It feels like a soup kind of night, so I'm wiping up a new one: Hungarian Mushroom Soup. Pretty simple dish. I modified some elements to make it fit my taste a bit more; addition of chilies for spice, and substitution of soy for worcestershire sauce.
Ingredient selection: Mushroom, red onion, garlic, serrano pepper, lemon juice, worcestershire sauce, dill, flour and hungarian paprika mix, bouillon cube in place of stock, sour cream.
Want to get a soup pot at temperature with some butter and oil to saute our onion, garlic and mushroom.
They're going to want to cook until the mushrooms have released all their excess water and evaporating it off again. Looking at about a 10 minute cook time over medium heat.
lurking
After the water cooks off you can continue with the saute if you want to build up a good caramelization. Since I wasn't working with too many mushrooms and didn't want them shrinking too much, I decided this was an adequate point.
>not using lea and perrins Worcestershire
ONE FUCKING JOB OP
Once the base components are ready, put in your flour and paprika mix. Make sure everything gets coated and the fats suck everything up. This will help thicken our sauce and add the smokey element / color from the paprika.
It was there. It was available. But cmon man... $4.50 bottle versus a $1.50 bottle? It was a steal.
Slowly add in your stock, or in my case water (since we're adding a stock cube) slowly and gradually build up the soup until you reach a desired consistency. You want it not too thick, not too loose.
Once you find a consistency, in goes the chilies and dill. Looks loose at the moment but don't forget it will cook down further.
Just let it go and do its thing. Heat mid-low.
Once it starts looking ready to finish, or you're hungry and tired of waiting, we're going to add our wet components: lemon juice, worcestershire sauce, and sour cream.
If you don't want your sour cream to lump and break, take some of the broth and mix it in a bowl with the sour cream before putting it in the main pot. This will break it apart beforehand, preventing the clumping.
The sour cream gives it a nice full body color. We don't want to do any additional cooking after having added the wet ingredients. Cooking the lemon juice too long will make it lose some of the astringency, it's always to be used near the end if you want a more prominent flavor.
Nothing left to do now but plate.
Dollop of sour cream, cracked pepper, scallions. That's all she really needs.
What you get in terms of flavor is a brightness from the lemon juice, a savoriness from the worcestershire, little spice from the serrano, and a full body smokiness, earthiness from the paprika and mushroom.
Came out alright. I'll cook it again for sure.
And one more shot to finish off the thread.
>hungarian paprika mix
What is that? The soup looks really good but we kind of need to know what the primary seasoning is instead of some amorphous term like "___ spice blend."
It was in the list of ingredients. Just flour mixed with hungarian paprika to create the thickening agent.
>being a poorfag
Saw a post saying they were going to make this yesterday probably by you. I was interested in the recipe so thanks for posting.
Question about Worcestershire sauce:
What do you use it in? I have a bottle in my cupboard that I pretty much only use in cocktail sauce. Can I just add a dash of it into dishes like I would with soy sauce?
Fundamentally, yes. They both employ fermented ingredients which heighten the savory appeal in dishes, even though they're two distinct flavors. Both soy and worcestershire are very interchangeable in dishes, but I feel worcestershire has a more robust aromatic sense than soy does, so use sparsely in dishes which have other aromatic notes that are meant to be conveyed.
It's great on red meats. Goes well in marinades as well. I use it in my beef jerky.
Thanks, guys!
Frankly speaking I expected more a dish out of Hungary. It appears very average with the only supplemental benefit of taste being dill which is not typically a common herb used in more western cooking aside from stir fry. A rather tame soup.
As someone who actually has Hungarian heritage, it's exactly what I expected. Paprika and sour cream are what I've come to expect. The only Hungarian dishes I know are chicken paprikash and stuffed cabbage, so this is right down my alley.
I can see by a visual a rough estimate, but what are the measurements of the ingredients? This soup looks good and like a nice alternative/twist to my standard favorite, cream of mushroom.
You could get a rough estimate just by the image OP posted. Looks like 1 clove garlic, 1 red onion, 1-2 serrano, 1 tbsp dill, 1/2-1 lemon worth of juice, 2-3 tbsp worth of flour--unsure of the paprika amount, but you cant go wrong with more, the entire thing of mushrooms probably, 1-2 tbsp of sour cream. I'm sure there's recipes online with similar quantities.
That's what I had mentioned, I'm just not confident on my ability to eyeball things. Thank you for your help!
I thoroughly enjoyed this thread.
thanks OP!
>flour
Anyone have an alternative thickening agent that isn't carbohydrate-based?
Best thing to do is taste the food and adjust accordingly.
The problem with this whole situation is that even an exact recipe is no guarantee of success. Ingredients vary in flavor so you should always taste before seeing how much to add.
For example: you're making curry and the recipe calls for "1 tb chili powder". If you have some dried out cheap shit that's been sitting around for 4 years and lost most of its flavor that is probably nowhere near enough. OTOH if you have some really good fresh stuff straight from the Indian grocer...well...that 1 tb could be serious overkill. Always taste.
Sure. Instead of using water an a stock cube, use proper homemade stock. The thickening comes from the gelatin in the stock. That's one of the reasons why proper stock kicks the shit out of bullion cubes--it has a much better texture.
Much truth to this. Simmer a good bone stock down to just a few inches and it will be naturally thick. Only other alternative I can think of is corn starch, which is much less heavy in terms of carbohydrates. You can also create a thicker body by adding a nautral vegetable puree like squash.
This is the same reason historic punch recipes in old cocktail books often call for adding a bit of milk or cream to a very citrus-heavy liquid. It immediately curdles and then you skim off the solids. Something molecular happens where the texture of the punch is pure velvet. They called it fat washing.
Very comfy thread OP, thanks for the high quality content