AI-generated Ciorbă de babic (Buzău sour soup with babic)
Recipes with Babic de Buzău
A sour vegetable soup from the villages around the Berca mud volcanoes, where guesthouses put it on the menu after tourists asked for it. Cubes of babic and smoked ham give the broth its smoke and its brick-red colour, bran borș gives the sourness, and a handful of lovage goes in at the end.
Prep Time
20 min
Cook Time
50 min
Servings
10
Difficulty
Easy
Ingredients
- 1 baton babic de Buzău (about 300 g), cut in small cubes
- 200 g smoked ham, cut in small cubes
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 2 carrots, cut in thin strips
- 1 small celery root, cut in thin strips
- 3 potatoes, diced
- 50 g rice
- 500 ml tomato juice
- 1 l bran borș
- 3 l water
- 1 bunch fresh lovage, chopped
- Salt to taste
Steps
Bring the water to the boil with the onion, carrot, celery, potato and rice and let it simmer until the vegetables soften.
Add the tomato juice and the babic cubes. Let the soup come to the boil a few times; the paprika in the babic turns the broth red.
Add the smoked ham and simmer for another 10 minutes.
Pour in the borș, bring it back to a boil once and take the pot off the heat.
Stir in the lovage, taste for salt and serve in clay bowls, which keep the soup hot longer.
Tips
The cooks in Berca use one baton of babic for a pot of about ten portions; the other quantities here are scaled to that. Babic and ham bring plenty of salt, so salt only at the end. Without bran borș, a little lemon juice gives the sourness.