the best woman from west Bulgaria.

3. Since it was already translated, few things – chopping vegetables finely is restaurant-y, chopping them in bigger pieces is more rural/peasant style. The vegetables you would put in a pot and close the lid with some oil on a medium heat. To make the zastroika at the end you’d put 1 raw egg yolk either in 2-3 spoons of yoghurt or 5 spoons of cream, maybe some lemon juice. Stir energetically. Then you either get the help of someone or extremely carefully pour tiny streams of hot broth from the soup into that mixture, stirring energetically (the point is the yolk doesn’t start cooking inside the mixture, but it becomes warmer). Once it’s sufficiently warm, close to the temperature of the soup, you do the same for the soup – you pour out the zastroika in a very tiny stream, very carefully, stirring the soup energetically.