This recipe comes from the German Mennonite heritage of my mum. We have it as a whole meal in a dish with diced hard-boiled eggs added to the soup. Delicious!
| Prep Time: | 25 mins |
| Cook Time: | 40 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 5 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
| Yield: | 2 quarts |
Ingredients
- 5 cups diced red potatoes
- 7 cups water
- 4 teaspoons salt
- 1 ¼ cups green onions, chopped
- ⅓ cup chopped fresh dill
- 2 cups buttermilk
- 1 cup half-and-half
Instructions
- Place diced potatoes into a large saucepan, and cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat, and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes. Stir in the green onions, dill, and buttermilk; bring back to a simmer. Stir in the half-and-half before serving.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 135 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 20 g |
| Cholesterol | 14 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 5 g |
| Saturated Fat | 3 g |
| Sodium | 1248 mg |
| Sugars | 4 g |
| Fat | 4 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
We make ours with ham bone or farmers sausage potatoes, bay leaf, onions, sorrel is a must because the flavour is tangy and we add 1 litre buttermilk. After cooked, we mix egg with cream and swish it in. This gives the soup an amazing texture!!!
This is traditional comfort food for me and went well with fresh homemade bread. I added a bit of sauerkraut because that’s how my mom used to make it . I also added a dash of liquid smoke. Brought me back to my mother’s kitchen. 🙂
Awesome tasting
Delicious! It definitely tastes better with stock made from farmer sausage.
For this recipe to be authentic, it needs farmer sausage (some people use ham). Vegetarians can use liquid smoke or imitation bacon bits, but the smoky flavour is necessary. It also needs sorrel… If you don’t have access to sorrel, try using beet greens, and add some lemon juice towards the end of cooking. In my family, we skip adding dairy to the pot, and add buttermilk to our own bowls.
I make this soup all the time from a recipe handed down from my mother. I find it much tastier if you cook chunks of farmer sausage in the water first and skim off the fat when it’s done. Then I add the potatoes and green onions to the sausage in the skimmed water. When that’s cooked, I add a bag of spinach leaves…mmm. Add the dill and salt. Boil til seasoned. Depending on how large a pot your using, add 1-2 cups of sour cream. Boil that together and add 1-2 cups of buttermilk. Truely a tasty soup 🙂
Neeeds meat; ham or sausage, and sorrel, or what we called on the farm “sour weeds”. Then it is perfect!
I make a stock using farmer sausage, then add the potatoes, dill, salt and pepper. The when almost done add green onion tops and sorrel. Finish with sour cream that has had hot broth added to it so it doesnt curdle. Yummy!
This helped me out as my husbands family makes it but nobody follows a recipe… and I do know that they use beet greens fresh in the summer and spinach in the winter. The best part is the farmers sausage!!!
I was really happy to find this recipe, my grandma was also german mennonite but as she has passed on i couldn’t get her recipe. This tasted very similar to hers, except as others have added she always used farmer sausage. When i made it I didn’t have any on hand so i used fresh bacon bits instead and it still tasted great! I also think it just isn’t the same without buttermilk, that is what i believe adds the extra kick!
I made a few changes simply due to personal preference and of course due to tradition of how my grandma used to make it. I boiled the potatoes in chicken broth instead of water to add more flavour. I also threw in carrots and onions and raw farmer sausage at the same time and let it boil for 45 minutes. Added lots of dill and then pureed it in the blender as my kids don’t like potatoes but will eat it this way. I added half and half cream only. Amazing flavour and my house smelled great. Definitly going to be a staple in my household this winter.
my family makes it with mennonite farmer sausage (pork) and beet leaves added my grandmother made it with buttermilk, but my mother made it with sourcream I must say i much prefer the sourcream version.
My great grandmother made this soup and it is a family favorite. I’m so glad I found this saskatchewan recipe! It is almost the same, but hers starts with browning mennonite or farmer sausage in the pan, then drain the fat but keep the brown bits in the pan for flavor. She used to use fresh greens from her garden (nobody knows exactly what they were!) but I used fresh dill and parsley. She didn’t use buttermilk either, just half and half at serving time. This is a delicious, hearty soup. My husband loves it (without half and half). My kids hated it the first time and loved it the second time, can’t wait to see how the third time goes tonight!
My father –and only my father out of a household of eleven people — would eat this soup every Friday. He found it hearty and satisfying. My siblings and I found it bland because of the buttermilk. Give me the borscht with beets, please.
Definitely needs a hambone stock to start this soup off and make it truly Mennonite fare…
My grandmother is also a german mennonite, and she used to make this soup except with ham stock as the base, otherwise pretty much identical. To be honest, one of the best soups I have ever had.