Zupa Ogórkowa — Dill Pickle Soup

Ingredients

• 1 lb potatoes, diced
• 1½ cups dill pickles, grated, plus ½ cup of their brine
• 1 carrot, grated
• 1 onion, diced
• 5 cups stock
• ½ cup sour cream + 1 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp butter
• Fresh dill, obviously

Method

1. Soften the onion and carrot in the butter; add the potatoes and stock, and simmer 15 minutes until tender.
2. Add the grated pickles and simmer 10 minutes more.
3. Whisk the flour into the sour cream, temper with a ladle of hot soup, and stir it back in — creamy, no curdling drama.
4. The tuning step: add pickle brine to taste until the soup lands sour-but-round. Every Polish family has a fixed opinion of exactly where; you get to found yours.
5. Finish with dill and black pepper. Skeptics become evangelists by the third spoonful — it's the pickle-brine dill-cream logic of a nation that understands winter.