Chicken soup

What is sour chicken soup?

A traditional Romanian soup consisting of chicken, ditalini pasta (or any pasta, or potatoes, or rice), mixed vegetables and a sour broth.

There are two ingredients that you might not be able to find in your grocery store, but are necessary for making a traditional sour chicken soup: Borș Magic, which is what makes the soup sour and adds a bunch of other herbaceous flavor as well and the second mandatory item is Lovage, which I personally never found in any store and ended up getting some seeds and planting my own (because I am a master of all trades). There is a third ingredient, Vegeta – but it can be substituted or simply removed. Honestly, the soup came up so tasty that you wouldn’t really need any seasoning.
Borș Magic

There isn’t really a good translation for this so if you are not around those parts you are out of luck. Traditionally, Romanian soup is turned sour by using ‘borș’ a liquid ingredient obtained from fermenting wheat or barley bran in water, but good luck finding anything similar in North America! However, you can definitely use lemon juice but not too much as the balance has to be just right or the lemon will over-power the whole damn thing.

Alternatively, you can find ‘Borș Magic’ in Polish stores, packages made in Romania by Knorr… I think.
Lovage

Lovage is somewhat similar to celery leaves as far as taste and aroma goes, but I found it a tad bit stronger and more flavorful.
Vegeta

Vegeta, because I put that #*%@ on everything! You can find it pretty much anywhere, but if not – use a chicken bouillon cube but only in case you really need it. Use a lot of bones and veggies in your soup and you can skip it.