Classic Ukrainian borscht – step by step recipe with photo

Do you know Ukrainian borscht? Oh, you don’t know Ukrainian borscht! Take a look: fragrant black bread, garlic and snow-white bacon are on the table, a pile of pepper has already been poured, and finally HE appears – a voluminous cauldron, inside of which something delicious, steaming, mysterious is hidden … And you – by golly! – ready to sign up as a serf, just to get at least a spoonful of this most powerful love potion. Today I will teach you how to cook such borscht, after which the taster will voluntarily surrender into slavery – the most well-fed and delicious slavery imaginable!

Borscht is one of the most favorite dishes of the editor-in-chief of The Rum Diary. In our family, it was not just food, but a solemn treat – every day when borsch was prepared, it turned into a mini-holiday. As you know, there are no two identical borscht – mother-grandmothers-aunts-brothers-sisters, everyone cooked it in their own way. And always your obedient servant (that’s a bad character!) found various shortcomings in this dish. Yes, delicious. But no, it’s not perfect. So I, already an adult, had to take up the ladle on my own. Along the way, having studied tons of recipes, interviewing all the culinary acquaintances, little by little, step by step, I managed to learn how to cook the perfect Ukrainian borscht. And today I will tell you in detail – what exactly and how to do to get it.

Step-by-step recipe for classic Ukrainian borscht

Borscht is a folk, peasant, but still a technologically complex, multi-component dish in which every touch, every nuance, every ingredient is important. The classic borscht recipe cannot be reproduced without three things: beets, cabbage and tomatoes. Yes, yes – rich, fragrant, made on a strong broth, with a solid piece of meat, borscht is, first of all, a vegetable dish. It is beetroot, coupled with cabbage and tomatoes in one form or another, that form the unique bouquet of this soup (it somehow jars when you call borscht “soup”, but so be it). This borscht differs, for example, from the Georgian kharcho, which is necessarily prepared with beef.

I’ll bore you with the theory a little more. There are a number of important points that make borscht borscht, and not tomato-beetroot soup:

• Set of vegetables. Beet – understandable. Cabbage – sauerkraut, fresh white cabbage (you can also use red cabbage, it will be an interesting dark color) or a mixture of them about 50/50. Tomato – best in the form of a paste, you can complement the bouquet with fresh or even sun-dried tomatoes. In addition, it is used: Bulgarian and hot peppers, potatoes, onion-carrots, celery, parsnips, parsley root. In short, almost any winter vegetables and roots. The main thing is that there should be much more cabbage and beets than other ingredients.
• Broth. Well, what is borscht without strong meat and bone broth?! Is that lean, but that’s a completely different story. The best results in this regard are given by a combination of beef and pork – ribs, brisket, and better – part of the leg with the marrow bone. Another classic option is borsch on a domestic cock. But virtually any meat or poultry will do.
• Salo and garlic – inseparable from borscht, like a cucumber from vodka! The most chic is old bacon grated with garlic, salt and herbs – it should lie down in a warm place, wrapped in paper for a couple of weeks, or even months. No, not “fu”, but “chic” – fermented salted lard in borscht acquires a delicious aroma, utterly harmoniously fitting into this dish.

• Preparation of ingredients. The technology for preparing Ukrainian borscht involves the preliminary preparation of almost all components and their further happy integration in a single pan. Onions, carrots, tomato paste, fresh cabbage – fry. Beets – marinate, cook whole or bake, otherwise it will become faded, lose color. Sauerkraut – squeeze, rinse and again fry or stew.
• Spices and additives. We will definitely need a lemon (in extreme cases, apple cider vinegar or citric acid) and sugar – in order to balance the acidity of the dish at the end of cooking. Some spices are added to the broth – roots and stalks of celery, parsley, parsnips, horseradish, whole hot peppers, allspice, cloves, laurel. The other part – in ground form 5-10 minutes before readiness. Both typical European and Asian spices go great with borscht: coriander, cardamom, thyme, fennel, black and white peppers, cumin, paprika, turmeric… My brother generally adds a little… soy sauce to borscht! Sounds weird, but delicious!

How to make the most delicious Ukrainian borscht? Ingredients.

So, I present to you my tried and tested recipe for borscht – with everything you need, but no frills. In my recipes, I strive to make the dish not only tasty and canonical, but also at least more or less dietary, not too fatty, without obviously harmful ingredients, and I process the products in such a way as to preserve the maximum of useful substances in them.

As we can see, there are a lot of components. But by following my recommendations and with a proper bit of luck, we will be able to harmoniously combine them, turning them into a real fusion!

Step 1. Cook the broth

It would seem that there should be no problems here – you threw everything into the water, cooked it and rejoice. But no – not everything is so simple! Ribs or any other meat should be washed and cut into pieces – I like pieces the size of half a cigarette pack, but here it’s all about taste and color. Boil a couple of liters of water in a saucepan. We throw meat into it, cover with a lid, boil again and cook over high heat for about 5 minutes. This step is necessary to save the meat from any harmful additives, and yourself from the need to remove the foam for a long and tedious time.. In five minutes, we pour this “primordial broth” to hell and move on to the next phase of evolution.

We wash the meat (you can also wash the walls of the pan at the same time). Pour clean cold water into the pan, put the ribs there and wait until it boils. After boiling, reduce the heat to a minimum. You can cover the pot with a lid – transparency is not important to us in this case – and forget about the brew for an hour. Foam is not formed with this method of cooking.

There are many varieties of borscht. In Ukraine, in addition to the usual borscht – “red”, as we sometimes call it, – green borscht is common, without cabbage, beets, but with sorrel and / or nettles, beet tops. In the summer they cook beetroot soup, it is also “cold”, or “beetroot borscht”, and on Orthodox holidays – lenten, with beans, prunes, mushrooms. Borscht is distinguished in Kiev style, Kharkiv style (with dried pears) and Odessa style (with fish), in western Ukraine they cook both classic borscht and its other variations – for example, vegetable “borscht”. The Belarusian variety does not contain cabbage, smoked meats are added to the “Old Moscow” variety, and the Polish variety is not borscht at all, but sour cream soup of leek, onions and potatoes with Krakow sausage.

After an hour, peeled roots, a whole onion (cut off only the lower part), large spices should be thrown into the broth. For convenience, the spices can be placed in a tightly tied gauze bag beforehand – then you can remove them all at once and none of the tasters will chew on a random allspice – a very unpleasant moment! Lightly salt to salt the meat. Now we cook the broth until the meat is ready – it should become completely soft and easily fall behind the bone. In the case of beef, you need to cook for about an hour more. After readiness, we take out everything from the pan, except for the broth, perfectionists can additionally strain it.

No one can say exactly how and where borscht came from. It is known for sure that it was prepared long before the appearance in Russia of colonial delights – tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes. The first mention of the dish dates back to the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, the recipe for the prototype of borscht is in Domostroy. It is believed that the dish was originally prepared from hogweed (some types of plants are poisonous, so I don’t advise you to experiment with the recipe). Then beets were used – first wild, and then cultivated root crops. The recipe for real Ukrainian borscht was finally formed in the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries.

Everything? No, not everything. Of course, you can start cooking borscht now. But – this is confirmed by many familiar cooks and cooks – the broth becomes much tastier if it is kept overnight in the refrigerator. Do this, if circumstances allow – the dish will become better. It will be easy to remove the frozen fatty film from the cold broth if you do not want the borscht to be too fatty.

Step 2: Prepare the Ingredients

As I said, almost everything that is part of the Ukrainian borscht is pre-processed in some way. This is what we will do now.

1. First of all, three or cut beets into small cubes – I like cutting them like Korean carrots. It needs to be lightly marinated – just pour the vinegar in a bowl and mix thoroughly. We leave for 10-15 minutes. Stir occasionally.
2. Onion cut into half rings and fry until golden brown.
3. Carrots (as well as celery, parsley root, parsnips, if you use them) are chopped in the same way as beets. Carrots can be fried – only separately from onions, since these vegetables have completely different caramelization temperatures. But I prefer raw carrots in borscht.
4. We shred the cabbage or cut it thinly, after which we must fry it, it is possible in a dry frying pan, stirring constantly. The indicator of readiness will be a change in color – from white to golden yellow and a characteristic pleasant aroma of fried cabbage, spreading through the kitchen.
5. We cut the potatoes (in my version – right with the skins, I just carefully wash the potatoes and cut out the eyes, but not everyone likes it that way). Potatoes are cut large so that they do not boil prematurely.
6. Squeeze the sauerkraut (if it is very sour, you can also rinse it under running cold water) and chop lightly. After that, fry with a little oil. It is very important that the sauerkraut does not burn – you need to mix it with great care!

7. Lastly, you need to fry the tomato paste in oil. Like fresh tomatoes, the pasta changes taste and color when frying, slightly caramelizes, “browns”. This is exactly what we need.

Step 3. Cooking borscht

As one humorist said:There is nothing difficult about being a writer. You just press the keys of a typewriter. The secret is to do it in the right order.».

In order to properly prepare classic borscht, it is very important to follow the order of laying the products – at the end they will all be completely ready, but none will boil soft and turn into porridge.

1. First of all, we take the beets pickled at the previous stage. Drain the excess vinegar, put the saucepan and pour a small amount of broth from the saucepan. Cover with a lid and simmer for about 10 minutes.
2. We send fried cabbage and onions to the borscht along with raw carrots. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a minimum and cover with a lid – let it gurgle slowly.

3. Add beets and potatoes to the borscht, bring to a boil again and reduce the heat. We admire how the dish changes its color to burgundy.

4. After 5 minutes, we send fried sauerkraut and tomato paste to the borscht. If you do this earlier, the acids contained in these products will not allow other ingredients to cook – the vegetables will remain firm and elastic.

5. There is a maximum of 10 minutes left until ready. At this time, you can separate the meat from the bones and additionally fry it in a dry frying pan – this will make the taste of borscht even a little richer. We send the meat to the dish so that it is colored.
6. 5 minutes before cooking, add chopped spices. If the borscht is not red enough, we do not feel sorry for the paprika, it has almost no taste, but there is plenty of color.
7. Grind in a mortar, blender, or just finely cut the old lard along with garlic and a pinch of salt. We chop greens. We set aside.
8. Now I have to try borscht. Are beets, cabbage and potatoes completely ready? Is there enough salt? Maybe some spices are missing in the bouquet? What about acid? Too sour? Add sugar – just a little, you need to start with half a tablespoon, even from this amount the dish changes instantly! On the contrary, it is too sweet or not enough acid – cabbage, for example, was caught undercooked, that’s a shame! – Yes, it’s okay, we have a lemon! The juice of half a citrus should be enough.
9. And only now the last ingredients are sent to the still slightly gurgling borsch – lard with garlic and greens. The fire is turned off and everything is covered with a lid.

Borsch – Russian or Ukrainian dish? Etymology will help answer this question. The most plausible version explains the origin of the word “borscht” in this way: the first part “bor”, related to such roots as “ber”, “bur” (for example, a bear in the German languages ​​“bear” or “bär” – “brown”). She explains the color of borscht (by the way, beets in Ukrainian “BURYAK”). The second part – “Shch”, goes back to the Old Slavonic “Shchi”. In short, add beet to cabbage soup – you get borscht. Only beets did not grow on the territory of the Russian state in the XIV-XVII centuries – the climate is not the same. In warmer Ukraine, there was always enough of it. So the origin of the dish is definitely Ukrainian. But now it can already be considered international.

Everything, you can try?

Where! Anu, hands! Borscht must be insisted – 3-4 weeks in a dark, warm place, shaking occasionally… Come on, just kidding – half an hour under the lid is enough. Only during this time the taste of the dish will truly reveal itself, the ingredients will make friends with each other, the balance of acidity, sweetness, spiciness will even out, and the aroma of spices will completely pass into the broth. Of course, on the second or third day it will become even tastier, but who can withstand so much!

While the dish is coming, you can cut bread – as for me, black bread goes much better with borscht than vaunted donuts, only black, pure rye, without any high-grade flour and other half-truths. Peel a couple of cloves of garlic – unless, of course, you go on a date. Although for the sake of such a dish, the rendezvous can be postponed. Put a small bowl with sour cream. And, of course, to drip a little bit – pepper, bison, coriander, caraway, pure vodka or, for example, vegetable tincture are ideal for borscht.

The classic Ukrainian borscht is not only cooked, but also eaten step by step, plainly, with arrangement. Here’s my recipe: knock over a stack of aperitif. Then we dip a clove of garlic in salt and bite – ma-a-scarlet piece. Now – black bread with a thin, almost transparent slice of lard or sour cream. Feel how all these rough but complementary flavors merge and mix inside. Something is missing? Well, of course – borscht! Prepare borsch, eat it in this way, and I guarantee you, you will burst into tears – from the realization of the perfection of the universe, world harmony and ideal karmic balance!