Red Fish Soup (Ukha)
A real, rich red fish soup — delicious and good for you! The secret to making authentic ukha is adding the fish in stages, so the broth soaks up plenty of the fish's juices and oils. You can make this soup not only with salmon-family fish but with any white fish, or a mix of the two.
Cooking method
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Step 1:
How do you make red fish soup? Gather your ingredients. For red fish soup you'll need: water; the head, tail, and fillet of red fish; one large onion or two medium ones; vodka (optional); bay leaves; allspice berries; ground black pepper; and salt.
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Step 2:
Wash the fish thoroughly. Peel the onion. Put the fish head in a pot and pour in cold water. Bring the water to a boil and cook, skimming off the foam, for 5 minutes.
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Step 3:
Add the fish tail and the onion. Cook at a low boil for about 20–25 minutes, skimming off the foam as it rises. You can go a little longer, until the fish and onion have cooked down well.
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Step 4:
Take out the onion and fish. You can discard them — we won't need them anymore, since they've given all their juices and nutrients to the broth. I decided to keep the tail, since there was a lot of meat on it. Strain the broth through a fine sieve or a double layer of cheesecloth. Return the broth to the heat and bring it to a boil.
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Step 5:
Add the fish fillet, bay leaves, allspice berries, ground black pepper, and salt to the boiling broth. Cook at a low boil for 10 minutes.
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Step 6:
Chop the dill.
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Step 7:
Pour in the vodka (optional — you can't taste it at all in the finished soup) and add the chopped dill. Add more salt if needed. Cook for another 2 minutes. Take the pot off the heat, cover it, and let the soup rest for about 15 minutes.
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Step 8:
Ladle the soup into bowls and serve it hot. Enjoy!
- This recipe doesn't include potatoes or grains. But if you want to make the soup heartier, you can add potatoes and millet or rice. Add them to the boiling broth along with the fish fillet, so they cook at the same time as the fish. Besides potatoes, you can add tomatoes or cherry tomatoes to the soup. A little secret: ukha and ordinary fish soup differ precisely in the rich broth made from the head and tail (or a small whole fish). So if you use only fish fillet, you won't get a true ukha.
- How do you fillet a whole fish? Remove the tail, head, and fins. Cut the fish along the backbone down to the spine. Turn it on its side. With a sharp knife, slice the meat away from the backbone. Flip the fish over and cut the fillet from the other side. Clean the inside, removing the black membrane, since it's bitter and will spoil the flavor. Rinse and be sure to pat it dry well.
- Important! Whether or not the recipe gives an amount of water for the soup, it's best to go by your own preferences (whether you like a thick or thinner soup), the size of your pot, and the ingredients you're using. Keep in mind that the author has their own idea of how much meat, potatoes, grains, and other ingredients a soup should have, which may not match yours. In practice, this means that if you're cooking it for the first time, don't make a whole pot at once. Make a small batch to taste — for one or two people. To do that, scale all the recipe's ingredients down to 1–2 servings and figure the water at about one cup per serving for a very thick soup, up to 1.5–2 cups for a thinner one. Don't forget that some of the liquid will boil off as it cooks. After tasting a small batch, you can adjust both the amount of liquid and the proportions of the ingredients to your taste. Down the road, like most experienced cooks, you'll be able to add the water and the ingredients by eye.
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Onion - 41 kcal/100g
- Bay leaf - 313 kcal/100g
- Ground black pepper - 255 kcal/100g
- Fresh dill - 38 kcal/100g
- Vodka - 235 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Water - 0 kcal/100g
- Allspice - 263 kcal/100g
- Red fish - 191 kcal/100g
