Catfish soup

Cooking a good hearty catfish soup that makes you want to ask for a second serving is not that hard. Every housewife has her own unique recipe for this dish. Therefore, I will share my recipe and a few little secrets that I use when preparing it.

Choosing fish for soup

Usually, river fish is used for soup. Good choices for this purpose are perch, pike, carp, roach, catfish. Crucian carp has a peculiar taste, but some people also cook with it. Not all sea fish are suitable. Residents of coastal areas make wonderful soup from pike perch.

It's great when the family enjoys fishing – then you have the opportunity to catch and bring home fresh fish. I, however, "caught" a decent medium-sized catfish at the market, which we will use to prepare our soup. From this amount of ingredients, we will get a good pot of soup, with a volume of 3 l.

Caloric value: 33 kcal per 100 grams of the dish.

Ingredients

Show ingredients

• fresh fish (catfish) – 700 g;
• 600 g of peeled potatoes;
• water 2 l;
• 1 carrot;
• 1 very large or 2 medium onions;
• bay leaf, cumin, allspice;
• salt;
• dill, green onion;

Should we put the fish head in the soup?

When making soup from roach, perch, or carp, I don’t use the heads. Otherwise, you can get a bitter and unpleasant taste. But how can one throw away a large head of catfish or pike perch? Besides, it adds the necessary "richness" to the dish. Therefore, I use part of the fish and its head (in a 50 * 50 ratio), from which I definitely remove the eyes and gills, as they impart unnecessary bitterness.

Preparation

1. We clean the catfish from scales and cut it into medium pieces. If you have a universal tool at home – metal scissors, you can easily make cuts along the fish’s backbone. Finish the cuts with a kitchen knife.

2. We pour water over the pieces of fish without the head and start boiling the broth.

3. From the head, we remove the gills, eyes, and wash it thoroughly. If you don’t put the head in the broth, the soup will have a more delicate flavor but will also be less rich. Therefore, to make the soup rich and filling, but without any foreign taste or bitterness, I put the head in a separate pot, add 1 l of water, and after bringing it to a boil, boil it for about 5 minutes. After that, I drain the water, remove the head, and add it to the boiling pot with the other pieces of fish.

4. To make the soup transparent and beautiful, do not allow it to boil too vigorously. After it boils and the foam (scum) is removed, reduce the heat and continue cooking on low heat.

5. After 30 minutes from the start of boiling the broth, we add a whole onion (if it's large, we cut it in half).

6. After another 30 minutes, we add the diced potatoes. It’s better to make the pieces large, as is customary in fish soup.

7. Together with the potatoes, we add chopped carrot pieces, salt, bay leaf, a little cumin seeds, and a few allspice berries. The pepper can be crushed beforehand for a more refined aroma.

8. After 20 minutes, once the potatoes and other ingredients have been added, we remove the finished soup from the heat. It’s better to carefully remove the head and pieces of catfish from the pot now. Do this very gently, so they don’t fall apart and small bones don’t end up in the broth.

We serve the hot soup in bowls, adding a piece of fish to each, and sprinkle with dill and green onions. Now we can invite everyone to the table - to enjoy delicious and fragrant soup!

Cook this fish soup according to our recipe. Enjoy your meal.