Polish Duck Soup

Forget the blood part, I'd love some duck soup with proper Bombay cuts :) :)

yes my family pronounced the same as you, maybe different dialects mis-pronounce it, but you are correct in the proninciation, please contact me for more information, rodborowy@aol.com

It is hard to find a place that supplies the blood along with the frozen duck. we need to go to a butcher in Erie, PA when once it was plentiful to find in Pittsburgh.

1-1 duck thawed, cut apart, checked for 'pin feathers' (should be pulled out), sprinkled with salt, and placed in fridge over night
2- next day, rinse duck and place in pot covered with water and place on stove.
3 - bring to boil and simmer..... while simmering, skim off the foamy, floating we called it marrow / dirt from the bones.
4- keep skimming til clean as best you can.
5 - add 2-3 celery stalks and 3 -4 carrots, peeled and quartered into bite size pieces
6 - add about 1/2 pound of prunes (prefer with pits)
7 - when duck meat is almost done you need to mix 2 heaping tablespoons of flour in with the blood provided (usually a small jar)
8 - temper the blood/flour mixture by slowly adding the duck broth to it.... to warm it to the soup temp.
9 - when it is no longer cold, you can add the blood/flour/broth mixture to the soup through a strainer (to eliminate the flour clumps)

10 - seasoning - now, you need to add salt, vinegar, and sugar to taste (and I prefer more sour some of the family prefer it sweeter ad will add sugar to their bowl) this is the hardest part - While it is boiling keep tasting/testing it!

11 - add the other 1/2 pound of prunes.
12 - when the meat is done, I remove the duck - and save the bits of meat (sweet meat)

you are done! Enjoy!

Merged: Duck soup anyone?

I understand that Poznań is the place in Poland to go for czernina (aka jusznik), fruity, sweet & sour, chocolaty-brown duck-blood soup. I've never sampled it there, but it is often featured by Pol-Am rerstaurants and at Polonian fests. It is turly delicious with egg noodles, potato dumpings or boiled potaotes. Anyone on PF every taste it? Does any Warsaw restaurant serve it?

is the key word here. I have never tasted it, but you need to understand that there is a lot of food being altered by the immigration. It is a normal process. I really liked pierogies with sour cream, which are only served to my knowledge in Canadian environment. It appears that some food is more popular abroad then in its native country eg. pizza, pasta - while Italians eat very varied food, that same applies to Polish food, which, like every food it regional. Greek food does not limit itself to souvlaki (went to Greece and it was not very popular). The list goes on.

Try to find a connection to your country by other means then just reading Polish Right wing newspapers and ranting on PF about
homosexuals, drugs, feminists and so on :D.

This is probably the longest post directed to you, but I am in a good mood, so I am a bit more tolerant today, usually I have you on the ignore list. It is a slow day;)

Thank you for your liberal-lefty tolerance. It made my day!

to make your day is a pleasure to me:)

If you can`t find a duck, rabbit will also do. Or hare.

I live in Poznan and have had more than one serving of czernina at this place:

zlotakaczka.poznan.pl

What surprised me the first time was how sweet is was. I remembered a co-worker in the US who tole me her immigrant father made it and told her it was 'chocolate soup'. She loved it until she found out what it was really made of at which point she refused to eat it anymore.

It does have a kind of chocolatey taste.

Reply as I am your cousin. Hi to all.

Hi
This is your cousin Gus. Interesting to find your post among my search results. hope all is well
Gus
gus90210@gmail

We bought ducklings last summer and I have never done this so it is truly our virgin voyage. Wednesday with the help of my 15 yr old son we did the deed and butchered one of our ducks. I grew up in the suburbs and have no previous experience pretending to be a farmer and I can assure you - this task is not for the faint of heart. You have to remind yourself that this is the way it should be - raising your own meat and that the butchering process is necessary for sustenance and that the animal served its purpose. I saved the blood, mixed in some apple cider vinegar and put it in the fridge. Tonight after work I will be making czarnina and I HOPE I can get it to be close to my grandmother's. I did allow 2 days for the duck to set in the fridge to age since it was an older duck. The one thing she did differently than what I see in these posts is not putting the duck back into the soup. Yes she simmered it, but when she took it out of the pot - she popped it into the oven and roasted it - to be eaten alongside the finished soup. The great thing about that roasted duck is that most of the fat came out in the soup and the result was a rich flavorful, more lean and less greasy roast duck at the end. Just wanted to offer that as an alternative to picking the duck and putting it back in the soup. Happy Eating!

An alternative way is to cook just the duck's wings, neck, rump and giblets together with a 2-rib portion of pork ribs. The remaining duck carcass is roasted. That way the soup isn't so greay but still quite flavourful

Don't forget the dried fruit!

Absolutely -- prunes, dried apples and pears, but some even add raisins. It is served over egg noodles, potato dumplings or boield potatoes. The English-spealing US-born Polonian kids used to call it 'chocolate soup and bullets' (the bullets being the rather heavy dumplings made with grated raw potato like for potato pancakes).

The 'bullets' are always delicious and go very well with it. Czernina is a wonderful soup!

Do tell us how it came out! You deserve a prize anyway..... but do tell! :)

My Bacchic. Wouldmake this soup often she would kill a fresh duck and hang it by the legs in her basement and let the blood

drain out into a bucket.I wish I would have learner to make this it was so good.The old ladies at Saint Hedwigs church. Use to

make it for our. .bazaars. ever September. Unfortunateley most of them are now gone.Oh how I would love some right now!!!

Can you post the butcher in erie, pa that sells the duck / blod for czarnina. Please. We'd like to call/contact them.

FYI - You can also make this soup with pigs blood since it is REALLY hard to get ducks blood anymore. Just finished making 4 gallon of soup for our family for Christmas. Our family prefers this soup without the fruit, we like it sour, not sour and sweet. There are a lot of ethnic families that prefer it this way (no fruit). My father and I used to get the ducks blood in Pittsburgh in the strip bought the duck and got the blood free.then switch to blood from a pig because it was easier to get and it REALLY makes no difference in taste of the soup. I now travel to Kutstown (near Harrisburg) to get pigs blood (also getting hard to find) from a shop called Dietrichs Meats.

Any ideas where to find blood now that chase is closed? My whole family is going through withdrawl!

I've heard you can still get blood from some of the eastern markets butchers in detroit..Now with the holidays coming up I've been trying to find it as well. Chase poultry was the best spot, but has closed for some reason. Any info you have would be helpful as well.

I have a great recipe for Duck Blood soup if your interested. The hard part is finding Duck blood. Some substitute pigs blood for duck blood.

Here is the butcher in erie that has Duck and Duck blood: Urbaniak Brothers Quality Meat
310 E 24th St Erie, PA 16503
(814) 454-4456

jamesy, could you please give me the name of the Polish market that makes czarnina? My mom is going to be 95 in two weeks and the only thing she wants for her birthday is czarnina!! Thanks!

barb

I an 70 years old now, and I was smart enough to write down my Mother's recipe for duck soup while she was making it. I can find ducks in the grocery stores, but not the blood. I live in a suburb of Chicago. I probably could find a Polish store in Chicago, but I'm not sure. I grew up on that soup and I love it. Does anyone know where I can get duck's blood in the Chicago area? Or southern suburbs?

Try Peoria Packing at 1300 W Lake St in Chicago. I was told they can handle most any such request.
Good luck!

After my grandparents passed away my father started making duck soup. He didn't have the heart to bleed the duck the way his parents did, slicing the head from ear to ear while the poor bird was still alive, so he started making it without the blood and found that everyone prefers it that way. It doesn't have the chalkiness that it does with the blood, but still has all of the right flavors.

He just followed his mothers recipe omitting the blood. I've tried it this way myself, but couldn't get the nice dark color without putting way too many prunes in the soup. One of the posts I read said to use apple butter to get the broth dark, so I'm going to try this little trick. We never added any other dried fruits other than the prunes, so I hope it doesn't change the flavor too much.

I also found a recipe for Slepo Czarnina using beef short ribs instead of duck. I've got my short ribs cooking now and I'm going to try the apple butter trick. I really hope it turns out, because I've been craving this soup for a while.

Try adding finely ground liver - it gives some of the blood flavour and adds the right colour. Not too much or the flavour will dominate. A few restaurants in Poland do this to make the ducks' blood (a rare commodity) go further.