Grandma's Chorba

This is my second attempt at documenting my Grandmother's so-called "sour-soup" or "chorba" as is apparently the appropriate word for it. I've been trying to replicate it for years, but recently, she and I sat down and worked everything out (while i video recorded everything) and I've finally managed to reproduce this amazing dish. I present it now for you in the hopes that it will brighten your day too:

Note: my grandmother isn't big on measuring, so I'm afraid I don't have much to offer in the standardised quantities department. Instead, I'll be listing the ingredients in the very same way she provided them to me: in practical use cases.

Ingredients

• Some meat.
  • Turkey is good for this, but you can get away with chicken or even beef (big chunks, not ground). Ask yourself how much you want in your soup, and that's how much you'll need.
• 4 Parsnips
• 4 Carrots
• 1 Bunch of celery
• 1 White onion
• 1 Red pepper
• Olive Oil
• A handful or two of some kind of pasta or rice.
  • I typically go for orzo or white rice, but you can also use angel hair pasta.
• A handful of Lovage
• A handful of parsley
• Some sour cream
• Salt
• Pepper (fresh ground black pepper, none of that powdered stuff)
• A big spoonful of vinegar (for the garnish step, below)

Directions

This is a two-part system, and it's probably best if you do things one at a time. Pros like my grandmother who have been doing this for 50 years can do things in parallel, but if this is your first or second time trying this out, pace yourself and do one pot at a time.

Preparation

In this two-part system we have vegetables we're going to eat, and vegetables we're using for flavour only, so we're going to break up our veggies into two groups:

A Warning

Throughout this whole process, it's important to note that the pot should always be covered, or you'll lose too much water and you'll end up with a more stew-like soup than you probably want.

Group 1: Flavour Only

In this group you have:

• 2 Parsnips
• 2 Carrots
• 2 or 3 stalks of celery
• 1 White onion

You chop these into big pieces, no less than 7cm long. For the onion, you just cut it in half. Leave these bits on the cutter board 'cause you'll need them soon.

Group 2: For Eating

In this group you have:

• 2 Parsnips
• 2 Carrots
• 2 stalks of celery (if you're into eating celery in your soup)
• ½ Red pepper
  • I usually just throw out the other half, but you can use the whole thing if you really like red peppers.

These are all chopped into bit-sized chunks. Put the chopped bits into a great big bowl for now.

Cook That Meat

You need to quickly cook the meat to seal in the good stuff, and you also want to clean the ugly bits out of your soup before you actually start making broth so...

• Put your big chunks of meat into a proper soup pot. You probably want something capable of about 6L or more of water. Don't worry about the size of the meat pieces yet, we'll make them mouth-friendly later.
• Fill up said pot with water until the water just covers the meat.
• Add some salt and pepper.
  • Don't be stingy with the salt. If you skimp out on salt early, you'll have very exciting-looking water masquerading as soup.
• Cover the pot and crank the heat up to 10, stirring occasionally so the meat doesn't cook all on one side. When the water boils, drop the heat down to 5. If any gunk floats to the surface (this is excess fat and other undesirable bits) scoop it off with a strainer or slotted spoon.

Completing the Stock

• Now that you've got the beginnings of your stock, add your "flavour only" vegetables. Let them hang out in the water there with the meat for a bit. Drop the heat down to 3 or 4 and let things slow-boil.

Vegetables for Eating

Now with the stock pot simmering on the side, we're going to work on the veggies we intend to eat.

• Dump all of your for-eating veggies into a deep pan or pot. Make sure that there's room to stir stuff around because you're going to be doing a lot of that.
• Add some olive oil. How much? Enough to sauté the veggies. Typically I start out with a little bit and add until I feel that all of the veggies are getting enough love.
• Run the heat up to 5 or 6 and stir frequently to make sure that all of your veggies get cooked properly.

Bite-Sized Meat

Going back to your stock pot, it should have been simmering there for a good 10-20 minutes. It's time to remove everything that doesn't belong.

• Open the pot and remove all of the vegetables. You might want to keep them around to eat separately, but they don't belong in your soup anymore.
• Now remove the meat and place it on a cutting board.
• Put the lid back on if you haven't already.
• Chop up that meat (careful, it's hot) into edible bits. Go ahead and sample some if you like, but my experience has been that the meat by itself at this point isn't very tasty. All the good stuff is back in the soup. At this stage, the meat is mostly for texture.
• Dump your chopped meat back into the stock pot
• Dump all of your newly sautéed vegetables (along with any remaining olive oil) into the stock pot

You're almost done.

Starch

At this point, you've got a pretty functional soup, but it needs something starchy, like pasta or rice, so let's do that.

If you're going the route of orzo or rice, I highly recommend that you rinse it first to get off all the excess starch. Otherwise you risk clouding your soup. It won't taste bad, but it'll be less pretty.

If you're going the noodle route, you'll want to break it into tiny pieces so it's easier to eat.

Either way, dump your chosen carb into your soup, cover it, and let it boil at a low temperature until the pasta/rice is ready.

Garnish

At this point, the soup is edible, but not yet exciting. You need to add all of the lovage and parsley at this stage:

• Finely chop or rip the lovage and parsley into the soup
• Stir it a bit and let it settle for another 5-10 minutes on a very low heat.
• Stir in the vinegar as well

Serving

Finally we're ready to eat. Portion out the soup into bowls, and just before you serve, stir in a spoonful of sour cream. I can't tell you how much better this makes things.

That's it! The portions listed above should serve about 4 bowls, but I usually double things so we have enough soup for a few days.

Posterity

This entire recipe came from a recorded interview with my Grandma after multiple written attempts resulted in failure. I needed to interrogate her, to tease out the information she left out as a given, so I recorded the whole thing with my phone. Below is that interview.