Everyone knows how to cook cold soups, but not many know how and why they began to be prepared, which one of them came from whence. Most of us prepare standard okroshka, varying only its liquid ingredients. In fact, there are a lot of such dishes, and all of them, without exception, are tasty and healthy.
Most of the cold soups come from Slavic cuisine - Russian, Ukrainian. These are okroshka, beetroot, chilled beetroot and botvinia. There are no hard conditions on how to cook cold soups. How many chefs, so many secrets of their preparation. But before we start cooking, let's get acquainted with the geography of the dishes.
Okroshka is considered to be one of the most popular cold soups. This dish is originally Russian. Despite the popular belief that its main ingredient is kvass, since ancient times it has been based on ordinary curdled milk or milk whey. Much later, the Slavs mastered the art of making kvass and gradually moved away from the use of fermented milk products in the okroshka recipe. Okroshka with kvass was most popular in Soviet times.
Botvinha is in second place in popularity and useful qualities. Unfortunately, few modern housewives know its recipe. The homeland of botvinia is Ukraine. The main ingredient in this cold soup is root vegetable leaves and fresh vegetables, which are boiled or boiled over. The meat components in the botvinja are usually replaced by fish fillets.
Beetroot - its very name speaks of what and how to prepare this cold soup. The second name is cold borsch, and the homeland, again, is Ukraine. The basis of the soup is a decoction of beet tops with the addition of kvass. Eggs and sour cream are used as the main additives.
Spanish gazpacho is more of a drink than a cold soup. Its base is tomato juice or puree. It is served in glasses, adding bread crumbs or fine crackers, pieces of cucumber, paprika, onions and garlic.
Bulgarians and Macedonians love tarator, a cold yogurt-based dish. Olive oil and vegetables must be added to it.
There are cold summer soups in Hungarian, Georgian, Swedish, Latvian cuisine. The Swedes cook such a dish on rosehip broth, Lithuanians - on kefir, Georgians - on meat broths, and Hungarians - on cherry juice!
Cold soup is the most important summer meal. At its core, it is a salad with a refreshing drink. Any unsweetened drink will turn a traditional Olivier salad into a hearty okroshka. Ayran, kefir, vegetable juices or decoctions from them, broths, yoghurts, kvass, sparkling mineral water, or even just water with citric acid can also serve as the main ingredient in cold soup. Sweet cold soups can be prepared on the basis of fruit compotes, fruit drinks, carbonated drinks, seasoning them with berries, chopped fruits and cream.
The first okroshka was prepared in Russia from fermented milk, radish and onions. A little later, they began to fill it with bread kvass, then potatoes, boiled meat, eggs were added to the ingredients. The first mention of this cold soup dates back to 900 BC! According to ancient recipes, cold soup can be made from any mixture of chopped vegetables and herbs, drenched in buttermilk, cucumber or cabbage pickle, kvass, and even home-brewed beer.
In the 19th century, this dish was positioned not as the first, but as an appetizer. Sometimes it was used as a general tonic for diseases of the digestive tract, for example, with a "lazy stomach". It is impossible to count all the useful properties of cold soups. They depend on the set of ingredients in their composition.
