Solyanka (Sour Soup of Cured Meats and Brine)

Name: Solyanka (Sour Soup of Cured Meats and Brine)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 2 h 25 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Russian
Ingredients: 300 g beef shin or brisket; 2 L water; 2 bay leaves; 10 peppercorns; 150 g smoked sausage; 100 g ham or bacon; 150 g brined cucumbers; 150 ml pickle brine; 60 g olives; 2 tbsp capers; 1 onion; 2 tbsp tomato paste; 2 tbsp oil; 4 slices lemon; 4 tbsp smetana (sour cream); 1 handful dill

A sour Russian soup of smoked sausage and ham with brined cucumbers, olives, capers and lemon. The sourness comes from an unusual place: not vinegar and not lemon, but the brine left in the pickle jar. This site’s balancing guide says to fix the salt first and then add acid a little at a time, changing one thing at once. Solyanka does not allow that — its acid is already salty, so more sourness means more salt as well. Which is why the broth is deliberately left under-salted until the very end.

Steps

Simmer the beef in 2L of water with the bay and peppercorns for an hour and a half. Do not salt it — the salt in this dish arrives at the end, from the pickles.
Lift the meat out and cut it into batons; strain the broth (stocks and broth).
⏲ 10 min
Soften the chopped onion in oil, add the tomato paste and fry it another 2-3 minutes until it darkens and the oil runs red.
⏲ 5 min
Cut the brined cucumbers into matchsticks and cook them in that pan for 5 minutes. Frying them first is what stops them going soft in the soup.
⏲ 5 min
Tip the pan into the broth with the meat, sausage and ham and simmer 15 minutes.
⏲ 15 min
Add the pickle brine. Start with 150ml and taste as you go, remembering from here on that sourness and saltiness move together (balancing flavour).
⏲ 5 min
Add the olives and capers and give it 5 minutes more. Only now adjust the salt — by this point there is usually nothing to add.
⏲ 5 min
Serve with a slice of lemon and a spoonful of sour cream in each bowl, and dill over. The lemon does not go into the pot: boiled, the peel turns it bitter.
⏲ 2 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Myasnaya (meat): the version here. A mixture of sausage, ham and beef is considered better than any one of them.
Rybnaya (fish): with sturgeon or salmon, and the older form of the dish.
Gribnaya (mushroom): the Lenten version, with pickled mushrooms and cabbage.
German Soljanka: it arrived in the GDR and is still common there, usually with more smoked meat.
Against bigos: that dish simmers a ferment for hours and is about acid preserving the structure of what is in it. Here the acid is poured in as liquid and is the flavour axis.

Tips

The whole dish is that its acid is already salty. Balancing flavour says to work in the order salt → acid → sweet → fat, one thing at a time. In solyanka acid and salt are welded to one handle: pour in more brine for sourness and the saltiness rises with it. So the broth is deliberately left under-salted from the start, and the seasoning is judged only after everything brined has gone in.
Make the stock without salt. Stocks and broth says a stock is not a finished dish and should not be salted; here that is not a preference but a requirement.
Everything in it is preserved. Smoked sausage, ham, brined cucumber, olives, capers, lemon — apart from the broth and the onion, nothing is fresh. That is why it tastes long-cooked without being cooked long: the depth comes not from your time but from time the ingredients have already had.
Fry the cucumbers first. Dropped straight into the soup they go soft and lose their shape.
Brined cucumbers, not vinegar pickles. Vinegar only makes it sharp and lacks the fermented depth. Korean oiji suits it well, and paocai brine works on the same principle.
Lemon in the bowl, not the pot. Boiled, the peel turns it bitter.
"Better the next day" is only half true here. The flavours do settle, but the cucumbers soften and any lemon left in turns bitter. Better to make the broth ahead and add the brined things when you serve.