Okroshka – Traditional Cold Summer Soup
Okroshka is a refreshing cold soup perfect for hot summer days. This traditional Slavic dish combines fresh vegetables, boiled eggs, potatoes, and cooked meat or sausage in a tangy base of kefir, kvass, or sour cream with sparkling water. It's light, nutritious, and full of flavor!
Ingredients
- 3 medium potatoes, boiled and diced
- 3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
- 1 cup cooked meat or sausage, diced (chicken, ham, or bologna)
- 3 medium cucumbers, diced
- 5 radishes, sliced
- 3 green onions, chopped
- ¼ cup fresh dill, chopped
- 4 cups kefir (or mix of kvass and sparkling water)
- ½ cup sour cream
- 1 tsp salt (or to taste)
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp lemon juice (optional)
Instructions
- Prepare Ingredients: Boil potatoes until tender, let them cool, then dice. Hard-boil the eggs, peel, and chop them. Dice the cooked meat or sausage.
- Chop Vegetables: Dice cucumbers, slice radishes, and finely chop green onions and dill.
- Combine Everything: In a large bowl, mix potatoes, eggs, meat, cucumbers, radishes, green onions, and dill.
- Prepare Liquid Base: In a separate bowl, mix kefir (or kvass with sparkling water), sour cream, salt, black pepper, and lemon juice if using. Stir well.
- Mix & Chill: Pour the liquid base over the chopped ingredients and mix thoroughly. Let the soup chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before serving.
- Serve Cold: Enjoy okroshka cold, garnished with extra fresh dill or a spoonful of sour cream.Let me know if you need any adjustments! 😊
Notes
Okroshka is not just a cold soup, it is a symbol of summer, warmth and relaxation. For many people, it is associated with carefree days spent in nature, and the taste of home cooking.
This dish has a rich history dating back centuries. Although the exact origin of okroshka remains a mystery, most historians associate its emergence with Kievan Rus. According to the chronicles, after the baptism, Prince Vladimir ordered to distribute “food, honey and kvass” to the peasants. It is likely that it was then that kvass became a popular drink among ordinary people, and later, combined with black bread and green onions, became the basis for a cold soup, which we know today as okroshka.
Interestingly, the name “okroshka” itself appeared only at the beginning of the 20th century. It comes from the method of preparing this dish, because all the ingredients for it need to be finely chopped.
Today there are many recipes for okroshka, because every cook has their own secrets and preferences. However, despite the variety of ingredients, there are those that remain unchanged: fresh cucumbers, potatoes in their skins, chicken eggs, dill and parsley greens, radishes.
Okroshka is not only a tasty, but also a healthy dish. It is rich in vitamins and minerals, and also perfectly quenches thirst and hunger in hot weather. And you can also make okroshka with beets.
To make cooking okroshka bring you only pleasure, use our tips and secrets:
- Finely chop the ingredients, because it is from this word that the name of the dish comes.
- Choose lean meat so that a greasy film does not form on the surface of the cold soup.
- For okroshka, choose an unsweetened kvass, which is also called “white”.
- On a hot day, be sure to add ice cubes to a plate of okroshka.
