Polish Pickle Soup (Zupa Ogórkowa)

A home-cooked meal is a labor of love: The seemingly effortless transformation of simple, honest food presented with a personal touch. A good home cook is a fount of culinary knowledge and many seem to be naturally gracious hosts as well. We sometimes need to be reminded that the best chefs aren’t always found in Michelin-starred restaurants. In fact, some of the most delicious and authentic meals I’ve had have been prepared by home cooks who make everything from scratch from family recipes handed down from generation to generation.

One of the best ways to learn someone’s native cuisine is to actually step into their kitchen or invite them into yours to create a dish working side by side. It’s rare that we have the opportunity to cook at a grandmother’s elbow while sharing a worn recipe card or peering into a cookbook with food-stained pages. Ingredients, instructions, or maybe a tip or two scribbled in the margin, and comments spoken quietly in the kitchen can be invaluable. Oftentimes, the most critical ingredient is not flour, liquid or fat, but nostalgia, which is easily evoked by the right aroma, flavor or presentation. Personal stories and authentic, unguarded memories are offered spontaneously when cooking elbow to elbow.

I was taking an online recipe-writing course with Gotham Writers when one of my classmates submitted a recipe for pickle soup. I knew immediately it was a dish my family and I would enjoy. My youngest daughter loves sour flavors and I grew up in New York City at a time when sandwiches were always served with a sour dill pickle on the side (the best part!). The recipe looked amazing and I couldn’t believe I had never encountered a pickle soup before.

When I showed the recipe to our Polish cook, she said she had a better one from her grandmother. I asked her to collect all the right ingredients from her favorite shops and together we made her family recipe for pickle soup—and now it’s one of my family’s favorites!

I was fascinated by the memories she shared of making pickles with her family. Cucumbers and other vegetables were preserved in brine to be enjoyed throughout the winter. Oftentimes, dozens of jars were stored in the basement, buried in the dirt floor. In the winter her grandmother would create new and imaginative recipes to make use of the pickled vegetables and that’s how this soup was born. I learned that most recipes for pickle soup call for dill pickles, and too often cooks reach for cucumbers pickled in vinegar. For just the right flavors, the way her grandma intended them, be sure to use cucumbers in brine (a salt-water solution with no vinegar), and be sure to strain and grate them.

If you ever have the opportunity to learn ethnic cuisine from an experienced immigrant cook, don’t miss it! I will be posting more ethnic recipes in the future, but the next time you are in New York and craving something different, check out the the League of Kitchens workshop series. In the meantime, let me know how you like this pickle soup.

I have found the ingredients for this recipe in the international section of most grocery stores, but there’s also a great Polish store in the Palm Beaches called A Taste of Europe Delicatessen and in the Hamptons look for Wisla Polish Deli in Riverhead.

Yield: Makes 6 quarts