Rassolnik is a favorite soup that is prepared with pickled or pickled cucumbers and the brine in which they were salted. The soup is thick, rich in flavors, and therefore it is cooked in various combinations. The meat component is represented by beef, pork and even chicken. And as a cereal, pearl barley or rice is taken. Vegetables are used in season. Regardless of it, carrots, potatoes and onions are present.
There is no big difference in preparing soup with barley or rice. We have already cooked it with pearl barley and many have prepared it according to this recipe. The scheme is the same in both cases. Except that in the second case it takes less time to cook. This is understandable, the rice is not so hard and requires 20 minutes to cook. Whereas for pearl barley it doubles.
It would be unfair to compare both options based on taste. Both soups turn out to be satisfying and nutritious. The taste depends on the type of meat taken and the degree of salting of the cucumbers with brine. Barrel vegetables will give the dish an oaky mood. And pickled ones - the smell of herbs and the slight sourness of the presence of vinegar in the marinade.
The dish itself replaces both the first and second. When I cook soup, I don’t even think about additionally frying the meat and preparing a side dish. I cook the pickle soup thickly, always with meat on the bone, so that there is fat. I add a lot of vegetables and spices. This is the recipe I want to share with you today.
And over the weekend I prepared a classic solyanka recipe from the blog. It turned out delicious too, see how to prepare it by following the link.
Classic pickle recipe
2 hours
We wash the beef, put it in a pan, fill it completely with water and start cooking. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a slow burn and periodically remove the foam.
After 20 minutes of boiling the broth, add pearl barley.
At the same time, fry the grated carrots and chopped onions in vegetable oil.
Cut the pickled cucumbers into strips or small cubes.
Check the readiness of the beef and remove it from the pan. We cut into small pieces, you can disassemble into fibers. Put it back into the broth.
Add potatoes, after 20 minutes – fry onions and carrots.
After 5 minutes, add cucumbers, brine and spices. Cook for about 5 more minutes, turn off the heat and leave covered for 20 minutes.
Before serving, sprinkle with chopped herbs. It could be dill, parsley, young green onions. Some people prefer to season the soup with sour cream and garlic and even unsweetened yogurt. The nuances of serving and refueling are based on your personal preferences.
Rassolnik with barley and pickles with beef
This is the most traditional and classic soup recipe. The rassolnik turns out rich, thick and with a pleasant meat aroma. This is the most popular option, so for those who are preparing such a dish for the first time, I advise you to do it this way.
Ingredients:
- Water – 2 liters
- Beef shoulder – 300 g
- Potatoes – 3-4 pcs.
- Onion – 1 pc.
- Carrots – 1 pc.
- Tomato paste – 100 g
- Pearl barley – 2 tbsp. l.
- Pickled cucumbers – 4 pcs.
- Bay leaf – 2-3 leaves
- Allspice peas – 3-4 peas
- Black pepper, salt - to taste
Cooking method:
1. The first thing you need to do is prepare the pearl barley. To do this, pour the cereal into a small container, fill it with water and leave it overnight. Then boil it until tender - this will take a little over an hour.
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2. While the pearl barley is cooking, you can make broth. To do this, place a piece of beef in cold water and cook for 40 minutes.
If you are not sure that you bought meat without antibiotics, you can drain the first broth immediately after boiling.
Next, place the peeled vegetables into the pan: whole onions and carrots. Boil everything lightly and then season with bay leaf and a few grinds of black pepper.
I recommend adding peppercorns and bay leaves to any soup: the taste will not become sharper, but the aroma will be more rich and piquant.
3. Now we need to prepare the frying. To do this, pass the peeled carrots through a grater and finely chop the onion.
Then pour a small amount of vegetable oil into the frying pan and fry the onion. When it becomes transparent, add the carrots there and sauté until soft.
To ensure that the vegetables turn out to be stewed and not fried to a crisp, you can add 1-2 tablespoons of beef broth or water to them.
4. Place tomato paste in a small bowl and pour in a little water. Using a fork, stir everything until smooth so that there are no lumps. Place the tomato in the pan with the vegetables, stir and leave to simmer.
5. Cut several pickled cucumbers into small pieces. Let's put them in a separate container; we'll need them later.
6. Take the beef out of the broth, remove it from the bone and chop it into medium cubes. Before doing this, it is better to cool it so as not to burn your hands when slicing.
7. Peel the potatoes and chop them into small slices. You don’t need to crush it too much so that it doesn’t turn into mush during the cooking process. After this, put the chopped vegetable in the pre-boiled broth.
8. We also put ready-made barley and beef into a common pan. Lightly boil everything and then throw in the pickled cucumbers. When everything boils, you can pour tomato dressing into the pan.
After the stew is cooked, you need to taste the soup. If there is not enough salt, you can add it. It is also necessary to season everything with a small amount of black pepper and leave to cook until all components are ready.
That’s it, the classic pickle soup with beef broth is ready and can be served with aromatic Borodino bread. To add a mild flavor, it is recommended to add a small spoon of sour cream and finely chopped herbs. Bon appetit!
Other pickle recipes
If you've had enough of the classic first course, you can treat yourself and your family to delicious soup experiments.
- Rassolnik Leningradsky
It was during the Soviet period that chicken, fatty fish and mushrooms disappeared from the soup ingredients. To replace the calorie content, hearty pearl barley came instead. It has an incomparable taste. This pickle must be prepared with beef on the bone.
Another difference from the classics is the addition of several types of peppers: peas, allspice and ground. You will also need a tablespoon of tomato paste. It needs to be added to vegetables when they are simmering in a frying pan before adding to the pan.
Interestingly, Leningrad rassolnik differs in the geometry of potato cutting. When choosing pearl barley for cooking soup, you need to cut the potatoes into cubes. And if you decide to cook with rice, then cut the tubers into strips.
- Rassolnik with rice
This dish is perfect for those who don't like pearl barley. Another convenience is that the rice does not need to be soaked. This means that you will spend a minimum of time preparing the soup.
For meat broth, you can use not only beef, but also poultry and pork. Any meat goes well with rice. Keep in mind that poultry will cook much faster than beef. If you take meat on the bone, the broth will be richer.
- Rassolnik with millet
Instead of pearl barley, you need to add 2-3 tablespoons of millet. There is no need to soak it, just rinse thoroughly in cold water. You will find a step-by-step soup recipe at the beginning of the article.
Another unusual ingredient is salted tomatoes. It turns out very tasty with soaked green tomatoes. They need to be cut into strips along with pickled cucumbers and simmered in sunflower oil or water for about 20 minutes. Then add it to the boiling soup.
- Rassolnik with kidneys
You can often hear that grandmothers and great-grandmothers cooked rassolnik not with meat, but with offal. This soup differs in taste from meat soup, acquiring a specific note. Try making your first course with beef kidneys.
- Rassolnik without meat
This soup is suitable for vegetarians and fasting people. The dish turns out satisfying and very tasty. Vegetables can be sautéed or added raw to the pan. Try cooking it both ways.
You can also get a child who doesn’t like meat interested in vegetarian food. Since the soup contains a lot of vegetables and healthy cereals, such a lunch will completely fill the body’s need for calories and nutrients.
Cooking rassolnik with pearl barley, pickles and meat in a slow cooker
A multicooker is an excellent kitchen device that will always help out the housewife. This is really very convenient, all you have to do is chop everything, throw it in, and after a certain period of time any dish is ready. Soups are no exception; in this unit they turn out no less tasty.
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Ingredients:
- Meat – 300 g
- Pickled cucumber – 3 pcs.
- Carrots – 1 pc.
- Onion – 1 pc.
- Pearl barley – 100 g
- Garlic – 1 clove
- Salt, ground black pepper - to taste
Cooking method:
1. Pour a small amount of vegetable oil into the multicooker bowl and add finely chopped onion. Lightly fry our vegetable on the “Frying” program.
2. While everything is preparing, cut the carrots into strips. Pour it into the bowl when the onion is already slightly golden.
3. Finely chop the garlic clove and chop the cucumber into medium cubes. Add everything to the already sautéed vegetables and simmer until the liquid evaporates.
Cut the meat into medium cubes. We put it in a bowl, add pearl barley, and mix everything well.
4. Peel the potatoes and chop them into large slices. Place it with the rest of the components and connect. Fill everything with plain water and set our device to “Soup” mode. My unit sets the time itself, it will take about an hour, but it depends on the type and power of the multicooker itself. Of course, don’t forget to lightly salt and season everything with black pepper.
It is necessary to remember that we added pickled cucumber, so it is better not to add more salt than to spoil the dish.
As you can see, there is nothing complicated about preparing pickle in a slow cooker. All you have to do is do everything according to the instructions, and you can treat everyone to aromatic soup. In addition, one cannot help but rejoice in the fact that the dish will remain hot for a long time, because many kitchen devices have a heating function. Bon appetit!
To soak pearl barley or not?
Each housewife prepares pearl barley in her own way. It can be soaked a day before cooking the soup, filled with hot water for a couple of hours, or boiled in a separate pan and then added to the broth. This is a tasty and healthy cereal, which at home has only one drawback - it takes a long time to prepare.
If you do not want to waste time on pre-soaking, you will have to cook the pearl barley for about 50-90 minutes. There is no universal recommendation for time, since it depends on the type of cereal. Readiness can be determined by its swollen and soft consistency, while the pearl barley should not be mushy.
Want to cook cereal faster? Then rinse it thoroughly until the water is clear, gently rub the grains together to remove the husks. Then fill with water for three hours. After soaking, the cooking time is usually reduced from 90 minutes to an hour, some varieties are cooked in half an hour. It is usually recommended to cook pearl barley from bags for 45 minutes.
Video on how to properly cook delicious “Leningrad” soup at home
This pickle can be cooked with both pork and beef. Feel free to take what you already have at home and start cooking. And the video will help you with this!
We will need:
- pork or beef – 500 g;
- pearl barley – 120 g;
- pickled cucumbers – 4 pcs.;
- potatoes – 2 pcs.;
- onion – 1 pc.;
- carrots – 1 pc.;
- vegetable oil;
- salt, pepper, coriander, garlic and bay leaf.
Preparation:
