Easy Ukrainian Borsch

Probably every country and then every family in every country growing beets and beef has a different recipe for borsh or borsch or borscht or beet soup. Its such a widely spread dish, popular not only in the Slavic countries, but as far as Turkey due to some Slavs migrating there and bringing it with them, that no single recipe could be called the true one.

Finding an authentic, one true recipe for borsch is as impossible as finding a true recipe for Ragu Bolognese – even in Bologna there is no agreement on which meat to use and whether to add tomatoes or not.

I was lucky enough to inherit a 1914 cook book from my great grand mother. It has 5 (FIVE!) pages of printed text about borsch and how to choose  the right ingredients and why. The first recipe in that book is entitled “How to make Eastern Ukrainian borsch as it is cooked in St Petersburg” and the second one is ” How to make Eastern Ukrainian borsch as it is cooked in Ukraine“. The difference is startling – the first one uses beef ribs as a base and the second one uses a duck or a goose PLUS beef ribs for a base. The second one also calls for pickled beets or beet kvass (the latter deserves a blog post all for itself).

That book lists three criteria for a good borsch:

Borsch has to be 1. rich 2. fatty 3. have a good amount of soup meat in it.

I totally agree! I can’t find a word that sounds more positive than fatty, but the idea is that you don’t skim the fat of the stock and then introduce even more fat by pre-cooking the veggies in butter or tallow. Fat carries flavour, provides us with fat soluble vitamins and gives any soup that magic golden sheen.

So I am not claiming I am giving you the one and only recipe for borsch, this is a recipe for Ukrainian borsch as it was cooked for generations in one family in eastern Ukraine, my family, not in St Petersburg, not in Kiev, just in my grandmas and my moms kitchens, in Kharkov, further adapted in my own kitchen in Switzerland. Borsch is not a rigid recipe – you can vary and adapt it to your liking.

If you have good strong beef stock and some cooked beef on hand, the preparation doesn’t take much time at all. If you don’t have the above, you must first start with preparing the beef stock, and that would take at least 24 hours.

You can use cooked or raw beetroot – raw needs cooking for a while, so its added at the beginning and cooked beetroot is added at the end.

To make this version of borsch you will need

2 l of good beef stock (fat left on)

300g or more cooked beef – for example stripped from ox tail, or beef tongue, or left over roast (optional and the amount is really up to you, we like lots of meat in our borsh)

For amounts of vegetables please use my photo as a guide, its roughly equal amounts visually once chopped

2-3 carrots

1 large onion or 2 medium ones

1/2 a medium cabbage (really depends of what you call medium – I measure this by eye, needs to be a good heap) last time it came up to 300 g

2-3 potatoes

1-2 beetroots  – about 300 g

2-3 T tomato paste or a cup of passata

1 bell pepper  (optional! – it won’t even feature in this recipe, this is my mums and mine personal favourite addition – add with cabbage )

To serve (all optional):

herbs (parsley and dill)

creme fraiche or sour cream

raw garlic

rye bread with a rough crust (it needs to be rough enough to grate garlic, if you toast the bread – even better, you can rub the garlic all over, not only the crust)

How to:

1. First step is to do the sweet and sour seasonings for our borsch, for that we combine gently cooked onions with carrots (sweet) and some tomato paste (sour)

Chop onion fairly small, heat some tallow or ghee and start frying on medium heat, you want to get it translucent, not brown.

Grate carrots, add to the onion when onions are soft, mix it all around on the pan, let the carrots to soften up. Cover with a lid to get the juices flowing.

2. Once everything looks softer than raw, add 2-3 T tomato paste. Mix it all in and cover, keep an eye on it while you move on to the next stage:

3. Heat up your beef stock to almost boiling and put in the vegetables in the order of longest to cook first. We are using cooked beetroot and pre cooking carrots (which are grated), so the longest to cook will be potato. If using raw beetroot and raw carrots, you would put those in first and let cook for 30 min.

Chop potatoes in small cubes, drop into the stock.

Re-visit your carrot-onion-tomato mix, switch it off the heat, if it looks all heated through – all you want is to combine the taste of onion, carrot and tomato into a lovely sweet and sour medley. It doesn’t need to be completely cooked, just all blended and smelling good.

4. Chop cabbage – thin (and across if you have picky toddlers, because my Kindergartner fishes long strands out and plays with them! so I chop everything very small now – to avoid parent frustration 🙂 )

Prick a piece of potato and if it gives a little, drop cabbage into the stock.

5. Drop the carrot-onion-tomato mixture into the stock.

6. Grab your cooked beetroot, grate with a coarse cheese grater and add to the the pot.

7. Add the cooked beef cut into cubes or strips

Let it boil gently for all the flavours to combine for at least 15 minutes.

Taste, season with salt and pepper.

If too thick – add more stock, if too liquid – reduce by increasing the heat and leaving un-covered.

Add some fresh herbs and enjoy with or without creme fraiche. Take a slice of rough rye bread (rough crust will act as a grater) and rub a garlic clove (cut in half so you have a juicy middle exposed) all over the bread. Try to bite the garlic clove and wash it down with borsch (photo 2 and 3 below)! I add chilli to my bowl for an extra kick.

If you can manage not to eat all of the borsch straight away – let it cool overnight (bring it outside in winter)  – borsch, like many stew style dishes gets better with “age”, it develops, infuses and thickens.

I really like it with lots of creme fraiche

and others like it as is or with chill or with lots of garlic, or with all of the above – you can find your own favourite way!

I hope you will give this wonderful rich soup a try! I am also looking forward to your recipes of borsch – do share in the comments – it would be great to see how varied they are and learn borsch tips and tricks from each other.