“Húsleves (hoosh-le-vush) is the ultimate medicine for us. We eat it when we have a cold, when we are drunk or when we feel sad,” says my Hungarian friend, Anita Tamáskovits.
Sunlight streams into her kitchen in , where she preps the soup vegetables we purchased that morning at , a true local’s market in Budapest’s 13th district.
The soup we’re making – a golden broth slow-simmered with chicken (or beef) on the bone and a solid line-up of root vegetables – can take up to seven hours to cook, filling the house with a wonderfully delicious aroma.
We’re making the fast version.
Ours will take just five.
The hack is to boil the peel from the vegetables into a flavour-packed stock that we’ll add at the final step.
My friend washes and peels the vegetables, leaving the skin on the onion for flavour and halving the carrots lengthwise “because it gives a different flavour”.
She uses both orange and white carrots – the latter a dead ringer for parsnip, but with the texture and a less-sweet taste than the common carrots available in Australia.
Húsleves is a dish of ratios, not measurements. The key to a good one? One carrot to every two white vegetables. The water in the pot should be four times the weight of the meat.
Anita Tamáskovits collecting ingredients from the market. Source: Belinda Luksic
It proves a handy equation when finding a replacement for those imposter parsnips. Surprisingly, it’s not parsnip (which has something to do with the flavour clashing with celeriac).
“Húsleves is the same as vodka for Russians. We can make it from anything,” my friend says. “We just like hot soup with some meat, some vegetables and noodles. As soon as my girls smell it, they are running into the kitchen asking if they can have some, even when it’s not ready.”
Like any consommé, húsleves is best cooked on a gentle simmer and then carefully strained to remove any impurities. Anita strains hers twice to ensure a super-clear broth, then adds the vegetables whole. “If you don’t get all the chicken foam, the vegetables will absorb it,” she says.
With everything in the pot and the heat turned low, it’s now a waiting – and smelling – game. On the surface, it looks as if nothing is happening. But underneath, the heat draws the gelatin from the bones, the meaty goodness of the chicken and the earthiness of the vegetables.
Prepping noodles and vegetables for húsleves. Source: Belinda Luksic
Five hours in, and what was water and a handful of simple ingredients has metamorphosed into a finely nuanced broth: complex, rich and fragrant with celeriac, carrot, chicken and a whole dose of soul-warming goodness.
“In Hungary, we say that if the húsleves has a nice yellow colour, we can anticipate the flavour. And this is a nice colour, so it will taste very nice,” my friend says.
Any traditional Hungarian restaurant worth its salt will have húsleves on the menu, the broth served with a flotilla of meat, vegetables and noodles. Its origins, though, lie in the home – a dish that is traditionally served on weekends at family lunch.
Different regions in Hungary eat it differently. Some serve the meat and vegetables first. Others dish up the soup, noodles and vegetables, with the meat as a main.
Húsleves is the ultimate medicine for us. We eat it when we have a cold, when we are drunk or when we feel sad.
Anita makes a Budapest version. Everything is served at once with super-hot broth so “everyone can help themselves to what they want”.
Some of the broth she freezes, ready to cook up with noodles as an after-school snack for her girls. The rest she turns on day three into a velvety-thick soup, puréeing the vegetables and adding a slurp of cream.
“When a friend is tired or miserable, bringing them húsleves is a show of genuine love,” says Anita.
“It’s the feeling of hot soup with some nice meat and vegetables inside. This is something hot, this is something loving.”
When Anita first offered to share – with me – the soup her girls love most, I had no idea about the work involved or how delicious it would be. Importantly, I didn’t realise what it meant about me and our friendship.
I’m neither tired nor miserable, but with my belly full and a heart light with laughter, I’m definitely feeling the love.
Húsleves
Serves 6
Ingredients
- 2 kg chicken pieces on bone (thigh, wings, backbone and 2-3 necks)
- 2 medium parsnips
- 2 small potatoes
- 2 small kohlrabi
- 1 medium celeriac, halved (with green leaves intact)
- 5 large carrots, halved lengthwise
- ½ cauliflower head
- 1 yellow paprika
- 1 medium onion
- ½ tsp whole black peppercorns
- Salt, to taste
- 250 g thin soup noodles
Method
- Wash the chicken and add to a 12-litre stock pot.
- Add 6 litres of cold water to the pot and place over medium-low heat. Slowly bring the pot to a gentle boil, uncovered.
- Use a sieve to skim the scum that rises to the surface.
- Continue to gently boil until the foam rises again, then skim again and reduce heat to low.
- To make the vegetable stock, prepare the vegetables. Peel parsnips, potatoes, kohlrabi, celeriac and carrots. Keep the peelings and celeriac leaves and set aside. Break cauliflower into large florets and pierce a 2mm hole in the side of the paprika. Set prepared vegetables and onion in the pot with the chicken. Add peppercorns to a small tea infuser and place in the pot. Add a pinch or two of salt. Slowly simmer on low heat for four hours.
- Collect the vegetable peelings and add them to a medium saucepan. Add just enough water to cover the peelings, put the lid on the pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and gently simmer until the water is coloured and the peel is soft (around 20-30 minutes). Turn off the heat, strain the stock and set aside. This should make 3 cups of vegetable stock.
- In the pot with the simmering chicken and vegetables, add the celeriac leaves and continue cooking for another hour.
- Remove the chicken and vegetables from the chicken soup. Discard the chicken skin and bones, chop the meat and set aside. Discard the onion and paprika, chop the remaining vegetables and set aside.
- Add the vegetable stock to the chicken soup and stir. Strain the soup using a fine mesh sieve. Season to taste.
- In a medium-large pot, fill it with water and place it over high heat. Once the water comes to a boil, add the noodles and cook for 2-3 minutes until soft, then drain.
- To serve the húsleves, divide the noodles, meat and vegetables into six portions. Take one portion of the noodles, meat and vegetables and serve with one bowl of hot soup. Repeat for the remaining serves.
