Sometime in the past, I have regaled the audience here with a post or two on the victuals of Romania. I have talked of Christmas and the mighty pig, and of Easter and the lamb. In many situations the local broth, called ciorbă (Turkish words for who may care) plays a part.

Ciorbă is rather a staple of Romanian cuisine, often the standard first course. It is basically a soup, a broth, however you may call it. One of the particulars of the region is that many of these broths are made including a souring agent. For ciorbă recipes, I have always hesitated because well… they’re kinda boring and most would not be interested. You’ve seen one soup, you’ve seen em all. Is there much difference, in the end, between French onion soup, minestrone and pho? I did decide to present a few variations, and here we all are.

First let’s start with the basic formula. Water (duh), vegetables, herbs, salt, sour and meat (although this can be optional, with the addition of more vegetables like ugh zucchini and whatnot). Various greens are also added, optionally, in spring and summer. Basic broth stuff.

For the water I recommend unleaded.

The vegetables are not different from the standard base for soup and sauce in many a country. Onion, carrot, parsnip, bell pepper, potato and celeriac root – many use celery, but in Romania celeriac is used. The vegetables, depending on taste, can be mostly left in big chunks to give flavor to the liquid, and then discarded – to the joy of most small children; or chopped more finely and left to be eaten. Celeriac and parsnip are always discarded. Potato, carrot and bell pepper are generally kept. Onion can go either way, although if you chop it fine enough it can almost melt in the broth. Some add tomato, most don’t.


Herbs vary, but the main ones in Romanian ciorbă are parsley and lovage.

Meat is also whatever one likes, with the comment that for a more intense broth you need some bone, preferably with some marrow. Which is usually the case, as the ciorbă is a way to use bones with some meat left on them from various parts of the animal, or tougher meat which benefits from boiling; choice pieces of meat are never used.

For each, the process starts with the meat and water, keeping in mind to leave enough room for the sour liquid. The meat part is boiled for a while, up to an hour or more if you have the time… boil away. During this time I think people care more or less about this, but my mother always skims the scum that forms on top multiple times.

After the meat is boiled reasonably well, the vegetables are added. There may be some scum to skim from those as well. Greens if used are added for some 5 to 10 minutes cooking,  and when the soup is almost done, the souring liquid is added, brought back to a boil for around another 10 minutes.

The herbs are added towards the end as they need little cooking time. It is usually finished with egg. It can be either dumped directly which sort of scrambles them – called rags in Romania, or you can let it cool a little and temper the eggs by slowly adding some broth while mixing, thus incorporating them instead of scrambling. My family uses the second method.

Souring is general to taste, my family prefers more sour than usual. The sourest of ciorbă is usually made after a day where a feast with liberal alcohol consumption occurs, as it is seen as a good hangover food – it is generally light on the stomach and the sour taste helps with feeling of nausea – probably the opposite approach to the Anglo-Saxon heavy fatty fried breakfast.

Recipe one is basic winter pork ciorbă, made with the freshly processed beast. The souring agent is pickel brine, in this case from pickled cabbage, a standard staple in Romania. Just go to your pickled cabbage barrel and get a pot. Be careful as it is quite salty, so the soup needs no additional salt. The liquid should be added a bit at a time and the broth tasted, it is hard to prevent excessive saltiness otherwise.

About 2 to 2.5 kg of pig was used, although it is mostly bone. About 2.5 liters of water, boil for an hour, skim scum. Add vegetables of choice, boil for another 40 minutes. Add brine to taste, bring back to boil (the brine being cold). No greens in this one, just some frozen lovage and eggs at the end.

Recipe two is the traditional Easter lamb ciorbă. This one is soured using Borș.

A note on borș: despite etymological similarity, it has nothing to do with the disgusting concoctions Russians make from beets. Borș is based on fermented wheat bran. This is widely available for purchase here, of reasonable quality, and besides cooking it is used by some as a refreshing drink with, like many a fermented beverage, alleged probiotic benefits.

Homemade, if you have the time or lack the way to purchase, can be better, but there is a bit of work. To start the fermentation, people usually keep part of the last batch in a jar, to start the new batch, sort of like sourdough.

My mom keeps about 1kg of the old batch, to which 200 gram of wheat bran and 200g of corn meal are added, with about a 1.2 liters of warm water – 40 Celsius or so. After that it should be kept in a warm spot to ferment, often in the sun in late spring, for 24 to 30 hours, stirring occasionally as the bran settles at the bottom of the jug.

If you do not have any old stuff, you can start with 600g of bran and 600 g of corn meal and add one or two slices of fresh bread, as it will probably have some remaining yeast. The first batch will probably not be quite good enough, but it can be used as a starter for the second batch, which should be the real thing. Actual yeast may be added, although this gives it a yeasty taste, but this can also be fixed the same way, by using the first batch solely as a starter for the second. Only the liquid is used for the food, so all the solids should be strained.  Yes… I realize none of you will be making this, but I gave the instructions anyway.


For this one the ration is about 2kg of meat, 2.5 liters of water, 2.5 liters of borș – 2 batches worth of the above recipe. Add the meat – lamb head is essential – and water, boil for 30 minutes or so – lamb boils fast. Then add carrot, parsnip, celeriac in big chunks as they are removed later for this recipe. No potatoes here, and no onion as spring onions are used instead.

Boil for another 45 minutes or so, remove the root vegetables, and add a bunch – like 8 or so depending on size – spring onions chopped. 10m minutes later, add the greens. You can use whatever greens you want and in whatever quantity, in this case patience dock and sorrel (or a type of sorrel anyway) – which adds a bit more sourness. Spinach can be used, even lettuce, stinging nettles, ramps, whatever. Usually Easter being in spring, spring greens are used – people would pick whatever grew around the house. These greens are roughly chopped and put in the pot.

5 minutes later you can adjust for salt to taste and add the borș. Let it come to boil again and boil for 10 minutes, the taste changes somewhat and the taste of boiled borș is what you want in ciorbă. Afterwards you can turn off the heat, put a large handful of chopped lovage. 10-12 minutes later, after it has cooled a bit, add 3-4 tempered eggs, and one more handful of chopped lovage. And you are done.

Recipe 3 is a simple meatball ciorbă. 500 grams or so of 80/20 beef with a handful of white rice and a handful of chopped parsley plus one egg should be good for some 30 meatballs.

Mix well together. Place 2.5 liters or so of water in the pot, and after it starts boiling form and add the meatballs.


This one is soured using unripe corcodușe which translate I believe to cherry plums. These are a clean sour taste when unripe, unlike most actual plum cultivars which have a bitter taste as well. In Romania cherry plums or unripe grapes are used, but I suppose other things can be used as long as they have a nice sour taste. The cherry plums also freeze well and can be used through the year. They should be still green when picked, but the stone should be fully formed. About 300 grams are placed in a liter of water and boiled. About 35 minutes or so. Later, they are pushed through a strainer, so the pulp gets in but the pits and peels stay behind, and there you have your souring agent.


After some 30-40 minutes, add the veggies, celeriac (large pieces), and the rest chopped carrot, potato, onion. Leave boil for another 40 minutes, remove whatever big pieces you don’t want. Add the greens same dock and sorrel in this case, boil for 10 minutes and add the cherry plum liquid. This only needs to come up to boil again and then turn off the heat. Add a handful of lovage and, 10 minutes later, 3 eggs.

And this is about it. Three types. There are more, although these are the main souring agents; vinegar is sometimes used, or lemon but quite infrequently. Don’t forget to have a fresh hot chile pepper on the side and take occasional bites out of it. Bread is optional, but usual.