This, friends, is the long-awaited culinary experiment I teased to earlier this week, when our usual Crock-Pot Monday festivities were thwarted due to post-vacation re-entry! I came across a recipe for Dill Pickle Soup over at Tablespoon.com, and as soon as I saw it I knew our pickle-loving family just had to try it. (And, of course, I vegetarianized the ingredients.)
… Wait a minute, I can hear some of you say. I thought you called this recipe Gherkin Soup. Not Dill Pickle Soup. What gives?
Well, you see, while I was picking up the ingredients for this meal (and the rest of my grocery list) at the store on Sunday, I seemingly selected the wrong kind of baby pickle. I was supposed to purchase baby dills. Instead, I cheerfully added baby gherkins to the cart instead and went about my merry way. Not even when I snuck a taste of one this morning while dicing them did I consider my error! No, that happened mid-afternoon, when suddenly I saw the word “Gherkin” in my brain, as prominent as can be atop a green Mt. Olive label.
Gherkin. Not dill. Gherkin.
So. This is Gherkin Soup. Dill will have to wait for another day.
At any rate, the prep work was incredibly easy, from the creation of the roux to the dicing of the pickles and carrots. I cheated and used a can of sliced potatoes instead of dicing up fresh, because the last couple of times I’ve bought fresh at the grocery store, they’ve come home all green and somehow I’ve failed to notice pre-purchase. Then just add a few spices, some broth, and set it to Low for the day!
LeeLee and I both worked from home today given the region’s latest snow storm (and between you and me, this snow lover has had enough of the white stuff for a while), so I continued to peek in on it through the glass lid every time I walked through the kitchen. Finally, at around 6:30, I could take it no longer and we sat down for the moment of truth.
The synopsis: The flavors of this soup are … interesting. Having never had pickle soup before, either dill or gherkin, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’m not sure I anticipated the final result in our bowls. And I don’t mean “interesting” in a polite, non-committal way, either; I really mean that the flavors were ones I had never experienced before, and that fact did take my taste buds a few bites to work out for themselves. A blend of tart and mild, sweet and savory, spicy and neutral … pickle/gherkin soup is just flat-out interesting! But many of my closest friends are interesting. So I went with it, bite after bite.
In the final analysis, I enjoyed one full bowl, and LeeLee devoured two. Both of us appreciated Tablespoon’s suggestion of pita chips on the side; we both liked dipping them into the soup for yet another interesting flavor. At any rate, I really did like this meal and I think I will make it again (only with different pickles next time). And I’ll also take greater care to read labels more clearly.
Hooray for gherkins!
:)