Flaki is a very popular traditional Polish soup. Flaki soup is quite dense and made from a shredded beef stomach. That is why word flaki simply means in Polish something like ‘guts’. No matter how oddly it sounds, believe me that Polish flaki soup is really tasty. Even some Poles, however, do not take these shreds into enough confidence and they confine themselves to eating a mere stock. And this one, being an aromatic extract of this nice traditional Polish soup, is absolutely delicious. As for it almost nobody has doubts. Like some other Polish soups, flaki is spicy and should be eaten with fresh bread or with a roll.

Recipe:

2 kg of beef tripe (flaki wołowe)

8-10 stock cubes (kostki rosołowe)

3 carrots (marchewki)

2 parsleys (pietruszka)

0.5 celery (seler)

2 leeks (pory)

roux: 50 g of butter (masło), wheat flour (mąka pszenna), 1 tablespoon of diced onion (cebula)

seasoning: marjoram (majeranek), ginger (imbir), nutmeg (gałka muszkatołowa), white pepper (biały pieprz), sweet red pepper (słodka papryka), allspice (piment), bay leaves (liście laurowe), salt (sól)

Time required: 1.5 h of preparation + few hours of cooking

Makes about: 4.5 L of soup

1. Precisely clean 2 kg of beef tripe , previously blanched. Put it in the pot, pour water and cook for 15 minutes.

2. In the second pot prepare 4 of liter of the beef stock. Of course you can make it in the traditional way by cooking the beef in water. But I prefer applying stock cubes (time, time, time:)) Dissolve 8-10 cubes in water. Moreover, I don’t use tap water for cooking soups. Use mineral water or at least filtered. Such water is softer, hence dishes have a better taste.

3. After fifteen-minute long cooking drain tripe off. Get rid of water in which it was cooked.

4. Throw tripe to 4 liter of hot broth and cook about four hours, until stomach meat is completely soft. Water evaporates during cooking so remember to fill it up from time to time.

5. When tripe is soft take it out of the broth and sift out (don’t pour the broth out!).

6. Cut tripe up to thin belts similar to pasta.

7. Put tripe to the broth again and start heating.

8.  At that time you can deal with vegetables. Wash: 3 carrots, 2 parsleys, 0.5 of the celery, 2 leeks and cut all of them up into thin stripes. Instead of that you could of course use the equivalent amount of frozen soup vegetables (frozen ‘wloszczyzna’).

9. Throw vegetables into the pan, add 1 spoonful of butter. Pour a bit of water so that its height from the bottom of the pot is about 3 cm.

10. Put the lid on the pan, start heating and stew vegetables. Stir every now and then.

11. When stewed vegetables are already soft throw the entire content of the pan into the pot with tripe. Mix precisely.

12.  In the same pan in which we stewed vegetables we now prepare the roux. Put 50 g of butter and 3 tablespoons of diced onion into the pan.

13. When onion gets brown throw 40 g of the wheat flour. Now, take with ladle some stock from the pot with flaki and pour into your pan. Carefully stir everything. All pellets must be broken, so it is necessary to apply yourself for a while. Fry the roux all the way to the moment, when the roux has a uniform consistency, and all pellets are broken.

14.  We pour the roux into the pot with flaki. Now try to mix everything precisely. If you will come across problems use a whisk.

15.  Now the time for seasoning. We season ‘flaki in a Polish manner’ with: two teaspoonfuls of the marjoram, teaspoonful of the grinded sweet red pepper, half a teaspoonful of the grinded ginger, half a teaspoonful of the grinded white pepper and a quarter teaspoon of the wiped nutmeg. Throw 5-6 grains of the allspice and two bay leaves.

16.  Stir flaki and leave on cooker for 15 minutes.

17.  At the very end salt flaczki to the taste and leave for another 15-20 minutes still gently cooking.

Enjoy your meal! Smacznego! 🙂