Ukrainian borscht
Beetroot, cabbage and a long simmer. Most of the depth comes from roasting the beets rather than boiling them.
- 210
- kcal
- 9g
- protein
- 8g
- fat
- 26g
- carbs
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 75 min
- Serves
- 6
Ingredients
- 3 medium beets, scrubbed
- 1 lb beef shin on the bone, or 4 cups vegetable stock
- 1/2 head white cabbage, shredded
- 2 carrots, grated
- 2 potatoes, cubed
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2 bay leaves
- Sour cream and dill, to serve
Method
-
1
Wrap the beets in foil and roast at 400°F for 50 minutes, until a knife goes in without resistance. Cool, peel and grate.
-
2
Meanwhile simmer the beef in 10 cups of water with the bay leaves for an hour, skimming the foam in the first ten minutes. Lift the meat out, shred it, and keep the stock.
-
3
Soften the onion and carrot in oil, add the tomato paste and cook for two minutes until it darkens.
-
4
Add the potatoes to the stock and boil for 8 minutes, then add the cabbage and the onion mixture. Simmer 10 minutes.
-
5
Add the grated beets, the shredded meat and the vinegar. The vinegar is what keeps the color — add it late.
-
6
Season, take off the heat and leave 20 minutes before serving. Sour cream and dill at the table.
Why roasting the beets matters
Boiling beets leaches their sugar and their colour into water you then throw away. Roasting concentrates both. It is the single change that separates a borscht that tastes of earth and sweetness from one that tastes faintly of nothing, and it costs you fifty unattended minutes in the oven while the stock simmers anyway.
The second colour rule is the vinegar, and it is chemistry rather than tradition. Betanin, the pigment in beetroot, degrades in neutral and alkaline conditions and holds its colour in acid. Add the vinegar at the end and the soup stays deep red; boil it in from the start and you get a brownish stew that tastes fine and looks wrong.
Making it vegetarian
Swap the beef shin for four cups of a well-made vegetable stock and add a tablespoon of smoked paprika with the tomato paste. The smoke does some of the work the bone was doing. A tin of white beans added with the cabbage brings the protein back up to around 12 g a serving.
Sour cream, and what it costs
A tablespoon of full-fat sour cream adds roughly 30 kcal and 3 g of fat. It is worth it: the fat carries flavour compounds the broth alone cannot, and the acidity plays against the sweetness of the beets. Greek yoghurt does the same job for fewer calories and a sharper finish, though it will split if stirred into soup that is still boiling.
Keeping it
Borscht is better on the second day and better again on the third — the flavours are still combining while it sits. It keeps five days refrigerated and freezes well, though the potatoes turn slightly grainy on thawing. If you plan to freeze it, leave them out and add freshly boiled potato when you reheat.
What it is worth nutritionally
At 210 kcal a serving this is a genuinely filling main course, and the cabbage and beets between them supply a substantial amount of fibre. Beetroot is also one of the better dietary sources of nitrate, which the body converts to nitric oxide — the mechanism behind the modest blood pressure effects seen in beetroot juice trials. A bowl of soup is not a clinical dose, but it is not nothing either.
