Hot cucumber soup

I have to share this recipe with you, because this soup is absolutely delicious, the preparation and cooking time is really short and it’s easy to make; a great dish for the hot summer days ahead. We are in the middle of the cucumber season, so it won’t be that hard to find the perfect ingredients; those round, smooth, home-grown, and a bit bloated cucumbers, who should be a light green color to taste the best, because they have just the right amount of bitterness and their seeds are not as big as well.

 

 

In the last 2 weeks I cooked this recipe about 4-times; 4-times in which I have perfected the process and wrote down the exact instructions for you to make a delicious-tasting soup in the first try (I accept any form of complain or approval on my e-mail klemen@plavariba.si). And what even better is that kids love to eat it as well.

 

For 8 portions of soup (about 2, 5 l of liquid) you need:

• 1, 5 kg home-grown cucumbers, not too small, but not too big
• 3 bigger young onions
• 2 cloves of garlic
• ½ kg potatoes (about 3 bigger potatoes)
• 1 liters water
• 5 grains of freshly grained pepper (or not, kids don’t like too spicy food)
• 2 spoons of butter
• 2 spoons of olive oil
• 1 dl sour crème
• fresh dill (you can also use the dried, grained version)

 

 

Preparation

Find some home-grown cucumbers and rinse them under cold water. Peal the skin and chop of the ends – try the meat at the end parts that it is bitter, because cucumbers have the most bitter parts at the ends. If the cucumber is bitter, chop of some more end parts till you get the perfect taste. Grate the remaining, cleaned part into thin pieces.

 

Peal the onions and chop them into tiny cubes.

 

In a bigger pot, heat up butter and mix them with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Add the chopped-up onions and stir them once in a while on low heat for 15 minutes and keep the lid closed to braise. Keep close watch not to let the onions stick to the pot. At the end add in the thin-chopped garlic cloves. Mix and sauté just a bit, so the garlic starts to develop a nice aroma.

 

 

Add in the grated cucumbers into the mixture. Add some salt and chopped dill. Salt just a little, because in the next step you add squashed potatoes into the pot, which is also salted with the water it was cooking in. Put on the lid and cook for another 30 min, so the cucumber lets out all of its liquids.

 

Peel the potatoes and cut them into smaller pieces, which you add in a separate pot, where you pour in about 1 liter of salted cold water, and salt just a little. Cook the potatoes till they are soft, for about 25 minutes. After that, put the pot with the potatoes off the heat, stir in about 3 spoons full of sour cream, which should be not too firm and not too soft, so it can bind the mixture together. The fat of the sour cream has to mix in well with the other ingredients that’s why it is best to use a hand-held blender.

 

Mesh the potatoes together with the remaining salted water and add into the cucumber mixture. At wish, you can enrich the ingredients with some black peppercorns, and mix in well. At the end you should get a nice and smooth mixture, which is not too stiff, or too loose, so you can spoon in up nicely (if it is too firm, add in some hot water).

 

 

Remove the pot from the heat and let it rest for about 10 minutes, so the ingredients can develop and mix in their taste. Serve the soup in bowls or plates and decorate with some fresh dill. For a perfect dinner I recommend to make some fried fish with a mixed salad to go along. The dish can also be eaten as a breakfast dish, whereas then the soup alone should be enough to make you last till lunch.

 

Cucumber soup is also delicious to eat when cold, and should hold in the fridge, because of the added potatoes, about 1 day.