Gray Cabbage Shchi (Russian Cabbage Soup)
A traditional, time-honored Russian cabbage dish! "Gray shchi," made from kroshevo (chopped cabbage leaves), is a dish almost everyone has forgotten — and unfairly so. This hearty, rich, thick soup of vegetables and meat is a great choice for lunch or dinner on cold winter days.
Katya1
Recipe author
Gray Cabbage Shchi (Russian Cabbage Soup)
Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe
By weight of the composition:
Proteins 24 %
4 g
Fats 24 %
4 g
Carbohydrates 53 %
9 g
84 kcal
GI:
89
/
0
/
11
- Gather your ingredients. Traditional gray shchi is built on kroshevo — fermented chopped cabbage made from the dark outer leaves of cabbage heads, the ones most cooks today leave in the garden and toss out (and cabbages with such leaves are hard to find in stores). The coarse leaves are gathered after the first frosts, washed, and chopped into fine bits in a wooden trough. As they're chopped, rock salt and rye flour are worked in, and the mixture is fermented in wooden tubs in a warm spot under a weight for a week. It's then moved to a cool place for storage or frozen, and when needed you chip off a chunk with a hatchet to make shchi. Today's cooks have swapped the old tools for bowls, plastic containers, and electric appliances, and freeze the kroshevo. Let's start with the kroshevo: chop the cabbage leaves together with the rinsed fresh herbs and green onion in a bowl until you have a coarse, granular mass. Add the salt and flour and rub it together with your hands until liquid starts to form. Transfer to a pot, set a weight on top, and leave it in a warm place for a week, piercing it a few times with a fork to let the gases escape. Now you can make the shchi. It's best made with bone-in pork that has a little fat. Simmer it for about an hour. Then add the peeled potatoes, a whole peeled onion, and a whole peeled carrot. After the vegetables have cooked about 20 minutes, add the kroshevo — if it tastes too sour, rinse it in clean water first. Take the meat out of the broth, cut it into small pieces, and return it. Take out the potatoes and mash them roughly, then return them to the pot. Do the same with the onion and carrot, finely chopping them. Lower the heat and cook another 20 minutes. The shchi is ready. Serve it with sour cream, which tempers the dish's tartness. Enjoy!
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- 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
- Pork fat - 333 kcal/100g
- Pork meat - 357 kcal/100g
- Pork - low-fat roast - 184 kcal/100g
- Pork chop on a bone - 537 kcal/100g
- Pork - schnitzel - 352 kcal/100g
- Pork Shoulder - 593 kcal/100g
- Boar's leg - 113 kcal/100g
- Pork - 259 kcal/100g
- Carrots - 33 kcal/100g
- Dried carrots - 275 kcal/100g
- Boiled carrots - 25 kcal/100g
- Green onion - 19 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Onion - 41 kcal/100g
- Spices dry - 240 kcal/100g
- Wheat flour - 325 kcal/100g
- White cabbage - 28 kcal/100g
- Boiled white cabbage - 21 kcal/100g
- Fresh frozen soup greens in a package - 41 kcal/100g
- Greenery - 41 kcal/100g
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