Grahova pretepena juha – a type of traditional thick bean soup from Međimurje cuisine, an integral part of the national Croatian cuisine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bean_soups
Pretepena juha od grahova is a Croatian bean soup, originating in Medimure County, the northernmost and second most densely populated county in Croatia. It consists of beans and usually some sort of smoked pork, simmered until soft and then thickened with a “pretep”, which is a mixture of flour, milk, and sour cream.
This was another recipe that I really had to dig for, experimenting with alternative spellings and rearranging words to figure out what gave the best search results. The arrangement of words on Wikipedia returned almost nothing useful, just enough to hint at what I should be searching for.
I had to wade through a lot of other recipes with pretepena juha in their names. It seems that there’s a whole family of soups thickened with pretep, including the very most basic version, “flour soup”, which is just broth thickened with the sour cream mixture. The translation for “pretepena” that showed up in most of the recipes I looked at was something along the lines of “stirred” or “beaten”, which was explained by one cook as coming from the fact that you have to whisk the flour into the cream and then stir constantly once you add it to the soup to prevent burning or clumping. I deduced from this that juha, then, must mean soup. Grah, or some variation thereof, is the word for beans across the Balkans, so put it all together, and we have a literal translation along the lines of “beaten soup with beans”
There really isn’t much to this soup. Simple, basic ingredients. Let it simmer for a couple of hours. Add the pretep. Serve! The only really unusual ingredient is Vegeta*, which is a popular seasoning in the Balkans that is essentially vegetable bouillon powder. It’s probably not an ingredient that is essential to the dish, since I don’t think it actually showed up in the written version of any of the recipes I looked at, and only made it into my calculations from a couple of videos, where it was casually mentioned in the same context as salt and pepper, like “season to taste”. I probably should have bought a new package of Vegeta, as the jar I had in the pantry is a good six years old at this point, having bought it way back in 2020 to make Tavče gravče, but I didn’t really think about that until I was already cooking. I used a generous couple of Tablespoons in the hopes that it would still have enough flavor to do something.
You can use pretty much any type of beans for this. Wikipedia says cranberry, bolita, navy, or kidney are the most common. I used cannellini, which are just white kidney beans, because I had some on hand, although I made the mistake of mixing beans from a bag that had been in the pantry for quite a while with some fresher beans, and wound up with some beans that were still a bit firmer than others. Quite a few of the recipes I looked at used canned beans, while one video I watched used home-grown beans, which she had harvested before they dried, and frozen for later use. Obviously, the cooking time will vary quite a bit depending on your beans. Depending on how long they take, you may need to add additional water. If so, use boiling water to avoid interrupting the cooking process.
You can also use other types of smoked pork, or even smoked sausages, in place of or alongside the bacon. If it’s something like a ham hock, cook it until it’s falling off the bone, and then chop the meat up and return it to the soup.
Overall, this was a tasty, simple soup, perfect for the cold, rainy day I made it.
Pretepena Juha od Grahova
Serves: 4
Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 2:00
Total: ~2:10
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1 lb. dry beans (cranberry, bolita, navy, or cannellini)
Oil
100 g bacon, diced
1 large onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 liter water
1 ⅜ teaspoons sweet paprika
1 small bay leaf
Black pepper to taste
Vegeta, to taste
¼ teaspoon salt, or to taste
3 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon garlic powder
100 ml milk
11 Tablespoons sour cream
Finely diced onion, to garnish
Optional:
800 g canned white beans, in place of dry
1 liter chicken stock, in place of water
Cooked bacon, to garnish
Parsley
200 g smoked pork
1 hot pepper
1 red carrot
1 yellow carrot
1 parsley root
Celery root, to taste
3 Tablespoons lard, in place of oil
1 liter beef stock, in place of water.
Pick over your beans, removing any bad beans or foreign objects. Rinse and drain the beans, then cover with cool water by about 1 inch and leave to soak overnight.
Drain the beans and add to a pot with fresh water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Put a soup pot over medium heat and immediately add a little oil and the bacon. Allow the bacon to render as the pan warms, and cook until the bacon is crispy. Remove bacon from the pan and set aside. Pour off excess fat, leaving about 2-3 Tablespoons in the pot.
Add the onion and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 30 seconds or so
Add the par-cooked beans and cooked bacon to the pan, along with water, bay leaf, paprika, black pepper, and Vegeta. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, partially covered, until beans are soft, 1-2 hours.
Once beans are soft, add salt to taste.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour and garlic powder. Add the milk, whisking until smooth, then mix in the sour cream. Stir this mixture into the beans and cook for another 10 minutes or so, stirring frequently, until thickened.
Serve with diced onion and good bread.
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Lorin cooks Legumes 