Soup with Canned Sprats and Millet
This soup begins not with water but with the pan — more precisely, with the very pot it is later cooked in. Onion, potatoes, tomato and millet are fried in oil one after another, and only after that covered with water. Fried grain holds its shape and doesn't break down into porridge the way boiled millet does in an ordinary soup.
The tomato goes in before the grain, not after. It gives its acidity to the fat rather than to the water, and at this stage it has time to dissolve — in the finished soup there are no pieces of tomato left, only the color and the taste.
The sprats in tomato go in last, when the vegetables are already done. Their job is not to cook but to heat through: the tin is emptied in, the soup is brought to a boil, salted and turned off.
Frying the grain before the water goes in is what keeps it whole; the same tin of sprats without that step is soup with sprats in tomato sauce and beans. Where the fish goes in raw, the whole dish rests on the stock instead: soup from fresh-frozen mackerel.
Caloric content: 66kcal
Fry the onion
Add the potatoes
Add the tomato
Pour in the millet
Cover with water
Add the sprats
Serve with sour cream
Notes
- A thick-bottomed pot. In a thin one the onion and the grain burn before it gets to the point of adding water.
- The millet is fried for a couple of minutes, no longer. All it needs is to be coated in fat; fried until it takes on color, it turns bitter.
- Salt after the sprats. The canned fish is already salty, and a soup salted in advance has to be thinned with water.
- Cook until the vegetables are done, not by the clock. The millet is ready at roughly the same time as the potatoes.
- Sour cream and herbs go into the bowl. In the pot the sour cream curdles into flakes from the tomato acid.
Questions and Answers
Why fry the vegetables and the grain before adding water?
Fried millet holds its shape and doesn't break down into porridge the way boiled grain does in an ordinary soup. The tomato meanwhile gives its acidity to the fat rather than to the water.
How long should the millet be fried?
A couple of minutes, no longer. All it needs is to be coated in fat; fried until it takes on color, it turns bitter.
When should it be salted?
After the sprats have gone in. The canned fish is already salty, and a soup salted in advance has to be thinned with water.
Why is the sour cream put into the bowl and not into the pot?
In the pot it curdles into flakes from the tomato acid.
Recipe and step-by-step photos — kolizhanka.net.ua.
