Borscht!

A recipe? For soup?!

For me, borscht mainly means a decent stock to begin with, a bunch of beets that have been washed, trimmed and diced up, and chopped cabbage. I often chop up the beet stems and add them, too. Also quite acceptable are smaller amounts of onion, carrot and potato - all chopped or diced. I always add some bay leaves, salt and a dash or two of pepper. Meat is generally absent from any borscht I make. If a bit of meat comes along for the ride in the stock, well, that's kismet, innit?

I don't make my borscht be sparse. I crowd it with solids. When it is ready to serve, some sour cream or plain yoghurt make a nice garnish.

Sounds great! I'm not going anywhere near it until it's time to eat, because I am the SOUPKILLER. This is Donald's project, but he can't be arsed to register, much less post.
Thank you!

Oh, yes. Serve with some kind of rye bread. Dark and sourish with a nice crust is good, since the borscht has some sweetness to it. Buttered if you dare, or plain if you're the ascetic type.

i had a really tasty borscht at east village ukrainian place that had kidney beans (i think) in it. actually added a nice touch to it with re: to aimless' love of solids in the borscht. in fact, we'd ordered cup of borscht and pierogis and my sister liked it so much she ordered an extra borscht and took the pierogis home!

try this.
2 Tablespoon butter
1.5 cups chopped white onion
1.5 cups thinly sliced potato
1 cup thinly sliced beets
1 large sliced carrot
1 stalk chopped celery
3 cups chopped green cabbage
1 scant teaspoon caraway seeds
1 Tablespoon raisins
4 cups water or chicken stock (i use the stock, pref homemade but hey)
2 teaspoons salt
some black pepper
1 cup tomato puree
1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon - cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon - honey

Topping:
dill weed
chopped tomatoes
sour cream

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** you will likely add much more salt, honey, cider at the end. this also improves a little on 2nd day.
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Directions:
Place potatoes, beets in saucepan with water/stock - cook till tender. Drain but save liquid.
Cook onions in butter in a large kettle, add caraway and salt and cook till onions are translucent. Add celery, carrots, cabbage and reserved liquid. Cover and cook till veggies are tender. add potatoes/beets and any remaining ingredients and cover and cook on slow for another 30 minutes. Let cool off a bit, correct for seasonings - salt, honey, vinegar. Serve with toppings!

Serving ideas:
I serve this with Cuban bread which can be found in Bernard Clayton's Book of Breads, altho you could probably also serve with any crusty bread. Cuban bread is a beginners loaf and also does not contain fats so its crustiness is easy to come by. ideally to balance this shoud probably be served with a very crusty but also **rich** loaf. Roastbeef sandwiches would also be good and at that point one can add generous butter/mayo to achieve the richness--- this is to balance the soup which lacks much fat/is fairly acidic.

re: the 1 beet recipe. the recipe above actually calls for about 2 or 3 beets only. think borcht is mostly tomatoes and cabbage by volume. beets are pretty strong tho

I was in my local Polish deli, and they stock a dehydrated cup-o-bortsch product. I'm sure it's nothing special, but I'm tempted to acquire a jar of it for work. I did try the Krakus (sp?) concentrate, which is OK.

(/my grandmother) GRRRRRRRR, it is called BARSZCZ, GRRRRRRRRR! (/my grandmother)

Never really been a fan of borscht to be honest, although zurek is heavenly and much preferred.

I don't think there is a standard borscht. I've had types ranging from insanely sweet and purple, to meaty and orangy red, to a pretty average reddish meaty bland soup, depending on the amounts of meat, tomatoes, beets, cabbage, and spices that go in. OWN the borscht! (The meaty orangy one was my favorite, and sounds more like the recipe you found, but I'm not a huge fan of Russian food, that was a variant with an Armenian touch.)

I made the borscht from one of those Mollie Katzen whimsical hippie vegetarian cookbooks and it won high grades from the friends I fed it to. (Maybe they were just being polite though.) I can't remember if I made it more than once though, because I wasn't really into it that much.

i'm pretty sure that's where my recipe came from. it is pretty good but really did have to tweek it (and i distinctly remember recipe directions in those books not making a lot of sense --whimisical is right). incidentally if anyone wants it, there is an *excellent* beet,tomato,onion stew type thing that is similar to borscht but soooooooooo much better and heaertier - from Maddhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking. dear God, i need to make that right now.

Borscht Report:
He ended up following the Joy of Cooking recipe, which is a lot like Aimless's. He also made stuffed cabbage (stuffed with buffalo!) and paprika-sour cream gravy, out of the one of the Frugal Gourmet cookbooks. The gravy turned out WAY too salty because of a bouillon slip-up, and the borscht lacked salt, so, there you have it—a glop of gravy into your bowl of borscht. Yum!
One of our non-ilx consultants talked up the meat-in-borscht idea. He throws a bunch of stew meat in, cooks the shit out of it until it all falls apart, says it's great.

It's always a risk when you plan to serve guests food you have no experience in preparing. I hope these were old, dear friends who merely laughed at the over-salted v. under-salted goof-ups, and a good time was had by one and all.

The guests actually bailed! And our kids were too afraid of the food to come over. It was just a romantic dinner tfor two, and now we have enough Russian leftovers to feed a whole gulag.

Please post the paprika sour cream gravy recipe, that sounds good, Like goulash or stroganoff in sauce form.

That was my other idea—a Gulag Dinner, where we would try to replicate that dishwater stew that Solzenitzen wrote about, where you were ecstatic if you found a shred of potato peel.

Hungarian Paprika Gravy

Hungary, Russia, whatever...

I notice this online version has much less flour. The book version calls for 3/4 cup. We used Jalapeño peppers. The book also says you can use oil, but I have a feeling you'll go for the freshly-rendered lard, Ed. Donald got into trouble by using "Better Than Bouillon" beef base instead of stock. Quite a bit saltier.

That looks damned tasty, I shall give it a try.

i love borscht!

The guests actually bailed!

That makes this the perfect opportunity to stick it to them by telling them what a superbly delicious gourmet feast they spurned. How scrumptious! How delightful! Every bite a revelation! Both of you falling off your chairs from the sheer unsustainable weight of the pleasure this meal delivered. It would be poetry if you did this.