Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup
There is more than one recipe for lenten foods on this website, if you are looking for some other recipe, try here: homemade lenten food recipes.
This soup doesn’t include any meat, it is based on mushrooms and have vegetables (carrot, parsley and celery roots, potato) as well as pearl barley.
Such kind of mushroom soup is very popular in Russia. Various kind of mushrooms can be used in this recipe, but I must say fresh or frozen porcini are the best tasting ones, if you can find them, of course.
If you are not trying to follow Great Lent rules – my advise is don’t skip on sour cream, 1 tablespoon of sour cream to the bowl of mushroom soup not only adds nutrients, but also gives the soup its unique rich taste.
Ingredients:
- 13-15oz of fresh or frozen porcini mushrooms (can be replaced with other types of mushrooms to taste)
- 1/3 cup of pearl barleys
- 1 cup of green peas (fresh or frozen)
- 1 medium onion
- 2 medium potatoes
- Roots: ½ of parsley root, small piece of celery root, 1 carrot
- Fresh dill (dried dill can be used as well)
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 3 bay leaves
- Several black pepper and allspice corns
- Salt to taste
- Vegetable oil
- Sour cream
How to prepare, step-by-step:
-
Prepare ingredients: for best results use porcini mushrooms (frozen or fresh), any type of boletus are good choice also. If you use fresh mushrooms, clean and rinse them before cooking; if you have frozen porcini like me, put them outside fridge to unfreeze some time before cooking:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 1 -
Pour pearl barleys with cold water in small cooking pot, put on moderate heat and bring to light boil:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 2 -
When pearl barleys is almost ready (starts getting soft), remove pot from the burner and pour pearl barleys to colander to remove liquid, then set aside:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 3 -
Warm skillet with 1-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil over moderate heat. Peel onion, slice it in quarter circles and fry over moderate heat until soft and yellowish in color:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 4 -
Slice mushrooms if needed, add them to the skillet with onions; fry onions and mushrooms together over moderate heat, stirring from time to time:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 5 -
While mushrooms are cooking, feel cooking pot with about 10 cups of water and bring to boil. Peel parsley and celery roots, slice them into small stripes and add to the boiling water:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 6 -
Skin carrot, slice it also, add to the cooking pot and boil for about 10 mins. Adjust heat so water isn’t boiling too much:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 7 -
Skin and dice potatoes as for soup, add them to the cooking pot and let them boil:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 8 -
All liquid from mushrooms should evaporate by now; if needed let them fry a bit more until you get something like this:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 9 -
Then pour mushrooms and onions from skillet to the cooking pot:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 10 -
When potatoes start getting ready (if you pierce them with knife they feel softer), add
all pearl barleys you cooked before and let everything lightly simmer for about 10 mins:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 11 -
Then add green peas:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 12 -
Add bay leaves, pepper corns and allspice:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 13 -
Peel garlic, chop it finely with a knife and add to the cooking pot:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 14 -
Add chopped finely dill:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 15 -
Let soup simmer for 2-3 mins more, salt to taste and turn heat off:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 16 -
Serve lenten mushroom soup hot, stir about table spoon of sour cream into each bowl of soup before serving:
Russian Lenten Mushroom Soup Recipe: Step 17
View Comments
That soup looks amazing! hank you for the recipe!
If anyone wants to be technical about 'postniy' foods, eliminate the oil. It's usually NOT allowed during fasting periods.
Julia, the recipe sounds great!
Sveta, I apologize, I didn't realize you are the. Actual author of this recipe. I was simply under the impression it was Julia, who seemed to be welcoming of the discussion. If this discussion in anyway offended you as the author of the recipe, I'm truly sorry. Please disregard it. Thanks.
Masha, sorry, I am not the author.
I do appreciate being educated, there are many things in Russian cuisine which are hard for me to translate to English, especially because it is not my native language. So any help I get is good :)
Well those who do not eat any animal byproduct are called Vegans not Vegetarians. I have many vegetarian cook books that list both dairy and eggs in recipes. Vegan books omit those ingredients. So as long as you don't call it vegan you're ok. LOL!
Wikipedia calls vegans "non-dairy vegetarians", so I guess that makes them vegetarians. I guess I will better not use this term to not get into argument there as well :)
Wow, Masha and Alexandra, how nice and smart of you two to educate Julia on the issue. Your comments are really (not) appreciated by the author, I suppose.
Julia, thank you for your work. Due to your site I could share traditional recipes with my friends who do not know Russian but like our food :)
Hi Julia,
I guess if you're trying to indicate that it's meatless I'd just say vegetarian. "Postniy" means suitable for fating days, not just great lent but all the other fasts through the year, including Wed and Friday fasting days, which all follow the same rule for the most part (exceptions of fish on some days and like I said before Cheese fare week, when sour cream would be ok.) Regardless, it's not that big of a deal, as most people who follow the fasts have learned to omit the dairy from their recipes, and would figure it out on their own. I think the recipe looks really good and I appreciate you sharing it with us all. Most people wouldn't even know what I'm talking bout anyway with the exceptions of Alexandra ;). I will probably try it on one of these fast days (minus the sour cream as I don't even like sour cream and skip it every day of the year :) .)
Some vegetarians will not agree with you about dairy in vegetarian meal I think, but this is part I know even less about.
I guess our discussion here is enough for ppl to be figure out what you were trying to tell if they are not sure about how suitable this recipe is for fasting days.
Hi there,
I like the fact that you post a lenten dish recipe and it looks yumm! But it's funny that you say don't skip on the sour cream. Sour cream (unless you use a soy substitute or during the cheese fair week) is not lenten. Lenten foods are foods that exclude all meat, dairy, eggs, and most days fish. Shell fish, and things like squid and octopus is an exception to this, and is allowed any day.
Just FYI.
I agree wtih Masha. If you say it's "Russian Lenten" which implies that it follows the traditions of Russian Orthodox Great Lent, then sour cream is definitely to be removed from the list of the ingredients. But yes, because it lacks any kind of meaty broth, it will just taste like vegetables in water and that's why sour cream would punch it up a notch. Unfortunately, the Great Lent is not about eating good tasting food..
Masha and Alexandra,when talking about soup, lenten means it doesn't contain broth or meat bouillon.
BTW, this soup is awesome! Thanks!
yes that is what I call lenten in my head: no broth or meat bouillon or meat itself. But I guess that can be understood in different way...
BTW, forgot to mention, putting word "Russian" in the recipe name I didn't mean to imply that recipe follows the traditions of Russian Orthodox Great Lent, I wanted to mention that this soup is popular in Russia.
Good that I didn't call it "Great Lent" soup or anything, I will remove mentioning of Great Lent in the recipe description if you insist.
Unfortunately I don't know good english word to translate "postnyj" with. This soup is "postnyj"; and even thou for you looks like "postnyj" means food for Great Lent, for me it means soup w/o meat, that is how my family called soups w/o meat my whole life.
Thank you for your comments, I believe they will help ppl who read this recipe to make right decision and not put sour cream if they want to follow Russian Orthodox tradition for the Great Lent food.
There are various strictness of lent traditions, somebody doesn't eat meat and calls it lent, another eats nothing and calls it the same.
This recipe has no meat in it, and with a scoop of sour cream tastes much better than without; if you choose to be more strict during your lent - don't put sour cream into it, up to you.
Greetings to Enjoy Your Cooking!
I'm happy to find your blog listed on Moscow-on-the-line. My wife is a fabulous Russian cook who makes me feel lucky everyday to be living in St Petersburg Russia with her for the last 10 years! My blog is about contrasts between Russian and American ways of life.
I add a food entry ever so often, and have a sidebar list of Russian food blogs. Is it OK that I added you to that list? Are you on Facebook, Networkedblogs, and Twitter?
I can see that I'll be checking Enjoy Your Cooking often, as I like the summary setup, the good photos, and clear instructions. Got to admit that I got hungry writing about your scrumptious site!
All good wishes,
Rob MacDonald
It would be more friendly if you used a first name, even if it isn't actually yours.
Hello Rob,
Thank you for your comment, of course I will be happy if you add me to the list of russian food blogs. Thank you!
I have both twitter and facebook. Feel free to follow EnjoyYourCooking.com in both :)
Julia.