Slepačia polievka, a simple soup Slovakians use to get rid of hangovers.

We already gave you some tips and tricks to get rid of your hangover. But every country has its own traditional dishes to make the process go faster. We like to give you a taste of the international anti-hangover cuisine. In this episode we focus on a dish from Slovakia, a country in Central-Eastern Europe with a good drinking culture and quite an amazing cuisine as well. Although slepačia polievka is quite an easy dish to make, this chicken soup will make you feel better in the morning after a night of partying. You can take that from a guy who recently celebrated his birthday with a full week of drinking in Bratislava.

As most countries from behind the former Iron Curtain Slovakia has a pretty good drinking culture. With a large variety of traditional types of booze made out of fruit who go by the common name pálenka, like slivovica (plum) and hruškovica (pear). Also there is a national strong drink named borovička, which is a kind of gin made with juniper berries. So actually quite like the Dutch drink jenever, which is considered the original ancestor of gin. Add to that some more than decent wines and types of brandy and you’ll understand it’s difficult to get bored in this country.

Obviously with all those goodies around mornings can be pretty rough in Slovakia. Especially in summer when temperatures can be well over 30 degrees and dehydration becomes a serious problem for heavy drinkers. That’s when a simple chicken soup called slepačia polievka comes in handy. With a few pints of Slovakian beer, which are usually not too high in alcohol percentage. We still advise you to cook the soup before you start drinking, and you’ll have a lovely surprise waiting for you the next morning.

Ingredients:
Half a hen
3 liters water
Chicken stock (6 cubes or 1 liter liquid stock instead of a liter of water)
60 grams of noodles
1 piece of parsley
1 piece of celery
1 onion
1 carrot
2 cloves of garlic
Ground black pepper
Salt

Preparation:
Put the chicken meat and bones in water and cook for 1,5 hours. You will notice the meat is all tender and it will simply fall off the bones. Now remove the bones from the pan and add the stock. Cut up the onion and garlic and add them to the soup. Let the soup simmer for another half hour. Now cut up the carrot, celery and garlic and add them to your pan. Now put in pepper and salt to taste and wait another 15 minutes. Finally add the noodles and when those are properly cooked, your soup is ready to serve.

Micky Bumbar

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