Photo: Pannet · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ukha (Clear Fish Soup with Dill and Vodka)
Russia’s clear fish soup. It is not a broth made in advance and used in something else — the broth is the dish, so the rules of stock-making invert one by one. Fish bones turn bitter past twenty or thirty minutes, so more time is not available, and depth has to come from the number of fish instead: cheap small fish are boiled first and thrown away, and the good fish goes into that liquid for ten minutes. No fat goes in at any point, which is why the broth has to stay clear, and why it is salted from the first pot rather than at the end.
Ingredients
- The first fish (discarded)
- small fish, or fish heads and frames · perch, ruff, roach, or the heads of anything white; this fish is not eaten800 g
- water2.5 L
- The second fish (eaten)
- firm white fish · pike-perch, cod, salmon or sturgeon, in steaks600 g
- Vegetables and spice
- onion · whole and peeled, lifted out at the end1
- potatoes · in large pieces400 g
- carrot1
- parsley root or celery · optional1 stick
- bay leaves2
- black peppercorns10
- allspice berries · optional3
- salt · goes in with the vegetables, not at the end2 tsp
- To finish
- dill · most of what this broth smells of is dill1 large handful
- vodka · off the heat; optional but traditional30 ml
- lemon0.5
- To clear the broth further (optional)
- egg white · the ottyazhka: stirred in at about 60C, it sets around whatever is suspended1
Steps
- ⏲ 15 min
Scale the first fish and take the gills out — they carry almost all of the bitterness and muddiness. Gut them too. Tying them into a piece of muslin makes them easy to lift out later.
- ⏲ 15 min
Put the first fish into the pot with cold water and bring it up slowly. Dropped into boiling water the surface proteins seize at once, the flavour is sealed inside, and the scum disperses instead of rising.
- ⏲ 10 min
Skim the grey foam diligently as it rises just before the boil. Miss these ten minutes and that protein disperses back into the liquid, where it cannot be retrieved.
- ⏲ 25 min
Drop the heat until the surface barely trembles and hold it for twenty-five minutes. No longer — fish bones start giving bitterness and a fishy edge past that (stocks and broth).
- ⏲ 5 min
Lift the first fish out and throw it away. Strain the broth through a fine sieve. That fish has done its whole job.
- ⏲ 15 min
Into the strained broth go the whole onion, the potatoes in large pieces, the carrot, parsley root, bay and peppercorns — and the salt goes in here, not at the end. Fifteen minutes, until the potato is done.
- ⏲ 12 min
Add the second fish in steaks and cook it eight to twelve minutes only. Never let it boil. It is ready when the flesh is about to come away from the bone.
- ⏲ 10 min
Off the heat, add the vodka and the chopped dill, put the lid on and leave it ten minutes. Lift the whole onion out. Serve with lemon.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Named by the fish: red ukha (salmon, sturgeon), white ukha (perch, burbot), black ukha (carp family). The one called the tsar’s ukha is made with sterlet or sturgeon.
- Fisherman’s ukha: cooked on the riverbank, and finished by lighting the end of a birch log and plunging it into the pot. The smoke and char go into the broth; it survives now mainly as a way of faking a smoked note.
- Troynaya, the triple ukha: two successive lots of small fish are boiled and discarded before the good fish goes in third. The method written here is the two-stage version of it.
- Opekannaya ukha: beaten egg is stirred through and the surface set briefly in an oven or a Russian stove.
Tips
- Taking the gills out is the first rule. When a fish soup is bitter or muddy the cause is usually not long cooking but gills left in.
- Why throwing the first fish away is not waste. There are barely thirty minutes of use in fish bones before bitterness starts, so you cannot spend four hours on them the way you would on beef. The only remaining way to build depth is more fish in the same time. The small fish are closer to a seasoning than to an ingredient.
- Season in the first pot. Stocks and broth says not to salt a stock, because you will reduce it or combine it later and double the saltiness. There is no later here — this broth is the finished dish. Seolleongtang answers the same problem differently, by leaving the seasoning to the table.
- No fat goes in. Nothing is fried, and there is no butter or cream — the opposite of borscht, which starts by frying its vegetables. With no oil to emulsify there is nothing a hard boil could buy, so boiling only clouds it.
- It is the exact inverse of bouillabaisse, which boils hard on purpose so that olive oil emulsifies into the liquid and the broth thickens and clouds. Two fish soups, and whether fat is added decides how hard each of them is allowed to boil.
- For a glassier broth, the ottyazhka. Let the broth fall to about 60C, stir in a beaten egg white, and bring it back up: the white sets around whatever is suspended and rises. Skim it off.
- The vodka goes in off the heat. It sharpens the aroma and mutes any fishiness, but as cooking with alcohol says, not all of it cooks away.
- Cut the potatoes large. Small dice shed their edges and cloud the broth.
The basics behind this dish
- Salt: When You Add It Matters More Than How MuchThe same amount of salt either draws water out or seasons all the way through, depending on when it goes in. Osmosis, seasoning in layers, and why salt types are not interchangeable by volume.
- Stocks and Broths: Clarity, Time, and Why You Do Not Salt ThemWhat separates a clear stock from a cloudy one is temperature, not ingredients. Why you start in cold water, how long each ingredient wants, and why salt comes later.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
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