Ukha — Russian Fish Soup with Sea Bass
Shake up your usual menu with a sea bass ukha. This classic Russian fish soup can be made from all sorts of fish. If you want something different, use sea bass instead of the river fish more commonly used here — your ukha will turn out not only delicious but striking to look at.
Cooking method
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Step 1:
Gather all the ingredients for the ukha. You can use fresh or frozen fish. Thaw frozen fish in the refrigerator first — it's best to move the sea bass from the freezer to the fridge the night before so it's thawed by morning. Wash and peel all the vegetables. You can chop the onion if you like; I use a whole onion that I fish out and discard at the end.
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Step 2:
Wash the fish, trim off the fins, scale it, and remove the gills. Gut it if needed. Cut the fish into serving pieces. You can bone the fish now if you want, but keep in mind it will likely fall apart into small bits. If you want to keep the pieces whole, leave the backbone in. Luckily sea bass has few small bones, so it's easy to eat in soup.
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Step 3:
Cut the carrot into half-moons or thin slices.
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Step 4:
Cut the potatoes into not-too-large cubes.
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Step 5:
Put the fish, the whole onion, and the allspice berries in a pot. If you'd rather keep the onion in the soup, chop it and add it a little later with the rest of the vegetables.
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Step 6:
Cover the fish with cold water and set it over low heat. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes, skimming off the foam.
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Step 7:
Add the potatoes and carrot to the soup. Cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Season the soup with salt and pepper. At the end, take out the whole onion and discard it.
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Step 8:
Cover the pot and let the soup rest for 10–15 minutes.
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Step 9:
Before serving, sprinkle the ukha with chopped fresh herbs. Enjoy!
- Unlike its freshwater cousin, sea bass is richer and a bit less lean. But that means soups made with it come out heartier — definitely a plus.
- Important: sea bass has very sharp fins that can give you a nasty cut even while you're picking the fish out at the store, so handle it carefully. When prepping it, trim off all the fins first, then scale and gut it.
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Onion - 41 kcal/100g
- Ripe potatoes - 80 kcal/100g
- Baked potatoes - 70 kcal/100g
- Mashed potatoes - 380 kcal/100g
- Boiled potatoes - 82 kcal/100g
- Potatoes in uniform - 74 kcal/100g
- Fried potatoes - 192 kcal/100g
- Carrots - 33 kcal/100g
- Dried carrots - 275 kcal/100g
- Boiled carrots - 25 kcal/100g
- Bay leaf - 313 kcal/100g
- Ground black pepper - 255 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Water - 0 kcal/100g
- Allspice - 263 kcal/100g
- Sea bass - 79 kcal/100g
