Borscht Recipes?

Here is the Russian version

200 g Beef
2 ltr. beef broth
2 bay leaves
1 onion (diced)
200 g white cabbage
150 g potatoes
200 g red beets
100 g carots
1 tablespoon tomato paste
100 g butter
1 tablespoon each sugar, vinegar
100 g sour cream
salt and pepper to taste
parsley to decorate

Cover the beef with water and cook for 5 minutes.
Take out the beef, discard the water, clean the pot. Then add the beef again,
the beef broth, add the bay leaves, an diced onions, cook for about 2 hours.
Take out the beef and cut it into small pieces, discard the onion and bay leaves. Cut up potatoes and cabbage and add to beef broth, cook for 15 min.
Grate red beets and carrots, heat butter in skillet and add red beets, cook
for 10 minutes, add tomato paste, vinegar and sugar, add carrots last
and cook for another 5 minutes. Add beef, beets and carots to beef broth,
cook for another 5 minutes, season to taste and serve with a dash of
sour cream and sprinkle with parsley.

A real Ukrainian borscht doesnt have that sour cream crap. Its a hearty meal but takes a bit of prep. HEres my mamas

MAMA VLADZ' BORSCHT
2lb mixed beef and veal. (Also get the bones from the butcher)
1lb lean pork
.5 lb smoked pork (a hamhock works really well)
2 bay leaves
20 whole peppercorns
2clove garlic smashed
parsley
2carrot (fresh fall carrot , must be a sweet variety) sliced
2stalks celery sliced

8 medieum beets (Ive used the torpedo kind, they slice into nest little slices, however mny mama always chopped her beets into chunks)

1 small cabbage sliced into kraut like strips
2 large tomatoes peel and quarter (i like to smoosh em up)
2 big onions (no pussy onions like vidalia)
4T cider vinegar
2T sugar
1C navy beans
1kielbasa sliced into 4 in chunks to serve on the side.

Take all the meat except the kielbasa(Keep the kielbasa aside for later),Cut the meat from the bones, then Take the bones and bake them in the oven for about an hour and a half at 350 degrees along side the meat (this you wanna do to make nice brown bones and meat and give a complex flavor to the soup). Then add some water to deglaze the pan .
Put the bones, the deglaze mix, and the meatinto
a big pot and simmer for about an hour. Add the peppercorns,garklic,parsley, carrot, celery and the leek into the pot and cover with water and simmer for another hour.
Cube and peel the beets and simmer in a covered pot of water and vinegar for about 2 hours .

After all the stuff in the main pot is simmered, remove the meat and put it aside. Strain the soup to get the spice veggies out. Let the soup cool and strain the fat. (I usually make this stuff in the winter and put the pot on the patio wall and let it cool to stiffen the fat.

Return the broth to a clean (new)pot and add the beets , AND NOW the kielbasa, the cabbage, tomatoes, onions, vinegar and sugar. Cook for 30 min and add the beans . (meanwhile slice up the meat and add it to the soup. Take one last raw beet, peel it and grate it and add this to the soup and serve after about another 20 min simmer.

This soup is better the second day and serves up real good with some crusty bread and butter or even corn bread and butter . This recipe is for about 10 to 12 people or two people for a week.
ITS peasant food (veal used to be trash meat to farmers, whenever the cows were freshened they would fatten the calf and use it for schnitzels and rib roasts).

Ive been told that a nice Chesterfield Ale accompanies the borscht real well .

This is good to make on a Friday for a Saturday meal with the meat as a "side".

Mama always served these with piroshki and you may like that, but truthfully I cant stand em. I do like to get some really nice "Pot STickers" fdrom a hinese restaurant and serve them as another side. Usually 3 pot stickers per person is almost too much.

PS to adjsut the broth , it should have a strong meaty, beety and a sweet sour base taste. All the rest of spices (some recipes even add cloves) are to your tastes.

sour cream. never forget to add a big heaping spoon of sourcream in at the end... or into your plate while serving. it's a must.

NO NO NO> FOrget the sour cream. All it does is make a manly soup "PINK" and it gives it a leass hearty flavor. Dont listen to the Romanian.

She's not Romanian, farmerman, - but perhaps she knows how Borscht is and was done ... before the recipe was changed after having travelled over the big pond?

Slovak... Raised on borsch. My mother makes the best one on the planet. It doesn't merely turn the soup pink- you need something of the sort - sour cream or even yoghurt, whatever you prefer.

Kefir.

of course that's a ukrainian version...there are many different variations. but this is by far my favorite.

in the summer you don't usually even add meat - it's a very light refreshing summer soup that way.

oh, and caraway seeds - haven't seen those in the above recipes. they just go with the cabbage. always.

Cabbage without caraways is like strawberries without cream: you can eat it, but ...

well we might not know what to do with a raw fish, but we sure know our cabbage!

I do remember such: when I was a child, one of the several refugee families in our house was from "Pressburg" (Bratislava), and at noon time I always wandered from one room to the other ...

MY MAMA MADE THE BEST AND DONT YOU FORGET IT!!

I dont have anything against the sour cream , I just dont like it in the soup. Most Jewish Borscht is with the sour cream and served cold. That they serve with the pickled fish and fruit.

The hot and hearty borscht is what I was raised on and it has sweet sour, its warm and meaty . The cabbage and onions are associate flavors and texture.

I can agree that DONT put the sour cream into the soup but serve it on , say, boiled potatoes or herring.


I dont remember whether my momma had any caraway (KIMMEL) in the cabbage but anything else with cabbage always had kimmel. I remember the Rotkhol dish , (which was red cabbage in a sweet brine with caraway) . There is a brand (Kuhne's) that we get and store in our pantry and schlepp it out when we make a roast chicken (Bear understands "sides")

In my house, when I was growing up, there was always sour cream served with the borscht but it was on the table, separately. The cook didn't put it in the soup. Sour cream on the table meant you could add a dollop to your bowl of borscht or not. Neat compromise, no?

It's clear that farmerman has never had my grandma's piroshkis, or he wouldn't have blasphemed so about them...

If youre really hard core , heres a Polish soup that Ive eaten several times and its pretty good.

The Russian community down in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, NY has great
restaurants and serves probably a mighty good Borscht. I had liver with onions
there and it was just divine, just like Grandma used to make it. And their bread
is to die for.

Hear, hear! Anyone who doesn't care for piroshki must have been exposed to an unnaturally bad batch during his formative years. A good piroshki is ambrosia.

Pierogis, on the other hand, I can do without...