Greetings Gastronauts! This is Keef Cooks, I’m Keef, and today I’m going to show you how to make a
wonderful warming winter soup from Scotland: Cullen Skink
[ MUSIC ]
Now it's a bit of a weird name which apparently comes from its origin in the fishing village of Cullen
in the North East of Scotland and skink, a kind of
corruption or borrowing from the old Scots name for a soup or broth made from
shin of beef. How they get from beef to fish, I don't know. But, they did
Very easy to make, quite quick, totally wonderful so let's do it
OK, ingredients for the Cullen skink, I've got 500 grams of smoked haddock
I've got500 grams of potatoes, I've got a large onion and I've got half a litre of fish stock
(or you could use chicken stock)
300 ml of milk and two hundred ml of cream. Now these can vary...
I'm using cream to give a richer soup or you could use all milk or you could just use water but
milk is more traditional. And I've also got a bunch of chives which is also not
really traditional but you know chives and fish go really well together
so I'm doing it. And if you can't get smoked haddock, any kind of smoked
white fish will do in a pinch
So, let's get going. And continuing the Keef Cooks tradition of forgetting to
tell you about a fairly vital ingredient, I've got a big knob of butter, that's 50 grams, 2 ounces
So first thing to do is prep the spuds, I need to peel them, and chop them into cubes about a centimetre (half an inch)
And then we need to peel the onion and chop it into small bits.
I'm going to melt the butter in a large pan. I'm doing this in one pot because this is basically a peasant dish
and I don't think they had lots of frying pans and different pans - they'd do it in one pot
So just throw in the onions and stir them around until they're nicely coated - and we want to let those cook for
about 5 minutes till they're softened but not browned. Now we add the spuds
Stir those round, get them nice and coated in the butter, and cook for a couple more minutes.
Now I'm going to add the fish stock - or chicken stock if you're using that. And the milk.
I've got the heat on quite low - you don't want it too hot when you're cooking with milk because it might curdle
Now we just lay the fish on top of that to cook for about five minutes
So this looks about done. You don't want to overcook the fish at this point but you can see there it
breaks apart quite easily so now we take out all the fish and set it on one side
So now we just need to let the soup cook until the potatoes are tender - probably 10 or 15 minutes
I'm going to throw in some chopped chives now and have a little taste ...
[ ECSTATIC CHEF NOISES AND SLURPING ]
That's wonderful . I don't think it's gonna need any salt because the fish itself is quite salty
Right, the spuds are nice and soft - I'm just gonna add in the cream
give it a stir. And now flake in the fish - it should fall off the skin very easily
And that's basically it!
So, here we are, a wonderful Cullen Skink - I'm trying very hard not to call it Killing Skunk
'cos that's what normally happens
So we just slap a pile of it in a bowl with some soup around it
And just throw some chives on it to make it look pretty and let's have a taste
[ AWWW ]
[ MMM ]
That is fantastic
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