Spinach puree soup - possible options

Spinach is a garden plant, native to southern countries, from the Middle East. In national cuisines of Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, it is present in different forms: as a side dish, an ingredient of salads, a filling for pies. In Europe, this unpretentious plant began to be cultivated already in the Middle Ages. His undemanding cultivation conditions made spinach one of the most common garden crops. Useful properties and high nutritional value of spinach have determined its important role in dietary and infant nutrition. In France, spinach puree is the main dish in school cafeterias

Among the many dishes from fleshy green leaves, the spinach puree soup is especially popular. It can be prepared from fresh or frozen leaves. Neither the useful properties, nor the taste qualities of frozen spinach, almost differ from fresh ones.

Even in the northern regions of Russia this unpretentious plant can yield two crops of green mass, but it was impossible to preserve it. "Frost" was a very good way of preserving juicy leaves, it makes it possible to cook soup puree with spinach almost all the year round.

The greenery of the plant is neutral to taste, so it is combined with a variety of products: with milk products - sour cream, cream, soft varieties. From it you can cook soups and on meat, and on chicken broth, and on water.

Soup puree from spinach, the recipe of which is proposed here, is not inferior in caloric content to soup on meat broth, and on useful properties, undoubtedly, surpasses it.

To make soup puree from spinach, you need:

- 300 - 500 grams of spinach (fresh or frozen);

- 1 medium-sized carrot;

- 1 onion bulb;

- 50 grams of butter:

- 2 chicken eggs;

- 100 grams of sour cream;

- 1 tablespoon of wheat flour;

- 100 grams of soft cheese.

- 100 grams of white crackers;

- salt, bay leaf, spicy greens (parsley, dill, coriander).

This spinach soup is prepared very quickly, no more than 20 minutes.

In a saucepan pour water (1.5 liters) and put it on the fire. In a small saucepan cook hard-boiled eggs. While the water boils, we clean and finely chop the onions, rub the carrots on a large grater, pass them in a deep frying pan in butter. When the onions and carrots become soft, add spinach leaves to them. If they are large, they should be cut. They passivate for no more than five minutes otherwise they will lose their bright green color. In another small frying pan, toast the flour to a golden color and add it to the vegetables. Mix everything and remove the frying pan from the fire.

In boiling water, put the bay leaves, salt and the resulting vegetable mixture. We mix well, at the first signs of boiling turn off the fire. Cheese cut into small cubes. When the soup is slightly cooled, add sour cream and cheese to it and crush it all with a blender until it is pure. Welded eggs are cleaned, cut each in half. Spicy greenery finely chopped. We serve soup immediately, hot. Put eggs in half on the plates, pour soup with mashed potatoes, sprinkle with greens and crackers on top.

This recipe is the basis. Replacing some components, you can cook different dishes on the same basis. This spinach soup will be sharper if you add half a sweet pepper and grated celery on a large grater, take the spicy cheese, and the ready-made soup is sprinkled with lemon juice. In such soup are appropriate such spicy herbs as basil or mint. Sometimes mistresses add sorrel leaves to such soup, it gives the dish an acid and some sharpness. Lemon juice in this case will be superfluous, and to give the taste of refinement and softness, you should add a little sugar.

Delicate and completely dietary soup of spinach, in which sour cream is replaced by low-fat cream, onion - for leeks, and hard-boiled eggs - on whipped raw. With constant stirring, they need to be poured into a boiling soup with a thin trickle.