Top 11 Eastern European Hot Soup Recipes

This Polish split pea soup easily can pass for the main course, loaded as it is with potatoes, carrots, and chunks of ham. A piece of crusty bread or crackers and a green salad make the meal complete.

This recipe for Hungarian goulash soup or gulyas leves is hearty enough to be eaten as a main course with rye bread. This soup benefits from a long, slow cook.

This is a hearty, creamed soup made with dried Polish mushrooms or porcini mushrooms and barley. It's thick and satisfying and makes a great vegetarian main meal when served with bread. It also is one of the courses at a traditional Polish wigilia or Christmas Eve dinner.

Polish beet soup can be served warm or cold, creamed or clear. This recipe is for clear beet soup served with boiled potatoes and rye bread on the side. Check out the recipe for creamy beet soup in the ninth listing, below.

Oxtail-barley soup is popular with most Eastern Europeans. It's another hearty affair that can be made with or without barley, but the barley gives it a pleasant thickness. And, fear not, the soup is made with beef, not ox meat. The name hearkens back to early preparations.

Serbian white bean soup - pasulj - can be made with or without meat. This recipe is vegetarian and is another hearty affair that can be supplemented with a crisp salad and crusty pogacha bread.

Dill pickle soup is common among Poles, Lithuanians and Russians. Much like clam chowder, it can be made "white" or "red." This recipe is for "white" dill pickle soup thickened with sour cream and teeming with potatoes, pickles and fresh dill. If you like dill pickles, this soup should strike a tastebud chord.

Although the colors in this pumpkin soup recipe are evocative of fall, it becomes a year-round offering because it can be made with canned pumpkin for convenience. Add homemade drop potato dumplings or boil up some frozen gnocchi and you're good to go.

This recipe for creamy kohlrabi soup makes use of a cabbage-like vegetable known as kohlrabi. It's a favorite among many Eastern Europeans, but Hungarians adore it.

This recipe for creamy beet borscht gets its tang from sour cream and is thicker than the clear beet soup described in the third listing, above. It can be served hot or cold and is another good candidate for a hearty rye bread. Speed things up by making this soup with canned beets.

This recipe for Serbian lamb-vegetable soup is usually the first course at a groaning board of Easter treats, but it can be made year-round with the meaty bones leftover from any lamb meal or lamb on a spit.