Jägersuppe - Hunter's Soup

A traditional German dish, jägersuppe translates to hunter’s soup in English. This version features wild mushrooms, bacon, red wine and sour cream. 

A while back I was looking for soup recipes and came across the name jägersuppe. I am not familiar with German cuisine so, intrigued, I followed the links and went down a rabbit hole of recipes with all manner of wild game and foraged ingredients.

The recipe I finally settled on called for chanterelle mushrooms which my high-end local grocery store, Central Market, often carries. Much to my disappointment, they didn’t have any! So I picked up some baby bella mushrooms there instead and decided to hydrate some wild mushrooms to keep to the spirit of the recipe name. 

It turns out that chanterelle season here in the US is July through November so I’ll definitely be making this again later in the year. Even without the special mushrooms though, it was delicious, rich and satisfyingly savory. My husband said it was the best mushroom soup he's eaten in quite a while!

Jägersuppe – Hunter’s Soup

Use whatever nice fresh mushrooms you can find if chestnut ones aren’t available. If you have chanterelles, all the better! This recipe is adapted from one on Gute Kueche, Germany’s Good Food magazine. It makes four servings. 

Ingredients

1 oz or 28g dried wild mushrooms

8 oz or 227g fresh baby bella mushrooms

½ large or 1 small onion (Mine weighed 112g)

2 tablespoons butter

3 ½ oz or 100g bacon crumbles

2 tablespoons flour

4 ¼ cups or 1L beef stock

½ cup or 120ml dry red wine

½ cup or 120ml sour cream

¼ teaspoon white pepper

¼ teaspoon fine sea salt or to taste – depending on the saltiness of your stock

Optional for garnish - chopped flat leaf parsley

Method

Pour boiling water over the dried mushrooms in a heatproof bowl and set aside to soak. 

Clean the fresh mushrooms, trim any hard bits and slice them. 

Mince the onion.

Sauté the sliced mushrooms in the butter.

Keep cooking until they have released their liquid and turned a lovely golden brown. Remove them from the pan and set aside. 

Drain the dried mushrooms, reserving the liquid and straining out any dirt. Chop them finely with a sharp knife.

Fry the bacon crumbles in the same pan you used for the mushrooms.

Add in the minced onion and cook until the onion is softened and translucent. 

Dust the bacon and onion with the flour. (I like to use a little sieve which helps avoid lumps.) Stir well and cook the flour for a minute or two. 

Pour in the stock and red wine and bring to a low boil.

Stir in the fresh and dried mushrooms along with the soaking liquid. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the sour cream, season with salt, if needed, and white pepper and bring to a boil again briefly.

Stir well to combine.

Garnish with some chopped parsley to serve. Enjoy! 

Welcome to the 10th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2026, brought to you by the letter J. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the J recipes below:

• Aloo Tamatar Jhol - No Onion No Garlic from Sneha’s Recipe
• Bacon Wrapped Jalapeño Poppers from Blogghetti
• Coconut Cherry Jasmine Rice from Jolene’s Recipe Journal
• Cowboy Candy from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Jägersuppe - Hunter's Soup from Food Lust People Love
• Jasmine-Infused Tres Leches Bundt from Culinary Cam
• Jerk-Seasoned Caribbean Honey Mustard Sauce from Faith, Hope, Love & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Juniper Butter Cookies from A Messy Kitchen
• Jicama Slaw with Carrots, Cucumbers, and Bell Peppers from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Vegetable Jalfrezi from Mayuri’s Jikoni

Here are my posts for the 2026 alphabet challenge, thus far:

A: Ají de Cerdo aka Peruvian Pork Stew

B: Baby Cos Peach Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing 

C. Traditional Cullen Skink 

D. Coconut Cream Date Caramel 

E. Edamame Summer Salad 

F. Lamb Feta Mint Patties 

G. Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle 

H. Hazelnut Vodka 

I. Italian Sausage Stuffed Mini Peppers - this post!

J. Jägersuppe - Hunter's Soup - this post!

To check out the Alphabet Challenges for 2024 and 2025, click here.

Pin this Jägersupper – Hunter’s Soup!

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Hazelnut Vodka

If you love Frangelico but think it’s a bit too sweet, like I do, this is the drink for you! Hazelnut Vodka is perfect for sipping straight or over ice. 

I’ve mentioned before about the amazing cherry tree in our back garden in Paris years ago but I don’t think I’ve written about the prolific hazelnut tree out front. It was actually in our neighbor’s yard, Madame Coucou we named her because that is what she called out over our party wall to get my attention. Coucou, coucou! Always with a big smile.

The tree grew right up near that wall so a goodly portion of it hung over our side. It took me a while to figure out what they were because I had never seen a fresh nut in its little fuzzy green outer coat. As they ripen, that turns brown and the nuts are ready for harvest, often falling to the ground on their own. During the season, hazelnuts were literally everywhere.

Unlike the cherries that we turned into jam and pie and cherry bounce, we just shelled and ate the hazelnuts. I wish I had had this recipe back then! 

Hazelnut Vodka 

If you have hazelnuts with the shells still on, it will take about 8 ¾ oz or 248g to get the required amount shelled for this recipe. This recipe is adapted from one in Abundance: Eating and living with the seasons by Mark Diacono.  

Ingredients

3 ½ oz or 100g shelled hazelnuts

¾ cup or caster sugar 

4 cups or 946ml vodka 

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

Method

Preheat your oven to 375°F or 190°C. Spread the hazelnuts out on a baking pan and roast them for about 15 minutes or so, checking after 10. The skins should darken but you don’t want them to burn!

Remove the pan from the oven and pour the hazelnuts into a towel.  

Wrap them up and leave them to steam for a couple of minutes. 

Rub them through the towel, squeezing and rolling to remove most of the skins. 

Pick the hazelnuts out of the skins and put them into a food processor. Use a few short pulses to grind them into a coarse rubble. You want some small bits and some medium bits. Nothing too fine. 

In a large, wide-mouthed jar, stir the sugar into 1 cup or 240ml of the vodka until it dissolves. 

Add the chopped hazelnuts, allspice and the rest of the vodka and stir together. 

Stir well! 

Screw the lid on and set it someplace out of direct sunlight, where you’ll see it. 

Shake the jar once a day. 

I left mine for about a week before tasting it. Divine! Very hazelnutty! Leave it another week or two if you’d like – I did - but it’s very drinkable after one week.

Strain through a fine sieve and/or muslin and funnel into a sterilized bottle or jar. 

Enjoy!

I made this last Christmastime and after we sipped a bit, I stashed it behind the bar and forgot about it. I pulled it back out when I was writing this post to discover that sediment had settled to the bottom. I decanted it, leaving that sediment behind and it's much less opaque now. Still delicious though! 

Welcome to the 8th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2026, brought to you by the letter H. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the H recipes below:

• 3 Ingredient Hot Fudge Sauce from Blogghetti
• Creamy Cilantro Herb Caribbean Potato Salad from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Haluski from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Harissa and Brie No Knead Focaccia from A Messy Kitchen
• Hazelnut Vodka from Food Lust People Love
• Homemade Chilli Oil from Sneha’s Recipe
• Honeynut Squash Soup with Apple and Bacon from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Hot Chocolate Rolls from Magical Ingredients
• Vegetable Hariyali from Mayuri’s Jikoni
• Whipped Honey from Jolene’s Recipe Journal

Here are my posts for the 2026 alphabet challenge, thus far:

A: Ají de Cerdo aka Peruvian Pork Stew

B: Baby Cos Peach Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing 

C. Traditional Cullen Skink 

D. Coconut Cream Date Caramel 

E. Edamame Summer Salad 

F. Lamb Feta Mint Patties 

G. Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle 

H. Hazelnut Vodka - this post!

To check out the Alphabet Challenges for 2024 and 2025, click here.

Pin this Hazelnut Vodka!

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Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle

Tender on the inside and golden brown on the outside, this ricotta gnocchi à la poêle is a wonderful, protein-full dish, easily dressed up to suit any palate.

I’ve made gnocchi with polenta and with potatoes but the most tender kind of all is made with ricotta, which as a bonus, adds protein that the other two methods do not. 

If you think gnocchi must be boiled, let me introduce you to a method I first learned in France. Anything cooked à la poêle simply means it’s been pan-fried over a reasonably high flame. In other words, it’s been seared in a hot pan to protect the insides from drying out. 

Once the gnocchi are cooked, dress them with your favorite sauce or seasonings. Below I give the method, as per our idol Jacques Pépin, for gnocchi persillade, tossed with a mix of minced flat leaf parsley and fresh garlic. 

I don’t know that he ever made gnocchi persillade but I have made pan-fried frog legs adapted from his recipe, finished with parsley and garlic and they are divine. Perhaps I’ll share that recipe someday! 

Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle

This recipe makes enough to feed five or six people. Since we are not that many, I tried to freeze some in rolls wrapped in cling film but, once thawed, they needed way more flour to make them easy to roll out again and cut into pieces. Next time I will cook them all à la poêle before freezing them. I’m thinking that will work better. I’ll update this post when I do.

Ingredients

For the ricotta gnocchi:

8 ¾ oz or 250g ricotta, with any visible liquid poured off

2 cups or 250g 00 flour plus extra for rolling

1 large egg

For frying: 1 tablespoon olive oil

For the persillade:

2 cloves garlic

Several stems flat leaf parsley, leaves only

For adding the persillade:

1 tablespoon butter, divided

Method

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the ricotta, 1 cup or 125g of the flour and the egg and stir to combine. 

Knead the dough with your hands, adding flour until you have a smooth elastic dough that is soft but not sticky. You may not use it all. It all depends on the moisture in your ricotta. (For this batch I only used 1½ cups or 188g flour.)

Roll the dough into a ball and wrap in cling film. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Separate the ball into 8 or so pieces. Working one at a time, roll out on a floured work surface into a long, even roll.

Use a knife to cut the roll into ½ in or 1 cm pieces. 

Press the pieces with a floured fork. 

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. When hot, drizzle in the olive oil. Add the gnocchi being careful not to crowd the pan. I only cooked two rolls for these photos and did it in two batches. 

Pan fry for about three minutes or until browned on the one side. 

Turn and pan fry for an additional 3-5 minutes on the other side. Remove to a plate and continue cooking the rest of the gnocchi in batches. 

Meanwhile, remove the parsley leaves from the stalks and mince the parsley and garlic cloves. 

To make the persillade, mix the minced parsley and garlic together. 

Once all the gnocchi are browned and you are ready to serve, put them all back into the hot pan. Add in the tablespoon of butter, separated into three.

As the butter is melting, add in the persillade aka the parsley garlic mix. 

Stir and pan fry for a few minutes to cook the garlic a bit, wilt the parsley and heat the ricotta gnocchi through. 

Spoon straight on to plates or into a serving dish and serve hot. 

Enjoy! 

Welcome to the 7th edition of Alphabet Challenge 2026, brought to you by the letter G. Many thanks to Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm for organizing and creating the challenge. Check out all the G recipes below:

• Cheesy Bacon Grits from Jolene’s Recipe Journal
• Chunky Garlic Stuffed Olive Deviled Eggs from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Gochujang Garlic Flower from Magical Ingredients
• Gochujang Sugar Cookies from A Messy Kitchen
• Golden Diner Pancakes with Maple Honey Syrup from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Grilled Garlic Honey Boneless Wings from Blogghetti
• Ham, Cheese, and Spinach Packets from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Homemade Gluten Free Bread Flour from Sneha’s Recipe
• Kadai Aloo Gobi from Mayuri’s Jikoni 
• Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle from Food Lust People Love

Here are my posts for the 2026 alphabet challenge, thus far:

A: Ají de Cerdo aka Peruvian Pork Stew

B: Baby Cos Peach Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing 

C. Traditional Cullen Skink 

D. Coconut Cream Date Caramel 

E. Edamame Summer Salad 

F. Lamb Feta Mint Patties 

G. Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle - this post!

To check out the Alphabet Challenges for 2024 and 2025, click here.

Pin this Ricotta Gnocchi à la Poêle!

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