Slovakia has many mouthwatering cuisines to its credit, and some of them are soups.

Kapustnica is a delicious Slovakian soup, made with the help of sauerkraut, dried mushrooms, and a number of other ingredients.

This soup can be found in Slovakian restaurants year round, although its inseparableness is felt the most when the time for celebrating Christmas arrives.

Different people prepare kapustnica differently. This recipe is a bit of an English version.

Ingredients you need

To start making the soup, first you need to gather sauerkraut, black pepper, garlic cloves, bay leaves, dried mushrooms, onions, pork, red pepper, caraway seeds, and nutmeg. You also need apples, paprika, and sour cream (optional).

Note that, depending on your taste and your recipe, you can make some changes to the above ingredients if you know what you are doing.

Cooking method

Follow these steps to cook the delicious soup yourself:

1. Take sauerkraut in a large pot and then add about a liter of water into it
2. Crush two garlic cloves into paste, and keep aside
3. Add caraway seed and black pepper into the pot
4. Now, add the crushed clove paste; also add crushed nutmeg
5. Put dried mushrooms and bay leaves this time
6. After that, cut pork into very small pieces and add the piece to the mixture
7. Add two small apples and an onion
8. Once your soup has boiled for about 20 minutes, add your sausage
9. Now, add red pepper and paprika to the mixture
10. Cover the pot and let everything simmer for about half an hour

Once done, you can keep it as it is.

Or, if you like your soup to have somewhat thick consistency, then you may go ahead and add sour cream into it. If you live in the UK, you can buy thick sour cream in most grocery stores easily.

To add cream to your soup, take thick sour cream and mix with the milk of comparable amount. Follow that by mixing a spoon of flour with it. Then, add the mixture to your soup and keep stirring for about a minute before removing the pot.

Your soup is now done!

How to serve

You can serve it with a rye bread slice if you want to enjoy truly its deliciousness.

Most Slovaks like to follow it with fried fish with potato salads when they are celebrating Christmas. At last, they savor the soup by consuming wonderful Christmas cookies.