When ever I make Ukranian or Russian Cabbage Soup and have no lemon or citric acid, I take a Vitamin C tablet and throw it in. That takes care of the citric acid. Have been using this for years and it really works well.
I have used this recipe before - it has been handed down in my family for many generations. I have found that you can substitute lemon juice for the citric acid with almost the same results.
I was looking for a sweet & sour cabbage soup so I "bumped" this one a little bit: 1/3 c. apple cider vinegar and 1/3 cup sugar in place of the citric acid and the sugar in the recipe gave the soup just the flavor I was looking for. To keep the cabbage a little crisper don't add it until the last 1/2 hour of the cooking time. This soup is definitely better the 2nd day!
Great soup. We added more vegetables. The soup needed a lot more flavoring. We added a lot (way too much) of salt. Next time we make this we are going to use chicken stock or vegetable stock. Thanks for the recipe.
This turned out really good but I did add a little more to spice it up. I added minced garlic black pepper salt & cayenne pepper. Thanks!
I receive a head of cabbage each month through Angel foods and soup is about the only thing my family will eat so soup it is! This was very good although I did add a large can of tomato juice and also used homemade chicken broth sitting in the freezer instead of water.
We forgot the tomato's and it was still wonderful. The second day we added the tomato's and it had a totally different taste. 2 meals in 1. Everyone loved it.
This soup was delicious! The only thing I did differently was omit the beef and left it as just a veggie soup.
Turned out to have a nice deep flavor. At first it seemed like there wouldn't be enough water for the vegetable ratio but the vegetables shrunk a bit. I didn't know what spices to throw in to really get it flavorful. I added a little garlic and pepper. Next time I might throw in a few pasta noodles. Was very hearty and traditional.
warning the house smells pretty terrible while this is cooking! The soup itself turned out okay but I was the only one in my family willing to eat it. I guess no matter how it is cooked cabbage really isn't our thing (despite the fact that we got about 20 of them last year from our CSA!). I'm glad I tried this but I won't be making it again.
