Classic Borscht Recipe

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Full recipe

Living in Ukraine and not writing about Ukrainian borscht is probably a shame. That’s why we decided to improve ourselves and make a detailed recipe of red borscht with step-by-step photos. However, it will be not quite classic, but with the addition of modern spices, which allow the dish to open 100%.

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For starters, let’s do the meat broth. I think it should be moderately fat and with a pronounced meat taste. Ribs are best for it. You can take both pigs and beef. I bought some cool beef, with a lot of rib meat, so I stopped at it.

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Ribs are washed well under running water and put into a saucepan, in which we cook borscht. Pour water up to the top and put it on the stove.

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Bringing the meat to the boil, remove the protein foam and salt 1/2 tablespoon. I also throw pepper and bay leaf at this stage to make the meat and the broth have a pleasant aroma.

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We leave the ribs for 1.5-2 hours, on a small fire. It is enough for us that the meat is a little boiling, without strong boiling.

While the broth is being cooked, let’s take care of the vegetable component. We need beetroots, carrots, potatoes, onions and cabbage.

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We clean the potatoes and leave them in cold water to wait for their time. Clean the beet and carrots and grate them on a large grater, throw them into one dish. Shinkle the cabbage in small strips.

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In principle, the finer the cabbage is cut, the more convenient it will be to eat future borscht. It is not very good, when the cabbage leaf does not get into the mouth and dirty the whole face.

That leaves the onion, which we clean and finely slice. Now we need to fry it.

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Pour some oil into the pan and throw onions. Fry on medium heat for about 5 minutes. It is enough for us to make the onions a little transparent.

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Add carrots and beetroots to the frying pan, and fry them, stirring well, on heavy fire. We only need 3-4 minutes of such heat treatment of vegetables.

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Now we add tomato paste, salt and Wooster sauce. At this point I will stop in detail. Tomato paste is needed for a rich and concentrated tomato flavor. If there is no pure paste, you can replace it with tomato sauce, or evaporate the tomato juice.

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Wooster sauce enhances the meat flavor, and adds spicy taste to the borscht. It can be replaced with a good soy sauce. It is enough literally 2 tsp. for the whole saucepan to make our soup several times tastier, but not to turn from Ukrainian into Thai or Chinese.

Worcester and soy sauces contain glutamate, so they help reveal the meat flavor. There is nothing terrible about it, as it is the same seasoning as salt or sugar. Cookers often add spice sets that also contain dry sodium glutamate, but do not report it because they do not read the composition. And some, not quite decent cafes and restaurants, add glutamate as a separate ingredient, in large quantities, and then their borscht seems many times more delicious than homemade.

Fact

I also throw a smoked paprika, which can be replaced by a regular one, dried garlic and a set of barbecue spices. The “BBQ” spice consists of a fairly balanced set of red pepper, paprika, basil, caraway, mustard seeds and parsley, so I throw it. But nobody prevents me from throwing all the spices into the roast for borscht separately. By the way, now the stores sell a large number of “Borscht Frying”, combining the listed ingredients, which we threw to the vegetables.

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We fry our roast for about 5 minutes, stirring periodically. Then add half a liter of water, shredded cabbage and braise for 25 minutes. For this time I cover the frying pan with a lid.

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When the broth with meat is cooked, we catch the ribs and throw potatoes sliced with straw or small cubes into it.

Boil potatoes for 15 minutes. Then we add roast to the borscht, stir well, and cook for another 5-10 minutes until the potatoes are ready.

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Together with vegetables, I pour in some vinegar to add acid. If the roast is already sour enough because of the tomato paste, you can skip this step. While the potatoes are being cooked in borscht, I take the meat off the ribs and cut it into small pieces that I throw back into the pot.

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Sometimes it is more convenient to add pieces of meat separately in a plate with borscht, but I often leave everything together so that the “chemistry” of the dish is not lost.

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We leave ready borscht for 30 minutes to insist on it and finally exchange all the ingredients.

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You can eat borsch with pampushka or black bread, with fresh onion or garlic, adding sour cream or leaving it in its original form.

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In any case, it will be tasty and nourishing. Now you also know how to cook borscht with meat and you can go experiment in your kitchen.

Bon appetit! Don’t starve 😋