Chorba


Chorba or shorba is a broad class of stews or rich soups found in national cuisines across North Africa, The Middle East, Iran, Turkey, Southeast Europe, Central Asia, East Africa and South Asia. It is often prepared with added ingredients but is also served alone as a broth or with bread.

Etymology

The word chorba in English and in many Balkan languages is a loan from the Ottoman Turkish چوربا, which itself is a loan from Persian شوربا. The spelling shorba could be a direct loan into English from Persian or through a Central or South Asian intermediary.
The word is ultimately a compound of شور meaning 'salty, brackish' and با meaning 'stew, gruel, spoon-meat'. The former is from Parthian ??? meaning 'salty', and the latter from Middle Persian *-bāg meaning 'gruel, spoon-meat'.
The etymology can be definitively tied to Persian through the cognate شورباج ; in modern Persian, while شوربا evolved to mean 'broth, stew', شورباج simply means 'soup'. It is typical for Middle Persian word-final ? to either change to ج or to be dropped altogether in Modern Persian.
The dialectal Arabic word شوربة or شربة is also a loan from Persian and cannot be etymologically tied to شرب meaning 'to drink'. That said, it is highly likely that phono-semantic matching occurred during the loaning of the word into Arabic, which would explain the orthographical difference.
Chorba is also called , , , , čorba, , ciorbă, , , çorba, , and shorba in. In the Indian subcontinent, the term is commonly used to mean gravy. It is a Mughlai dish and it also has vegetarian forms..

Types

Shorwa is a traditional Afghan dish which is a simple dish which is usually mixed with bread on the dastarkhān. It is a long process and a pressure-cooker is usually used, as it reduces the process to 2 hours. The main ingredients for shorwa are potatoes, beans and meat. It is commonly served with Afghan bread.
Ciorbă, as called in Moldova and Romania, consists of various vegetables, meat and herbs. Borș is a sour soup that is used in the Moldova region. There are several types of this dish, such as ciorbă de perișoare, leek soup, Romanian borscht, and borș de burechiușe.