The Hirshon Ultimate Russian Okroshka Soup with Homemade Kvass – Окрошка

My most revolutionary and GLORIOUS Citizens of TFD Nation – long has it been since I have posted a Russian recipe, due to My profound support for the Ukrainians under siege by Russian aggression! While my heart is with Ukraine, my soul still yearns to add in the many Russian recipes that for years now I have resisted posting – and I have decided that geopolitics shall NOT interfere with My exhaustive compiling of the world’s finest recipes. As such, I choose to post today a variant of a recipe I first shared several years ago – for the cold Russian Summer soup known as okroshka!

The 2019 version of that soup was based around a liquid foundation of kefir or buttermilk, which is how many versions of the soup are still enjoyed today in Russia and throughout the former U.S.S.R. – but there is in fact an older and more “pure” form of this recipe. It uses not a dairy base, but instead a base of kvass – a mildly-alcoholic fermented drink that is very popular throughout the Baltic and Slavic regions of Europe. Given that it is still blisteringly-hot across much of the Northern Hemisphere despite the end of Summer, this liquid refreshment cools and relieves like few others, I promise!

Kvass is a fermented cereal-based low-alcoholic beverage of cloudy appearance and sweet-sour taste. It originates from northeastern Europe, where grain production was considered insufficient for beer to become a daily drink. In the traditional method, kvass is made from a mash obtained from rye bread or rye flour and malt soaked in hot water, fermented for about 12 hours with the help of sugar and bread yeast or baker’s yeast at room temperature.

In industrial methods, kvass is produced from wort concentrate combined with various grain mixtures. It is a popular drink in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, as well as some parts of Finland (where it is known as Sima), Sweden, and China. The word kvass is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European base *kwh₂et- (‘to become sour‘). In English it was first mentioned in a text around 1553 as quass.

In the traditional method, either dried rye bread or a combination of rye flour and rye malt is used. The dried rye bread is extracted with hot water and incubated for 12 hours at room temperature, after which bread yeast and sugar are added to the extract and fermented for 12 hours at 20 °C (293 K; 68 °F). Alternatively, rye flour is boiled, mixed with rye malt, sugar, and baker’s yeast and then fermented for 12 hours at 20 °C (293 K; 68 °F).

The exact origins of kvass are unclear, and whether it was invented by Slavic people or any other Eastern European ethnicity is unknown, although some Polish sources claim that kvass was invented by Slavs. Kvass has existed in the northeastern part of Europe, where grain production is thought to have been insufficient for beer to become a daily drink. It has been known among the Early Slavs since the 10th century.

Likely invented in the Kievan Rus’ and known there since at least the 10th century, kvass has become one of the symbols of East Slavic cuisine. The first written mention of kvass is found in the Primary Chronicle, describing the celebration of Vladimir the Great’s baptism in 988, when kvass along with mead and food was given out to the citizens of Kyiv. Kvass-making remained a daily household activity well into the 19th century.

In the second half of the 19th century, with military engagement, increasing industrialization, and large-scale projects, such as the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, created a growing need to supply large numbers of people with foodstuff for extended periods of time, kvass became commercialized; more than 150 kvass varieties, such as apple, pear, mint, lemon, chicory, raspberry, and cherry were recorded. As commercial kvass producers began selling it in barrels on the streets, domestic kvass-making started to decline.

In the 1890s, the first scientific studies into the production of kvass were conducted in Kiev, and in the 1960s, commercial mass production technology of kvass was further developed by chemists in Moscow. Although the massive flood of western soft drinks after the fall of the USSR, such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, substantially shrank the market share of kvass in Russia, in recent years, it has regained its original popularity, often marketed as a national soft drink or “patriotic” alternative to the famous Coca-Cola drink.

For example, the Russian company Nikola has promoted its brand of kvass with an advertising campaign emphasizing “anti-cola-nisation.” Moscow-based Business Analytica reported in 2008 that bottled kvass sales had tripled since 2005 and estimated that per capita kvass consumption in Russia would reach three litres in 2008. Between 2005 and 2007, cola’s share of the Moscow soft drink market fell from 37% to 32%.

Meanwhile, kvass’s share more than doubled over the same time period, reaching 16% in 2007. In response, Coca-Cola launched its own brand of kvass in May 2008. This is the first time a foreign company has made an appreciable entrance into the Russian kvass market. Pepsi has also signed an agreement with a Russian kvass manufacturer to act as a distribution agent. The development of new technologies for storage and distribution, and heavy advertising, have contributed to this surge in popularity; three new major brands have been introduced since 2004.

Okroshka (Russian: окро́шка) is a cold soup of Russian origin and probably originated at the Volga region. Resplendent in its heady flavors and redolent with herbs and Summer’s bounty of vegetables, this is one soup that truly eats like a meal (especially if you go with the non-vegetarian version of the recipe that includes meat!). The classic soup is a mix of mostly raw vegetables (such as cucumbers, radishes and spring onions), boiled potatoes, eggs, and a cooked meat such as beef, veal, sausages, or ham with light or diluted kefir, whey, vinegar, kvass (our version!) or mineral water.

The ingredients are finely diced (Okroshka is derived from the Russian word literally meaning “chop” крошить, which is why it’s chopped up in small pieces) and then mixed with kvass just before eating. Okroshka is mostly served in summer because the soup combines the refreshing taste of kvass and the lightness of a salad. Salt and sugar can be added according to taste. Okroshka is always served cold – sometimes ice cubes are added to served portions to keep the soup cold in hot weather.

Okroshka is typically a mix of finely-cut vegetables of neutral taste (such as boiled potato, turnip, carrot, rutabaga, and fresh cucumber), potherbs (chopped spring onions, parsley, fennel, celery, chervil, and tarragon), and hard-boiled eggs. The meat and vegetable mixture is marinated with a special okroshka seasoning blend made of mustard, spring onions, black pepper, horseradish and egg yolks, ground in a small amount of kvass or salted cucumber brine and diluted with special okroshka kvass and made rich with sour cream.

Okroshka can be veggie as well as made with meat or fish, with boiled lean meat of various sorts frequently used in okroshka today (the fish version is now very rare). In ancient Russia, okroshka was preferably made with the combination of the meat of sucking pig, turkey and black grouse. The choice of different sorts of meat is accounted for by the fact that originally, whatever leftover meat from the hunt (after the cooking of other dishes) were all mixed into the okroshka. Now it is considered quite normal to use a mixture of meat with fowl in this cold soup.

As for fish, okroshka would be very good with river fish, such as tench, pike-perch, and sturgeon, since they all have a sweet and neutral taste and not too many bones. Fish for okroshka is typically boiled for a short time and diced.

The general principle of making any type of okroshka is as follows:

1. Prepare finely-cut vegetables
2. Mix the veggies with finely-cut meat(s)
3. Mix with the seasoning okroshka blend
4. Leave to mature for no less than half an hour
5. Mix with potherbs
6. Pour in kvass
7. Make it rich with sour cream

In My supreme version of okroshka, I am bringing it back to its legendary roots and giving it the Beatific benison that is Mine ALONE to grant – making it a meal truly worthy of Russian nobility of old! For example, most modern versions of okroshka leave out the seasoning blend, which to Me is a travesty of the first order – that sharp blend is a needed component in REAL okroshka, especially this kvass variant. As such, this version does indeed go old-school with the blend and kvass – but as is typical for the Autarch of Authenticity, no mere ordinary kvass will do for this noble soup!

No, it needs to be the proper version of kvass for okroshka and that is the so-called “white” version, and since that version is no longer imported from Russia, we will gird our culinary loins together and make white kvass from SCRATCH! The good news – it’s not hard to make, but you will need a few ingredients that are probably not in your standard pantry (but now you can easily make it whenever you want)!

First, you will need both malted rye and malted barley – both of which are available from their respective links. Rye flour and buckwheat flour are also required, as well as the correct strain of liquid yeast that will yield the proper white kvass flavor profile – this version accomplishes that feat admirably! You will also want a jar of SERIOUSLY strong mustard to bring this okroshka recipe home – this is the strongest mustard I’ve ever tried AND the recipe for “Mother-in-Law’s Tongue” mustard is from the same part of the world, you can buy it from here. A little goes a LONG WAY, trust Me!

The garnish for this soup is classically either chopped pickled mushrooms or chopped pickled apples (I especially love the apple) version. My Citizens, we can only hope that Russia’s government will at last decide to seek peace with the long-suffering Ukrainian people – I for one still hold out hope that such a positive outcome can be achieved in the coming months ahead, for everyone’s sakes. The innocents on all sides deserve nothing less!

Battle on – the Generalissimo

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