Fazuľová polievka s údeným

The story

Fazuľová polievka is one of the soups Slovaks cook most often. Wikipedia's overview of Slovak cuisine describes it simply as a soup of beans, usually with pork meat or sausages, and the Slovak news site Startitup counts bean soup, together with lentil and tomato soup, among the basic fixtures of the Slovak table. The dish comes from the pantry of a farming country whose staples were wheat, potatoes, milk, pork, sauerkraut and onion, and whose typical pork products were sausages, smoked bacon and lard. That is what makes it winter food: dried beans keep for months, and a piece of smoked ribs or smoked pork neck (krkovička) flavors the whole pot without any fresh meat. Home cooks on the recipe portal Varecha.sk cook the beans with potatoes, carrots and parsley root alongside the smoked pork, thicken the soup with zásmažka, a roux of fat and flour colored with sweet paprika and garlic, and season it with marjoram. One cook writes that the soup is meant for warming up after a winter afternoon of sledding. Serve it as a full supper with rye bread and sour cream, and put the beans in to soak the night before.