Jota

Ingredients

• Soured turnip or sauerkraut600 g
• Beans — soaked overnight300 g
• Potatoes500 g
• Smoked pork ribs400 g
• Smoked sausage200 g
• Onion1
• Garlic4 clove
• Bay leaf2
• Vegetable oil40 ml
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Boil the soaked beans in a separate pot until soft, an hour. Keep the water.

   62 min

2. 2

   Simmer the smoked ribs in a litre and a half of water for forty minutes with the bay.

   42 min

3. 3

   Add the soured turnip or sauerkraut with some of its brine and cook twenty minutes.

   22 min

4. 4

   Add the diced potato and sausage and cook twenty minutes more.

   22 min

5. 5

   Fry the onion and garlic in oil until golden and stir them into the soup.

   8 min

6. 6

   Add the beans with their water, mash some of the potato in the pot and cook five minutes.

   8 min

7. 7

   Strip the meat from the bones, return it to the soup and season with salt and pepper.

   8 min

About the dish

In coastal Slovenia jota is made with soured turnip, inland with sauerkraut. The difference is in the acidity: turnip is sharper, cabbage gentler.

The beans are boiled separately and added at the end with their own water. Cooked in an acidic pot they stay hard however long they are kept on the heat.

Some of the potato is mashed in the pot. That is the only thickener: no flour goes into jota.

Worth knowing

• — Season at the end: the smoked meat gives salt to the broth, and jota salted early comes out oversalted.
• — Rinse a very sour base, but not dry. Jota without acidity is just a bean soup.
• — By the second day it thickens nearly to a mash. That is how it is liked, loosened with a couple of spoons of water when reheated.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

490 kcal

Protein

26 g

Fat

22 g

Carbs

46 g

More from Slovenia

• Potica — A yeasted roll with a walnut filling, coiled into a ring. Slovenian baking for every celebration.