Żurek

Polish soured rye soup with sausage and egg, sharpened by bay and ziele angielskie

Origin: Kraków & Poland

From the journey of Allspice.

Żurek is built on a ferment, and the ferment is the dish. Zakwas is rye flour and water left in a jar with garlic and a crust of rye bread for four or five days until it sours, developing the same lactic tang as a sourdough starter but drunk rather than baked. Poland has soups of this kind going back to a time when acidity was one of the few ways to make a winter diet palatable, and the sour rye soup was peasant food long before it became a Sunday one. Into it go smoked sausage, marjoram, garlic, bay, and ziele angielskie, which is Polish for allspice and means, literally, English herb. The name records the route: the berry reached the Polish lands through English merchants and the Baltic trade rather than overland from the Mediterranean, and Poland has called it that ever since. It is one of the two fixed aromatics of the Polish pot, the other being the bay, and Polish recipes name them together so consistently that they function almost as a single ingredient. What allspice does here is specific. The soup is sour, smoky, and heavy with pork fat, and the berry supplies a warm clove-like note that keeps the sourness from being merely sharp. Without it the soup tastes thin and one-dimensional. It is Easter food above all, eaten on Easter Saturday and Sunday with the blessed święconka sausage and egg, and in some regions served inside a hollowed loaf of rye bread.

Ingredients

Zakwas

100 g wholemeal rye flour
500 ml warm boiled water, cooled
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 slice rye bread crust
2 whole bay leaves
6 whole allspice berries

Broth

300 g smoked pork ribs or a smoked ham hock
1.5 litres water
1 whole onion, halved and charred cut side down
2 whole carrots, halved
1 whole parsley root or small parsnip
8 whole allspice berries
3 whole bay leaves
1 tsp black peppercorns

Soup

300 g white Polish sausage (biała kiełbasa), sliced
2 tbsp dried marjoram
4 cloves garlic, finely grated
150 ml soured cream
1 tsp salt, or to taste

To Serve

6 whole eggs, hard-boiled and halved

Method

Five days ahead, whisk the rye flour with the cooled boiled water in a clean jar, add the garlic, bread crust, bay, and allspice, cover with muslin, and leave at room temperature.
Stir the zakwas once a day. After four or five days it should smell sharply sour and slightly alcoholic and have separated. Strain and refrigerate.
For the soup, simmer the smoked ribs with the water, charred onion, carrots, parsley root, allspice, bay, and peppercorns for an hour, skimming at the start.
Strain the broth and discard the vegetables. Pull any meat from the ribs and reserve it.
Poach the sliced sausage in the strained broth for ten minutes, then lift it out.
Stir the zakwas into the hot broth, starting with about 300 ml and tasting as you go.
Add the marjoram, crushed between your palms, and the grated garlic, and simmer for ten minutes.
Temper the soured cream with a ladleful of hot soup, then stir it back into the pan. Do not boil after this point.
Return the sausage and the pulled meat, taste for salt, and serve with half a hard-boiled egg in each bowl.

Notes

Ready-made zakwas is sold in bottles by Polish grocers and is a perfectly respectable shortcut. Homemade is better and takes five days of no effort. Biała kiełbasa, the raw white sausage, is the Easter one. Smoked kiełbasa works and gives a heavier soup. Marjoram, not oregano. They are related and they are not the same, and Polish cooking is specific about it. Allspice appears twice, in the ferment and in the broth, which is deliberate and traditional. Serve with rye bread, or in a hollowed round loaf, which is how it is presented in Kraków restaurants.

The Gastrographer

Name: Żurek
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Kraków & Poland
Ingredients: 100 g wholemeal rye flour; 500 ml warm boiled water, cooled; 4 cloves garlic, crushed; 1 slice rye bread crust; 2 whole bay leaves; 6 whole allspice berries; 300 g smoked pork ribs or a smoked ham hock; 1.5 litres water; 1 whole onion, halved and charred cut side down; 2 whole carrots, halved; 1 whole parsley root or small parsnip; 8 whole allspice berries; 3 whole bay leaves; 1 tsp black peppercorns; 300 g white Polish sausage (biała kiełbasa), sliced; 2 tbsp dried marjoram; 4 cloves garlic, finely grated; 150 ml soured cream; 1 tsp salt, or to taste; 6 whole eggs, hard-boiled and halved

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control