Classic Ukrainian borscht is a legendary dish. Rich, always “thick, not empty”, it is served with garlic and lard. You won't be able to get away from such deliciousness! By the way, all over the world red borscht is considered a Russian dish. However, Ukrainians are not going to give copyrights to any other nation.
Features of preparing borscht
Many nations have variations on the theme of red borscht: Russians, Romanians, Poles, Moldovans, Lithuanians... And everyone has their own secrets of preparing this dish. The list of ingredients for real Ukrainian borscht is quite simple:
Meat (volumes depend on the size of the pan);
0.5 kg of potatoes;
one large beet;
several small carrots;
onion head;
forks of white cabbage;
one tomato.
To add flavor, vinegar, garlic, black and allspice, dill, and bay leaf are added to the dish. The secret ingredient is a spoonful of sugar. It is added during frying of beets, onions and carrots. Thanks to this technique, the vegetables are slightly caramelized, and the borscht itself acquires a unique sweet-sour and at the same time “very vegetable and meaty” taste.
Connoisseurs of borscht know that the final taste of a dish is formed only on the second day after its preparation - the borscht must sit and be saturated with the flavors of the ingredients included in it. Serve red borscht with sour cream and a pinch of finely chopped fresh herbs.
Each housewife makes borscht her own, special. The taste of this dish depends not only on the proportions, but also on a dozen other factors: the time the housewife spends on cooking, the quality of the meat, whether sour or fresh cabbage was used, etc.
Ukrainians recommend using beef or pork bones, brisket, and smoked pork ribs to prepare red borscht. You can also use chicken and lard (spicy smoked lard). The meat must be cooked for a long time, skimming off the foam several times. If you need a rich broth, the meat should be salted at the beginning of the process. If you want the meat to be tender, add salt to the dish at the end.
After the meat is cooked, diced potatoes are added to the boiling broth, and after 5 minutes - finely shredded cabbage. While the vegetables are boiling, the housewife sautes the onion, then adds beets and carrots cut into strips (or grated on a fine grater). When these ingredients are well fried, add one ripe, well-chopped tomato.
The frying is added to the borscht at the very end. When the beets are already in the pan, the heat should be reduced. Then the borscht should simmer on the stove for some time. You should not let it boil too much, otherwise the beets will boil out and the red borscht will turn into a dirty coffee-colored slurry.
Forbidden ingredients
Each region of Ukraine has its own method of preparing borscht. Many popular recipes include red bell peppers, mushrooms and prunes, pears, beans, pampushkas, croutons, meatballs, dumplings and even pickled apples.
Some peoples cook borscht with sausages and seafood. But Ukrainians do not consider beetroot soup with fish, scallops or other seafood to be borscht. Real borscht is associated only with meat. Anything cooked in fish broth falls into the category of “ukha”.
Sausages are also not related to real red borscht. It is prepared either with good smoked meat or only with vegetables - this is a lean option. Also, buckwheat, eggplant and zucchini are not added to traditional red borscht. Recipes with these products can be found on the Internet, but they have nothing to do with preparing real borscht.
The ongoing debate about which borscht tastes better - Ukrainian or Russian - leads nowhere. But the fact remains that this delicious first course has conquered the whole world and has become the hallmark of Slavic cuisine.
There are, of course, classic ones (you can read about this from the famous V. Pokhlebkin and in other cookbooks), but whether in Russia or Ukraine, each locality has its own version of this dish, and each housewife prepares borscht in her own way . That’s why there are a lot of borscht recipes.
We, having collected recipes from friends, relatives and acquaintances, rummaged through old magazines, chose the most interesting ones. Both experienced and novice housewives can use these recipes.
In addition, you will get acquainted with some culinary secrets.
Borscht with meat and bone broth
The whole secret of this borscht is that vegetables, except potatoes and cabbage, are first stewed separately in a frying pan and only then added 7-10 minutes before readiness to the pan with cabbage and potatoes.
Place a beef bone for broth in cold (!) water, cook without salt, skimming off the foam, for about 40 minutes. Then, about 20 minutes after the bone, add the meat, cut into pieces.
While the broth is cooking, you can cook frying .
To do this, fry coarsely chopped onions in a mixture of vegetable (preferably unrefined) and butter until golden brown. Add 1 tbsp. spoon of flour and mix well (the flour should “fry”, i.e. stop being white). After this, put the carrots and cut into strips and simmer for 5 minutes. Now you need to add the beets, also cut into strips, stir for another 5-7 minutes, add tomatoes or tomato paste, stir for 3 minutes. Cover the pan with a lid and simmer over moderate heat, adding a little water, until almost done. Don't add salt!
When the broth is cooked, strain, return the meat to the pan, and bring to a boil. Add coarsely shredded cabbage. After 10 minutes (if the borscht is with fresh cabbage) - potatoes, cut into large cubes. Bring to a boil, add bay leaf, a few grinds of black pepper (if you like, you can add cloves), salt to taste.
Now it's time for the frying. Place it in a saucepan, if necessary, add salt and pepper, add chopped garlic, herbs and, if desired, your favorite spices, for example.
Turn off the heat and leave covered for a while.
And the next day the borscht becomes even tastier!
Or here’s another little secret: you can grind a handful of dry porcini mushrooms in a coffee grinder about 10 minutes before the end of cooking and carefully add this powder to the borscht. Surprisingly, this does not give the borscht a mushroom aroma at all, but the taste of the borscht becomes extraordinary.
Let this be, so to speak, the basic recipe for our borscht, on the basis of which you can always cook your own, having done only the manipulations known to you.
Now it's time to take a peek and some secrets of making delicious borscht .
...It is customary to cook borscht in strong meat broth. You can use different meats, but you shouldn’t save time on preparing the broth. The longer it cooks, the richer and more aromatic it becomes. Very often, when cooking broth, the water boils away a lot; you can add it, but only boiling water, cold water can spoil both the taste and aroma of the borscht.
...Beets are considered an indispensable vegetable for borscht; they are added to borscht raw, sautéed, boiled or stewed. Beetroot is considered the main component of borscht. Borscht also contains tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, onions, and carrots.
...The process of adding vegetables to the broth is of no small importance.
The first vegetable that goes into the broth is potatoes. Some recipes even recommend frying it a little. This will add even more richness and richness to the taste of the borscht.
Once half cooked, you need to add cabbage. While the cabbage is cooking, under no circumstances should you cover the borscht with a lid, otherwise the unpleasant smell of the cabbage will spoil the entire aroma of the borscht.
Some housewives put a couple of whole potatoes in the borscht, then mash them and put them back into the pan along with the frying.
It is advisable to pre-sauce all other vegetables (onions, carrots, parsley or celery root, peppers, tomatoes) and stew them well.
...You shouldn’t neglect spices and spices. The borscht is piquantly decorated with garlic, allspice and bay leaf.
The rich red color of borscht comes, of course, from its main ingredient, beets. And so that our borscht is not only tasty, but also beautiful, let's learn some more secrets that different housewives use.
...Use dark cherry-colored beets for borscht (Bordeaux, Egyptian, and Cylinder varieties are excellent). So juicy and sweet in taste.
...Beets will not lose their color if you sprinkle them with lemon juice.
You can boil the beets separately in their peels, and add a tablespoon of vinegar to the cooking water. After this, peel the beets, grate them on a coarse grater or cut them into strips and add them to the almost finished borscht. Let it simmer a little more.
...To prepare rich red borscht, you can use this method: grated beets and pour boiling water over them. Then drain this liquid, but do not pour it out. Place beets in borscht. And pour in the beet liquid at the very end of cooking. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat.
...Roasted beets should be added to the borscht at the end of cooking.
...Tomato paste also plays a certain role in the color of borscht. Even if you cook borscht with fresh tomatoes in the summer, a spoonful of tomato paste won’t hurt. And in winter, tomato paste can be combined with homemade tomatoes or canned tomatoes.
...In order for the borscht to turn out red, you need to maintain the proportions of beets, carrots and onions. So they usually take 3 parts beets, 2 parts carrots and 1 part onions. Simmer in a frying pan with the addition of sunflower oil, oil, water and sugar until the beets give juice. Add to the pan when the cabbage and potatoes are cooked in the broth. At the end of cooking, you can add crushed garlic and ground red pepper.
And now the recipes.
Borsch "Red"
Pour the meat (preferably, of course, beef, but it doesn’t matter, you can use any meat) with water and put it on the fire. When it boils, remove the foam, reduce the heat to low, add a whole peeled onion and cook until the meat is ready, from 1 hour to 2.5 hours (depending on the meat used). At the end, add salt to the broth and remove the onion.
Throw the potatoes, cut into strips, into the broth.
While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the roast: fry finely chopped onion in a frying pan in vegetable oil until golden brown, add grated carrots and grated beets, fry. Then add, of your choice (whatever is available), fresh grated tomatoes or tomato paste diluted with water or broth, simmer until the liquid has almost completely evaporated.
Chop fresh cabbage very thinly.
Once the potatoes are cooked, add the fryer and bring to a boil. After this, add the cabbage and bring to a boil again. Add bay leaf, ground black pepper, cook for 3 minutes. Add finely chopped herbs and turn off the heat.
Russian borsh
Required 400 g pork, 400 g roast beef, 1 onion, 200 g carrots, 300 g beets, 200 g white cabbage, 500 g red tomatoes, 50 g parsley root or celery root. Besides , 2 bay leaves, 5 peas of black and allspice, 1 teaspoon of salt, 50 ml of vegetable oil, 20 ml of table vinegar, 20 g of sugar.
Pour the washed meat with clean cold water (3.5-4 liters) and bring to a boil over high heat. After this, reduce the heat so that it simmers just a little, skim off the foam that appears on the surface. Cook the meat for about 1.5 hours. When it can be easily pierced with a fork or knife, it is ready.
About halfway through the cooking process, add the bay leaf and peppercorns.
Cut the onion into cubes. To do this, peel the onion, cut into 4 parts and chop finely. The bulb should be quite large.
Cut carrots and beets into thin strips. It is believed that chopped vegetables are better suited for borscht than grated ones.
Chop the cabbage thinly and cut the parsley or celery into strips.
When the meat is ready, remove it from the broth and cut into portions.
Strain the broth, return to the pan, add salt and add chopped meat. Please note that salt is added at the end of cooking the broth.
Place cabbage in the strained broth and cook until done.
Place beets, onions, carrots and celery (parsley) in a frying pan or saucepan with vegetable oil, add a little (100-150 ml) of broth and simmer covered over low heat for about 20 minutes.
During the stewing process, vegetables need to be stirred so that they do not burn.
Halfway through cooking, add peeled and chopped tomatoes, sugar and vinegar to the vegetables. Simmer until the vegetables are fully cooked, then add them to the broth with the cooked cabbage. Turn off the finished borscht and cover with a lid to let it steep a little.
When serving, add sour cream and herbs to the borscht. Garlic and black bread go great with borscht.
Borscht is the most amazing dish of our cuisine. It seems like everyone knows how to cook it. There are several thousand recipes - in the strict sense of the word. Plus hundreds of versions: in Ukrainian, in village, in Czech, in Siberian...
But not every cook turns out borscht so tasty that you want to ask for more. Borscht is the most unpredictable dish in our cuisine. Akin to the mystery of the Russian soul. Even for the same housewife, the cooked borscht will taste slightly different every time. Although she cooked it as always. With the same ingredients. What's the secret? And in the same ingredients. Today we have larger carrots than last week, and a little less cabbage. At that time the potatoes were of one variety, but today they are of a different variety. Well, each piece of meat that we choose for borscht differs from the previous one in the same way that one day will never repeat another. He's different - that's all.
Beetroot soup is not borscht, but rather a red soup, nevertheless very tasty:
Instead of meat, you can put chicken, stewed meat, minced meat, mushrooms, and bouillon cubes in borscht. In general, it can be purely vegetarian, but at the same time remain borscht, and not soup or, say, cabbage soup. By the way, do you know how borscht differs from cabbage soup? Only by the presence of beets in it. Beetroot in combination with cabbage is an essential ingredient of real borscht. It can be boiled in its skin and, after grating or cutting into pieces, added to the preparing borscht at any time during cooking: at the beginning, in the middle, at the end. Boiled beets can also be stewed together with onions, carrots, tomato paste or tomatoes, making a dressing for borscht. Beets can be taken from a jar - pickled in vinegar or with the addition of citric acid. The beets can be filled with warm water and left for a couple of days for them to ferment (this is a Czech recipe) or even insist on kvass(rural cuisine), but you must clearly understand that without beets there is no borscht. And in the absence of cabbage, what you end up with is not borscht, but beetroot soup.
Borscht won't work without potatoes either. It can be cut in any way and thrown into the pan raw. If desired, you can add a couple of spoons of mashed potatoes to the borscht for richness. Or at the end of cooking, mash two or three potatoes, boiled (and, of course, peeled!) whole.
Carrots and onions are also essential components of any borscht. They are either fried or stewed, having previously been chopped, or placed in raw form.
Tomatoes are another essential component of real borscht. They can be fresh (it is better to first remove the skin from them by pouring boiling water over them), in the form of paste or ketchup, as well as any sauce containing tomatoes. Also, take a look at, do you have a couple of spoons of beans in tomato, lecho, or vegetables in adjika left in your jars? Eat? Feel free to add to borscht instead of tomato, the goodness won’t go to waste!
Everything else is mushrooms in any form, beans grains and capsicums, fresh or canned sweet peppers, hot peppers, celery, parsley, dill and all kinds of spices, seasonings, as well as salt and sugar, are added to borscht as desired. Based on your own fantasies, tastes and preferences. But it’s better, as they say, not to overdo it.
Moreover, the lack of salt or spiciness in borscht is perfectly compensated for when serving it. Real borscht goes amazingly with everything. Any greens, onions, garlic, horseradish, mustard, adjika... Sour cream, mayonnaise, butter... With bread, donuts, crackers...
But before you sit down at the table, borsch still needs to be cooked, right? Still... how to cook borscht? There are some secrets here. Because delicious borscht, which looks appetizing, will only turn out when all its components have already been completely cooked, while retaining their vitamins and nutrients, but have not at all turned into a structureless mess. How to achieve this? You need to understand the simple philosophy of cooking borscht, that is, a series of successive boils, and follow the order of adding all the ingredients.
So, get acquainted with the basic cooking recipe.
If needed cook borscht with meat on the bone, it is better to cook it in. For 500 grams of meat, two and a half liters of cold water, put the pressure cooker on fire and wait until it sizzles. If you take boneless meat or have it chopped into portioned pieces - this is pork, beef, chicken (it is better not to use lamb, rabbit and game for borscht), then cook borscht You can do it in a regular saucepan. Fill with water, cover the pan and turn the heat to full. It boils, turn down the heat, open the lid slightly and let it cook further.
Of the raw vegetables, the first thing we do is add chopped beets to the borscht. It is possible even when the meat has not yet boiled. It will, of course, lose its color by the end of cooking, but it will give the borscht the necessary deliciousness. For a rich color, you can then add boiled beets.
While the beets are boiling, peel the onion, finely chop half of it and throw it into the pan. Many people don’t like boiled onions on their plate, but believe me, they won’t be there, because the onions will boil completely and add a second component of deliciousness to your borscht.
Next, put carrots into the pan (one weighing 100 grams is enough), cut into beautiful strips. And then the borscht starts to look wonderful delicious aroma. And we will strengthen it further by lowering it into pan the other half of the chopped onion.
While everything is cooking over medium heat, we peel the potatoes. About six medium size. We clean two more small ones and put them whole in the pan. We chop the remaining tubers and send them to boil.
Now it's time for cabbage. Volume - a soup plate with a slide. Pour it into the pan and start preparing the salt and seasonings. You cannot add salt to the borscht before you add cabbage. But you can sprinkle half a teaspoon of sugar along with the beets for taste.
One tablespoon of salt is enough for this volume of food. No slide. Because, as you remember, it’s under-salted on the table, but it’s over-salted...
Feel free to throw in borsch a pinch of dried dill and parsley. If you want to use dried roots, it is better to put them in at the very beginning, along with the meat. You can mince or finely chop two cloves of garlic. To enhance the taste, you can also add any bouillon cube. A little ground black pepper. And - it's time for tomatoes. If you use tomato paste, two tablespoons directly into the pan is enough. Let it simmer for another three minutes, and that’s it – you can set the table for dinner. Delicious, appetizing, aromatic vitamin borscht is ready for you.
By the way, you can store such borscht normally for at least a whole week - it won’t disappear until you eat it. Cast from pans for lunch as much as you need, heat it up and - bon appetit!
Dumplings for borscht
Check out our selection of first courses, there are several delicious recipes for you:
Cooking time for classic borscht with beef is 2.5 hours, including half an hour of infusion. You need to spend 1 hour of clean time at the stove. If you use chicken for the borscht, then the total cooking time for the borscht will be reduced to 1.5 hours, since the chicken for the broth is cooked for only 1 hour, and such borscht does not need to be infused.
How to cook borscht with beets
Products
Classic recipe for a 4-liter saucepanBeef on the bone- 500 grams, approximately 400 grams of meat and 100 grams of bone.
Traditionally, bone-in beef is used because the bone deepens the flavor of the broth. However, sometimes beef is replaced with pork, then the dish will be fattier, and, as a result, high in calories. Borscht is less often prepared with chicken or turkey meat. In this case, cooking is less and, as a rule, cheaper. In general, it is better to use fresh meat on the bone. If the meat is frozen, defrost it in advance.
Beet- 2 medium or 1 large, 250-300 grams
Carrot- 1 large
Cabbage- 300 grams
Potato- 3 large pieces or 5 small ones
It is better to take larger potatoes for borscht to make peeling more convenient.
Tomatoes- 3 pieces
In the classic variation, add tomato + vinegar. Sometimes this tandem is replaced with tomato paste. Tomato paste is a little more acidic than tomatoes, but it helps preserve the bright color of borscht, as it contains vinegar. Or a few canned tomatoes or juice from canned beans (if it contains tomatoes). Cook in exactly the same way - fry along with vegetables. Or you can cook the tomato paste yourself - peel the tomatoes, chop and simmer over low heat until it becomes a sauce. It’s good to add bell pepper to this homemade tomato-borscht paste.
Vinegar 9% - 2 tablespoons
So that the color of the dish becomes rich red and the taste becomes sharper. For a 4 liter pan you need 1 teaspoon of vinegar 9% or 2 teaspoons of vinegar 6%; sometimes a tablespoon of sugar is added along with the vinegar. When preparing vinegar, you can replace it with freshly squeezed lemon juice (from half a lemon). Also keep in mind that added canned tomatoes or store-bought tomato paste, if they replace tomatoes, already contain vinegar.
Onion- 2 heads or 1 large
Garlic- 3-4 teeth
Dill, parsley- 50 grams
Salt and pepper, bay leaf- taste
These are products that are added to classic borscht. If you want to deviate from the rules, this is what else is often added to borscht:
1. Mushrooms and beans. Beans will make the dish much more filling, and mushrooms will add flavor.
2. Sugar - then borscht will be especially good with sour cream. If the beets are sweet varieties, then there is no need to add. Sugar is added at the very end, so try it and decide for your specific case whether sugar is needed or not.
How to cook borscht - explained step by step
Stage 1. Boil the meat broth - cook for about an hour and a half.
Wash the beef, pour 3 liters of water into a 4-liter saucepan, add the peeled onion and peppercorns, bay leaf, put the meat in the water, cook over low heat, covered, for 2 hours after boiling. Salt the water at the beginning of cooking - you need half a tablespoon of salt. After cooking the broth, the meat is slightly cooled and disassembled (cut) into pieces and returned to the broth. Cover the pan with a lid.
Finely chop the onion, grate or finely chop the garlic, grate or chop the beets into pieces - depending on your taste. And similarly with carrots, you can grate them, or you can cut them into semicircles. Some even grind it in a meat grinder. In the classic recipe, variations are allowed to suit your taste. Add vegetables to borscht in this order:
- Cabbage - if it’s ordinary, then before the potatoes, and if the cabbage is young and tender, then it can be added 5 minutes after boiling the potatoes. If you like your cabbage crispy, add it along with the potatoes.
- Potato
- Vegetable frying with beets - which must be prepared while the vegetables are boiling.
Heat a frying pan, fry the onion for 5 minutes over high heat, stirring. Add carrots and garlic to the onion, fry for 5 minutes. Add beets, fry for 5-10 minutes over medium heat (some people like the beets crispier). Then add tomatoes or tomato paste, pour a ladle of broth from the pan with meat into the frying pan with vegetables, add additional sugar and vinegar to taste, simmer for a couple more minutes, add to the borscht - all the vegetables in it should already be cooked by this point. It’s better to taste both potatoes and cabbage, and at the same time check the broth for salt. Cook the roast in the borscht for 3 minutes.
The pan with borscht is tightly closed with a lid, carefully placed on a blanket and wrapped on all sides, preferably in several layers.
This completes the preparation of borscht. Now all that remains is to pour it into plates and serve with sour cream and fresh chopped herbs.
Fkusnofacts
How to serve borschtSour cream, bread with lard or basturma, green onions and garlic, hard-boiled chicken eggs, cheesecakes with cottage cheese, and donuts are served on the table.
How to store borscht
Cover the pot with borscht tightly and store in the refrigerator for up to 7 days (remember that vinegar is a strong preservative). Borscht can be frozen in a bag - once frozen, it will keep for a month.
Cost of products
The cost of ingredients for preparing a 4-liter pan of borscht is 350 rubles. (average for Moscow as of October 2018).
How to make diet borscht
The dish can be made less caloric if you do not fry it. Just peel and cut the vegetables and add them to the soup: beets, after 10 minutes cabbage, after 5 minutes potatoes, carrots and onions. Or you can cook borscht without meat at all - lean borscht is also very good.
How to cook borscht in kitchen gadgets
How to cook borscht in a slow cooker1. Place the meat in a multicooker pan, add water, salt and cook in the “Stew” mode for 1.5 hours.
2. Separately, fry onions and carrots, beets, and tomatoes in a frying pan.
3. Add the frying to the borscht along with potatoes and cabbage.
4. Set the multicooker to the “Stew” mode and cook the borscht for another 1 hour.
How to cook borscht in a pressure cooker
1. Wash the beets, peel and grate on a coarse grater.
2. Place the beets in a pressure cooker, fry them in an open pressure cooker in vegetable oil for 10 minutes, then add onions and carrots, after another couple of minutes, tomato paste - and simmer for 5 minutes all together.
3. Add meat - for borscht in a pressure cooker, boneless meat, cut into small pieces, fry for a couple of minutes.
4. Place potatoes and cabbage.
5. Add salt and spices to the borscht, additionally lemon juice from half a lemon
6. Pour water, close the pressure cooker with a lid and cook for 20 minutes, then wait until the pressure drops, add herbs and serve.
How to make donuts for borscht
ProductsFlour - 1.5 200 gram glasses
Water - 100 milliliters
Sugar - 1 tablespoon
Salt - a quarter teaspoon
Sunflower oil - 1 tablespoon
Yeast - 10 grams
Chicken egg for greasing - 1 piece
Recipe
1. Heat water to 40 degrees, dissolve yeast in it, cover and leave for 10 minutes.
2. Measure out 0.75 cups of flour, add sugar and salt, butter and mix well.
3. Add diluted yeast to the flour mixture.
4. Add the remaining flour and knead the dough, then cover it and leave in a warm place for 40 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
6. Form dough balls into donuts and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. The distance between the donuts should be at least 1.5 centimeters so that they do not touch during the lifting process.
7. Beat the chicken egg and brush the donuts with a pastry brush.
8. Bake the donuts for 20 minutes.
Serve the donuts warm with the borscht.
And again about borscht
Answers and tips
Classic Ukrainian borscht is a legendary dish. Rich, always “thick, not empty”, it is served with garlic and lard. You won't be able to get away from such deliciousness! By the way, all over the world red borscht is considered a Russian dish. However, Ukrainians are not going to give copyrights to any other nation.
Features of preparing borscht
Many nations have variations on the theme of red borscht: Russians, Romanians, Poles, Moldovans, Lithuanians... And everyone has their own secrets of preparing this dish. The list of ingredients for real Ukrainian borscht is quite simple:
Meat (volumes depend on the size of the pan);
0.5 kg of potatoes;
one large beet;
several small carrots;
onion head;
forks of white cabbage;
one tomato.
To add flavor, vinegar, garlic, black and allspice, dill, and bay leaf are added to the dish. The secret ingredient is a spoonful of sugar. It is added during frying of beets, onions and carrots. Thanks to this technique, the vegetables are slightly caramelized, and the borscht itself acquires a unique sweet-sour and at the same time “very vegetable and meaty” taste.
Connoisseurs of borscht know that the final taste of a dish is formed only on the second day after its preparation - the borscht must sit and be saturated with the flavors of the ingredients included in it. Serve red borscht with sour cream and a pinch of finely chopped fresh herbs.
Each housewife makes borscht her own, special. The taste of this dish depends not only on the proportions, but also on a dozen other factors: the time the housewife spends on cooking, the quality of the meat, whether sour or fresh cabbage was used, etc.
Ukrainians recommend using beef or pork bones, brisket, and smoked pork ribs to prepare red borscht. You can also use chicken and lard (spicy smoked lard). The meat must be cooked for a long time, skimming off the foam several times. If you need a rich broth, the meat should be salted at the beginning of the process. If you want the meat to be tender, add salt to the dish at the end.
After the meat is cooked, diced potatoes are added to the boiling broth, and after 5 minutes - finely shredded cabbage. While the vegetables are boiling, the housewife sautes the onion, then adds beets and carrots cut into strips (or grated on a fine grater). When these ingredients are well fried, add one ripe, well-chopped tomato.
The frying is added to the borscht at the very end. When the beets are already in the pan, the heat should be reduced. Then the borscht should simmer on the stove for some time. You should not let it boil too much, otherwise the beets will boil out and the red borscht will turn into a dirty coffee-colored slurry.
Forbidden ingredients
Each region of Ukraine has its own method of preparing borscht. Many popular recipes include red bell peppers, mushrooms and prunes, pears, beans, pampushkas, croutons, meatballs, dumplings and even pickled apples.
Some peoples cook borscht with sausages and seafood. But Ukrainians do not consider beetroot soup with fish, scallops or other seafood to be borscht. Real borscht is associated only with meat. Anything cooked in fish broth falls into the category of “ukha”.
Sausages are also not related to real red borscht. It is prepared either with good smoked meat or only with vegetables - this is a lean option. Also, buckwheat, eggplant and zucchini are not added to traditional red borscht. Recipes with these products can be found on the Internet, but they have nothing to do with preparing real borscht.
