What's Cooking Wednesday: A2eatwrite's Real Borscht

Posted on Wed, Aug 26, 2009 : 6:45 a.m.

Note: this entry has been republished with corrected information.

Yeah, that's not a typo. Real borshch is hard to transliterate, and as it's been pointed out, the correct English spelling is borscht - but I'm focusing on the transliteration here. There's a "sh" sound, followed by a "sch" sound, and we English speakers have a hard time hearing those sounds and an even harder time pronouncing them together.

And please, this post isn't about anything that's close to florescent pink and comes in a jar. (Although I know there are many fans of that particular version, including my mother, so no offense to those who love it).

This is the real thing, passed on to me by schoolteacher friends from Krasnodar when I taught there in the fall of 1987, and this has so nothing to do with anything manufactured by a certain company that starts with the letter "M".

It's borshch season. It's borshch season because the borshch I love consists of beets, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and cabbage, all of which are at perfect ripeness right now. You really can make it with just those things, although a bit of spicing and some tomato paste for thickening really makes the flavor much richer. Now I have to add the caveat that my schoolteacher friends wouldn't think of making this without meat bones and without a big slab of meat at the bottom of each bowl, and for those of you inclined that way, you can certainly add those things, but for my money, I like my vegetarian version (vegan, if you don't use dairy sour cream).

Oh. And there's another ingredient that was all mine - can you guess what it is?

A2eatwrite's Real Borshch

Ingredients

9 cups of water 3 medium beets, peeled and cut in half 1/2 TBS salt 2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed 1 small carrot, peeled and shredded 1/2 medium head of white cabbage, shredded 1 medium tomato, chopped 1 6 oz. can of tomato paste 4 black peppercorns 2 TBS red wine vinegar 1 tsp maple syrup

Directions

1. Pour water into large soup pot. Bring to a boil. (If you're using soup bones, add them at this stage and simply remove them before serving).

2. Add beets and salt and boil 10 minutes.

3. While beets are cooking, prep other veggies (if you have a food processor with a shredder attachment this will go very quickly).

4. Take the beets out of the water after 10 minutes. Shred with food processor, or grate by hand.

5. Put all the ingredients back into the boiling water. Stir and bring back to a simmer. Leave soup cooking on simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

NOTE: Try NOT to let the borshch come to a full boil. It may become soggy if you do.

To serve, add lots of pepper and a tablespoon of reduced fat sour cream (or regular sour cream - or soy sour cream to keep things vegan).

Another Note: This soup is even better the second day, and it freezes well.

Number of Servings: 12

Nutrition Information:

Amount Per Serving:

* Calories: 62.6 * Total Fat: 0.3 g * Cholesterol: 0.0 mg * Sodium: 426.6 mg * Total Carbs: 14.2 g * Dietary Fiber: 3.0 g * Protein: 2.3 g

As always, nutrition information supplied by the recipe calculator at sparkrecipes.com.

Priyatnova appetita!

Please go to The Fairy Blogmother for more What's Cooking Wednesday participants.

I'm Jennifer Haines and my blog is a2eatwrite. Please contact me at: Jenshaines at gmail dot com. A2eatwrite will post a What's Cooking Wednesday piece each Wednesday in this space.