Comfort Food: Sauerkraut Soup

This post is dedicated to my family who love to eat strange, but delicious, foods.

This is an aftershock of Eta's lángos party and another sign of how I'm learning Hungarian food. The second dinner she served that night was a nice sauerkraut soup with sausage and frankfurter slices. It was time to make my own version. So I set of to the Mars tér farmer's market with Franny and bought a half kilo of sauerkraut from one of the wonderful vendors, of which there are at least three, who pickle things. I say things because their products can range from whole cabbages to slices of watermelon!

I couldn't pass up the pickling onions or the sauerkraut-stuffed pickles. In my wildest dreams I could not have come up with this, but here it is.

Yup, sauerkraut-stuffed pickles!

My family, as weird as we are, love two things: pickled foods and spicy foods. Growing up we would usually consume an entire jar of homemade pickles when we went to Grandma's house, and we'd probably have a sauerkraut roast for dinner too. Of course we would have other dishes that prepared me for a life in Hungary such as cabbage and potato soup, so sauerkraut soup is not a stretch where I come from.

Instead of posting an even longer description of the process I'll simply post my recipe:

Sauerkraut Soup

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 small parsnips, peeled and chopped with greens reserved
2 medium carrots peeled and chopped
Salt
3 tablespoons paprika
Vegetable stock
½ roasted red pepper, diced
½ kilo sauerkraut, slightly rinsed
1 teaspoon caraway
Sour cream

Procedure:

Heat oil over medium flame and add onion, parsnips, greens, carrots and salt to sweat. When the vegetables are soft add paprika and mix well. Add vegetable stock, roasted red pepper, sauerkraut, and caraway. Simmer for 40 minutes and serve hot with sour cream and rye bread.

Jó étvágyat!