It’s unpleasantly hot and humid — we just had a thunderstorm drench us — so I decided to try something completely different and made chlodnik, a cold beet soup.
I found the recipe here. If you try it, caution: the proportions there are sufficient for a whole family of 6 or more. We’re going to have chlodnik oozing out of our pores for a few days. Next time I’ll cut everything in half.
The flavor is interesting. Imagine digging up everything in a Slavic peasant’s garden, chopping it up fine, and drowning it in yoghurt, kefir, and sour cream.
It’s cold, though, which was the important criterion.
Gazpacho ain’t half bad.
It looks delicious and refreshing, but you’re overcooking your hard-boiled eggs. That green ring around the yolk is a sure sign. Try this: put the eggs directly from the fridge into a pot of cold water, bring it to the boil, boil them for exactly seven minutes, then immediately dunk them in a bowl of ice water — a lot of ice! — to stop the cooking in its tracks. Let them sit in the water until they’re completely cold. Perfect eggs every time.
Being ‘almost’ vegetarians, I must ask, PZ, are eggs ‘kosher’ for you as a vegetarian? And, I certainly don’t want to trigger a widespread argument about ‘fetal chickens’.
robertmatthews
“you’re overcooking your hard-boiled eggs.’
You beat me to it!
Remember, different people have different tastes.
I myself like near-gellid yolks, but my wife goes for full hard.
(Or, presumably over his near 7 decades PZ has had some practice at cooking it how he and his like it)
It’s a fair cop. I’ve never made this before, so I got distracted by all the other ingredients while boiling the eggs.
And we are lacto-ovo pescatarians to be fully categorical.
“lacto-ovo pescatarians” – Council of 1879 or Council of 1915? : )
Larpar@8…
“Council of 1915? Die heretic!”
Mammalless.
Think I’ll pass on this one. I’ve just have never been one with the beets.
The temp outside being 98°F right now, I pulled out from the freezer, a vacuum-sealed bag of gazpacho I made last summer, with vegies from my garden. Had it with a rye bread pita I made. Oh that hit the spot!
The beet color will make it through your system undiminished.
So be advised; You probably won’t need to call your gastroenterologist tomorrow morning.
@10
Mammalless. Where does lacto- come from then?
I’m yolkless in my ovo-. I just buy the egg whites and cannot be bothered with the yolks or dealing with shells.
The beet and egg concoction does look good as pictured.
Nah, I’m looking at that and thinking ‘Dude, that lab-grown meat doesn’t sound half bad.’
Hemidactylus,
Well… it comes from the flesh of mammals, but it is not the flesh of mammals.
Still, good bit of badinage. Kudos.
(Did you get the sideband of ‘Mammalless’ & ‘Marvelous’?
A little faux-phonetic bit of drollery there, with the right posh accent)
[PS I have chooks in my backyard. I give eggs away. Happy chooks]
The lab-grown cow it came from might think otherwise. [rimshot]
Basic peasant cooking… You eat whatever you’ve got.
That sounds delicious but yogurt, kefir, and sour cream together in one dish? Sounds a bit on the heavy side for me.
@ 2 robertmatthews
But… why? X-D
I understand getting super fussy about a poached egg. There’s a knife-edge between under and over cooked. But dude. It’s a hard-boiled egg. What nutjob is going to be preparing vats of ice water?
I put ’em in tap water boil tenish minutes from the time a decent boil gets going then tip out the hot water and just run tap water in the same saucepan for a minute or two and trust me dude they’re fine.
Walter Solomon @18: But what if it’s the cow from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and wants to be eaten?
Silentbob @21: Immediately dunking hardboiled eggs in ice water is the way my family likes to do it. Helps insure that the shell and membrane peel off easily.
When I was a lacto-ovo-pescatarian (I’ve now dropped the “pesca” bit) I used to say I didn’t care to eat close relatives.
By the way, that’s “chłodnik” (/ˈxwɔd.ɲik/). The little stroke through the “L” is important. It means it’s pronounced like an English “W”.
An easy way to not overcook eggs is to turn off the stove as soon as the water starts to seriously boil. Then you just let the kettle sit on the stove and wait at least 10-15 minutes before pouring the water. You might need to work out a suitable eggs to water mass ratio, but it’s not too precise and then you can almost forget the eggs. I find that storing the eggs under water in fridge makes them peel easier.
Thanks PZ, for the clarification. I guess we used to be lacto-ovo pescatarians. I used to live near the coast and loved fresh seafood. However, now, in northern scarizona, all the seafood tastes like it was left on the fishing boat deck or truck loading dock for days. I would eat catfish, but they are (like most magats) bottom feeders and I can’t be sure if their pond is clean.
We do appreciate milk products for their protein and how they work in recipes. And, we have 1-2 eggs a week per person. And, an even easier way to not overcook eggs is to put them in batter for baking.
“What nutjob is going to be preparing vats of ice water?”
Ice water is an important tool in modern cooking. Sure, your grandma probably didn’t use it much, but she probably didn’t use a food processor or an air fryer, either. Also, you don’t need “vats” of it for six eggs, which is the amount that I usually hard boil; a normal sized mixing bowl with a handful of ice cubes is sufficient.
Ice water helps green beans and other cooked veggies keep their color and taste. It also improves food safety for cooked foods that are going to be refrigerated or frozen: it reduces the amount of time the food sits in the ‘danger zone’ of temperature that supports bacteria growth.
Finally, I personally think there is a world of difference between a properly cooked and an overcooked hard egg. The color, smell, taste, and mouth-feel are all so much better.
A sugestion of another dish because, in my opinion, is also a great choice for a hot Summer day (and i hate beets….):
Traditional Alentejo Gazpacho Recipe (serves 4)
Ingredients:
4 ripe tomatoes;
1 small green pepper;
1/2 cucumber;
1 small onion;
2 garlic cloves;
200g of stale Alentejo bread (from the day before);
1L of fresh water;
Extra virgin olive oil (to taste);
Wine vinegar (to taste);
Salt and oregano to taste.
Preparation:
Start by cutting the tomato, pepper, cucumber, and onion into small cubes;
Crush the garlic in a mortar with a bit of salt;
In a large bowl, mix everything: the chopped vegetables, the garlic, the oregano, and a good drizzle of olive oil;
Add the bread cut into pieces and cover with fresh water;
Season with vinegar to taste and mix well;
Serve immediately, or chill for a few minutes to make it even fresher.
Golden tip: serve with grilled sardines or a chickpea salad!
So, green eggs NO ham (especially not that rancid ken ham).
@lasius:
Ahh, so it’s like the currency name złoty, then. (Which I did get taught how to pronounce properly the one time I was in Warsaw.)
Anyhow, never had chłodnik myself, though the more famous beet soup of borscht was a pretty common thing growing up for me. My family may have been almost entirely British Isles and German, but we lived in a part of south-eastern British Columbia with a pretty high Ukrainian/Doukhobor population; the town of Grand Forks actually has ‘famous for Sunshine and Borscht’ on its ‘Welcome to…’ signs.
#26 lumipuna
This is how my mother attempted to teach me to make yummy hard-boiled eggs. I… cannot do it. I kept a log with my own pan that was similar to her egg boiling pan and never came up with a formula that worked. I think she used magic.
I just boil the heck out of them and let the ice-water decide.
Hard-boiled eggs were usually a PITA. For me it was peeling them. Annoying. Ice…no ice…it sucked. Egg whites in a carton are one of the greatest inventions as I would often toss the yolks anyway, and damn do they start to stink. I have seen some influencers recommend mixing on yolked egg into egg whites and cooking that. I dunno. Of course that’s not even hard-boiled but more an omelette requiring fewer broken eggs. I mix sliced olives and either banana or jalapeno pepper slices into my egg whites. Tasty! Excepting deviled eggs which are a treat, hard boiled is kinda bland and the yolk sucks all the water out of your mouth.
Try using an electric egg cooker for perfect soft or hard-boiled eggs. I use the ancestral 1970s Sunbeam machine, but there are lots of new varieties on the market. I take them out of the cooker and put them right into a bowl of iced water—made iced by using cold packs from the freezer. You can reuse those, and don’t need to buy or make ice. Víôlä!