To prepare a delicious first course, first of all, you need to know a few simple rules that apply to all types of soups (shchi, borscht, etc.).

1. All ingredients for soup must be fresh.

2. The saucepan for cooking soups should be thick-walled, or at least with a thick bottom. This is why the most delicious soups are made in clay pots or thick glass containers. But, of course, stainless steel dishes with a thick bottom are also suitable. If you don’t have such dishes in your house, then I recommend purchasing at least one such pan. She will delight your family with delicious soups for the rest of her life.

3. Take as many plates of water as you expect to get the finished product. That is, if you need to get four bowls of soup, then you pour in 4 bowls of water. What boils away during the cooking process will be filled with dense ingredients (meat, vegetables, cereals).

4. The soup should simmer very gently. After the broth boils, immediately turn off the heat so that the bubbles from the boil are small and rare. A very bubbling soup will not be tasty.

5. Soups require constant presence. If you pawn the groceries and leave “VKontakte”, only great luck will help you get a tasty first course. You should taste the soup, and if any product suddenly gets overcooked, you should immediately remove it and return it to the pan only when you turn off the heat.

How to cook soup. What to put when

Meat soup. Pour water or boiling water, add the meat and bring it to a boil. Add a whole onion and carrots (whole or chopped), parsley or celery root (if you like). Legumes are laid even earlier. But more often they are cooked separately and mixed at the end of cooking the dish. After 30 minutes, add potatoes, cereals, rice or buckwheat. 35-40 minutes after the start of cooking, it’s time to add fresh cabbage, etc., after 45 minutes. - tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, and 1 hour 20 minutes before - a second addition of onions or green onions, as well as dill, salt. Before this, take out the onions that were boiled in the soup so that they do not disintegrate.

Vegetable soup. Finely chopped onion is added first. All root vegetables are added gradually; cabbage and other tender vegetables are added first. Boil the soup over low heat until tender, then salt, add sour cream and spices. Vegetable soups cook quickly.

Fish soup. Pour some water, add salt and bring to a boil. Place finely chopped onions, potatoes - in cubes, carrots - in strips. 15 minutes after boiling, add fish, cut into equal pieces, and boil for 10-12 minutes, adding bay leaf, pepper, parsley, tarragon, dill. If desired, you can add pickles, brine or lemon and boil for another 1-3 minutes. Tomato juice (half a glass) or paste (2-3 spoons) is heated over low heat, but not brought to a boil, and added to the finished dish.

How to cook soup. Little tricks

Knowing this typical procedure for cooking soups, you can choose and prepare exactly the one you like - in composition, consistency and taste. You can improve the taste of soup by changing only the liquid part (not the solid part).

So, for example, they usually take fish soup cooked for 10-12 minutes with rice, onions, carrots, and potatoes. Remove the fish from the soup and place it separately. Then take half a glass of cold, always boiled water and dilute a tablespoon of flour in it, stirring thoroughly so that it is dispersed evenly. This liquid is poured into a soup without fish boiling over low heat, stirred well and boiled for 2-3 minutes. While stirring, pour half a liter of milk into the same soup and bring to a boil. Continue stirring and after 5-6 minutes, when the soup boils, take a spoon, cool it and taste the soup liquid: neither the taste of milk nor the taste of fish soup is felt. A new, pleasant soup liquid has appeared. Now, together with the fish, the soup is heated for 1-2 minutes and set aside for 1 hour to infuse.

In the same way, milk is added to vegetable soups made from root vegetables, without pickled vegetables. Instead of milk, you can add yogurt and sour cream.

I often observed the same picture, when completely different soups were prepared from the same set of vegetables. What could be the secret here? And, as I later found out, there are a lot of secrets. In this article you will read all these secrets for making delicious soups that I have put together. So, let's move on to learning the secrets of making delicious soups!

1. Place vegetables in soup in boiling water

The first secret tells us that vegetables need to be added to the soup only when the water has already boiled. Otherwise, cold water contains enzymes that oxidize vitamin C and other substances. From this it follows that you cannot pour cold water over vegetables.

2. Don't put all the vegetables in the pan at once.

When preparing soup, you cannot add all the vegetables at once, otherwise you risk ending up with either overcooked or undercooked vegetables.

3. Correct sequence of adding ingredients to soup

In order for the soup to be prepared correctly, you need to add the ingredients in a certain order: put the potatoes at the beginning, boil them for 15-20 minutes, then the cabbage for about five minutes, and at the end the sautéed vegetables. After all the ingredients are in the soup, it should boil.

4. Properly sauté vegetables and tomatoes

Tomatoes and vegetables should be sautéed in a thick-bottomed container. You need to stir with a wooden spoon or spatula. Tomatoes and carrots produce carotene, which is beneficial for the human body because it is converted into vitamin A. Substances from carrots and tomatoes have a red-orange color, which beautifully colors the soup or borscht itself.

5. Beet secret

Beets need to be stewed with the addition of fat, vinegar and a small amount of liquid. The entire process of stewing beets must take place separately. Beetroot dye is better preserved in the presence of vinegar, and this will help you achieve a beautiful brown color in borscht.

6. Sauerkraut in cabbage soup

Before putting sauerkraut in cabbage soup, it needs to be simmered for a long time in a small amount of liquid and fat. This will soften its structure and acquire a pleasant aroma of the cabbage itself.

7. How to help vegetables shine in soup

When preparing soup, potatoes must be boiled until partially cooked, and then you can only add foods that contain acid: beets stewed with vinegar, sauerkraut, pickled cucumbers, and so on. If you don't follow this advice, you risk getting tough and undercooked potatoes. Pickled cucumbers should be peeled and seeds removed, and only then added to the soup.

8. When should you add sautéed vegetables?

Passed vegetables should be added to soup or borscht only at the end of cooking; then you should add black pepper and bay leaves. If you do not follow this advice, you risk losing the pleasant aroma of the added products.

9. Correctly cutting vegetables for soup

Vegetables and other foods in soup must be cut into the same size and shape.

10. Cut vegetables according to pasta

If you plan to make soup with noodles, then the vegetables must be cut into strips, if with pasta - into cubes, with pasta in the form of figures - into circles and stars.
By applying the secrets to making soup, you can easily become a soup expert. And, as you have already seen personally, for this you do not need to have special culinary talent or extensive experience in cooking, just knowing your secrets is enough to prepare a unique soup.
On our website you will also find an article with culinary secrets - this is. I really hope that by learning culinary secrets with my help, you will be able to raise the level of your culinary abilities. I wish you good luck and bon appetit!

We are sure that everyone knows how to boil potatoes - the process, at first glance, is primitive: pour water, throw it in, wait.

However, we decided to experimentally find out:

1. Will a potato thrown into boiling water cook faster than the same tuber thrown into cold water?

2. How much faster do potatoes cook if they are cut before cooking than if they are thrown whole?

3. How much faster do peeled potatoes cook than jacket potatoes?

4. How does the taste of potatoes boiled in boiling water differ from those boiled in initially cold water?

For the experiment, we took 6 approximately identical tubers of the same variety.

• Two of them were peeled, put in saucepans and one of the peeled potatoes was poured with boiling water, the other with cold water. They put it on the stove.
• We also peeled two more tubers and also put one in cold water, the other in hot water. However, before that, they were cut into slices about 1 cm thick.
• We did not peel the remaining 2 potatoes and put them in boiling and cold water to boil right in their skins.

The weight of all potatoes was approximately 70 g. All were boiled in the same amount of water.

Chef Igor Murakhin checks the readiness of the dish...

What we got

conclusions

1. Any potato of each type (peeled, peeled and shredded, “in their jacket”) is cooked for the same time, regardless of whether you throw it into cold or boiling water.

2. If you want to cook potatoes faster, peel them and cut them into slices. It will cook in just 20 minutes and will be good for making purees if it is cooked in boiling water.

3. All types of potatoes (peeled, peeled and shredded, “in their jackets”), boiled in boiling water, are absolutely the same in consistency: slightly watery. Tubers cooked in initially cold water also taste the same: they turn out more crumbly.

And further...

Chef's tip: To check if the potatoes are cooked, pierce them with a toothpick or skewer. If it passes freely through the tuber, it’s time to turn off the stove.

What does science say about boiling potatoes?

If it's an experiment, then it's an experiment to the end. That is why, immediately after boiling and tasting, we rushed to get an expert opinion from a nutritionist, fitness instructor and athlete Ilya Andreev. And here's what we found out...

"By mixing a small amount of water and starch and thenWhen heated (from 60 to 100ºС), the gelatinization process begins. So, for a long timeCooking usually produces a paste (glue from starch). It forms insidepotato cells and the moisture contained in it has a greater influence on this process.

The human body is not able to digest starch in its pure form, thereforewe use pre-heat-treated foods,containing it.When cooked, the consistency of the products becomes softer andthey are digested and absorbed better and better. It happensdue to the rate of conversion of protopectin into pectin. And the speed, in turn, depends on the properties of the products. For example, the conversion rate of beets or legumes is much slower than that of potatoes or fruits.

This speed also depends on the environment: in an acidic environment, the transformation slows down, which is why in sauerkraut soup, potatoes are placed before it, before the cabbage. Now you know why one softens faster and the other slower."

About vitamins

During heat treatment, a group of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) are preserved and do not lose their properties. Worse with water-soluble ones - group B. When boiled, they partially (30%) go into the broth, and when stewed, they are lost in huge quantities.
A short-term heat treatment is best; the short time is almost not accompanied by the release of juice.
During cooking in a large volume of water, most of the minerals are transferred to the decoction. That is why they are often used as the basis of first courses.

When cooking potatoes in the usual way, most of the nutrients are lost - they are washed out and go into the broth. The more complex the cooking methods (grinding, stewing), the more beneficial substances dissolve. Long cooking times also strip the final dish of most of its vitamins and minerals.

That's all, actually. Now you know almost everything about how to cook potatoes!

This cooking method is considered the most useful. Potato peels contain Does the Skin of a Potato Really Have All the Vitamins? vitamins A, B1, B3, B6, proteins, fiber, potassium, iron and other microelements necessary for humans.

To ensure that the potatoes cook evenly, try to choose tubers of the same size. Wash them thoroughly from dirt (it is better to do this with a stiff brush) and pierce them with a toothpick in several places so that the peel does not burst.

Fill the tubers with cold water so that it completely covers them. Then add salt: about ½ tablespoon of salt per 1 liter of water. But you can put more: the potatoes will take as much salt as they need.

Then cover the pan with a lid and place it over high heat.

After boiling, cook the potatoes over medium heat for another 20–25 minutes.

If the potatoes are old, then most likely the time will have to be increased to 30 minutes. And for young potatoes, 15 minutes may be enough.

It is very easy to check the readiness of potatoes. You need to pierce the tuber with a knife or fork. If it is soft, then the jacket potato is ready. After cooking, drain the water, let the potatoes cool slightly and, if necessary, cool.

Perhaps the most difficult thing here is to get rid of the peel and all the eyes and green spots. Otherwise, the process is practically no different from cooking jacket potatoes.

Do not expose peeled potatoes to air. If you are not going to cook right away, put the tubers in water to prevent them from darkening.

It is better to take medium-sized tubers, as they will cook faster. Large tubers can be cut in half or into several parts.

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Place the raw potatoes in a saucepan, add cold water and salt. If you put vegetables in boiling water, the center may not cook through. However, opinions on this matter are divided even among famous chefs. For example, cooking program host Martha Stewart pours cold water over potatoes, but hot water.

If you need to prevent the potatoes from boiling, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar per 1 liter of water.

Place the pan over medium heat. When the water boils, turn it down.

After boiling, whole peeled potatoes are cooked for 20–25 minutes, cut into pieces - 15–20 minutes.

Before turning off the stove, check the readiness of the potatoes: pierce them with a knife.

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Then drain the water. If you don't do this, the potatoes will soften.

How to cook potatoes for salad

Most often, jacket potatoes are used for salad. Only it is cooked a few minutes less than usual so that the vegetables are firmer.

If you don't like peeling boiled potatoes, peel raw potatoes and cut them into small cubes or as needed for a salad.

Then pour cold water over the potatoes, add salt and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally. To check the doneness of the small cubes, simply taste one of them.

As a rule, after the water boils, they cook for 10–12 minutes.

The main thing is not to overcook them. After all, for a salad you need hard potatoes that will not turn into mashed potatoes.

How long to cook potatoes in soup

For soup, potatoes are usually cut into strips and placed in an already boiling broth.

The potatoes are cooked in the soup for 7–10 minutes.

However, cooking time may vary depending on the size. The larger you cut the potatoes, the longer they will cook.

How to cook frites

Potatoes can be cooked not only in traditional ways. For example, boil in a saturated saline solution. The end result will be frites that taste like baked potatoes. Ideal to add variety to salads or a regular dinner.

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Remove all dirt from the tubers, place them in an enamel pan and fill with cold water so that it completely covers the potatoes.

Pour a lot of salt into the pan: about 300-400 g. You may have to add more during the process, because the salt should not completely dissolve.

Bring the water to a boil over high heat, then reduce the temperature and cook the potatoes, covered loosely, for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

By the way, the saline solution can then be used many more times to prepare frites.

A few more life hacks

1. To make the potatoes cook faster, throw a piece of butter into the pan. Melted butter will cover the water with a thin film and will interfere with evaporation. The temperature in the pan will increase and the potatoes will cook about 5 minutes faster.
2. To give the potatoes an exquisite aroma, add a few pieces of onion or a couple of cloves cut in half to the pan. You can also add bay leaf or spices, and sprinkle peeled potatoes with chopped dill.
3. The liquid in which the potatoes were boiled can be used as broth to make vegetable soup. It will be saturated with useful microelements contained in potatoes.