Q: I've been searching for ages for a German soup recipe. I was introduced to it by a former roommate, the son of an Army chaplain who grew up in Germany, but sadly I never learned the name for the soup, much less the recipe. It involved lots of onions, garlic, bacon, mushrooms, and beer, and it was served with large sourdough bread dumplings cooked in the soup near the end.
I would love to try again, but all my book and internet searches for recipes have come up fruitless. Does anyone know what this is called, and where I can find a recipe?
Sent by Megan
Editor: Megan, this sounds amazing! We don't have any leads on a recipe, unfortunately, but hopefully one of our Austrian or German readers will. Any ideas, guys? We want to try this soup now too!
Related: Can You Help Me Recreate the Salads I Had in Germany?
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Oh wow, this sounds great! I hope someone has this one.
Your picture looks like a beef base it might be Goulash Soup with Beer Dumplings (Gulaschsuppe mit Semmelknodel). Hope this helps
I did a search and I think I may have found it here: http://visualrecipes.com/recipe-details/recipe_id/484/Beer-Cheese-Soup/
Its a Beer Cheese Soup with Bacon.
I hope this helps.
It sounds like it might be some variation on Gulaschsuppe mit Semmelknodel (Goulash Soup with Dumplings). Semmelknodel are just dumplings, and can be made with different types of bread, but here's a recipe that could be modified to use sourdough bread: http://www.whats4eats.com/pastas/semmelknoedel-recipe
There are any number of goulash soup recipes online, but most of them include onion, bacon, stew beef, caraway seeds, paprika, vinegar, and potatoes. Beer goulash/biergulasch is popular in the Czech Republic and Bavaria and so you may find a good recipe by looking for goulash recipes from there.
Here's a good history of goulash with variations from various countries:
http://www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/goulash
Since you're looking for a German soup recipe, keep an eye out for recipes with caraway seeds (as mentioned by lotusmoss). My great grandmother, who was from Germany, loved added them to every savory dish she made.
Maybe you should just try to friend your old roommate on facebook and ask them?
@Megan
Germany is pretty big, well at least from an European perspective...
Do you know by any chance the name of the town/region your room-mate was from?
@ lotusmoss
Semmelknödel are made breadcrumbs and not with sourdough (Semmel means bread roll in Bavaria):
http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/1023981207573697/Semmelknoedel.html
Here some German recipes with the mentioned ingredients:
Gulash with porcini (Boletus)
http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/432341134406773/Steinpilzgulasch.html
Farmer soup
http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/180161078128460/Baeuerinnensuppe.html
Porcini soup
http://www.chefkoch.de/rezepte/496971144251554/Steinpilzsuppe.html
Does anyone of those look similar?
AT: what's up with the links not being live anymore? This is a HUGE pain!
Cutting and pasting each ones of those links... too time-consuming!
Isn't anyone else annoyed by this?
@mschatelaine: Use Google Chrome, highlight links right click "Go to http://...." works fine.
Try it, all the links are live.
I think they change it, because there was a bit too much spam lately....
with FireFox I double click on the address and automatically select the whole address,
ctrl+c and I copy it,
ctrl+t and I open a new tab,
ctrl+v and it pastes right in the address bar. With the mouse is half an hour but with the short-cuts I don't find it particularly time-consuming.
hi megan,
this sounds like Brotsuppe but more or less a family recipy.
250 g Brot, altbacken (old bread)
50 g Speck, fett, geräuchert (bacon)
1 Zwiebel(n) (onions)
1 Knoblauchzehe(n) (garlic)
125 ml Weißwein (white wine - or beer)
1 Liter Brühe, Würfel oder selbst gemacht (broth)
2 EL Schmand (sour creme)
1 Bund Schnittlauch (chives)
slice bacon into pieces, bake it on middle heat. chop garlic, cut bread (squares) and onions and rost all in the baconfat. stire in beer and broth cook for 15 min.
cut chives, stire in the sour creme and serve.
hope this was it what you were looking for...
this is an very old recipy, you can find it all over germany in different variations. it was good to get your family fed up with a low money budget (after the war, when no one had money..) also popular on farmerhomes, when maid and farmhand had to be fed.
fichtlbibo
It sounds like the soup you are looking for is a medley of different traditional Bavarian and Swabian soups: bread soup, onion soup, mushroom soup, beer soup, and bread dumpling soup. I have done quite a bit of research for my cookbook on German regional foods but have never encountered this combo. If you are still looking for the recipe I might be able to help you with the components, email me at spoonfulsofgermany@gmail.com
Being German, the recipe of fichtlbibo sounds very right to me! It could not be any kind of German style Gulasch since for that, no bacon would be used but square chunks of beef. And the basis would be paprica and not onion.
The recipe is not from the North of Germany but probably from the South West area close to the French border.