cold ukranian borscht (beet soup)

This is a great summer soup!

When many people think of borscht, borsch, borshch, barzcz, or borchch, they think of a heavy winter stew made with lots of beef bones and potatoes. If you’ve never tried a summery cold borscht, I highly recommend it. Ukranian-style borscht is cool, creamy, and refreshing. Unlike heavy hot deep red borscht with chunks of beef, this pink Ukranian version doesn’t suffer at all when made vegetarian, with veggie stock.

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make your own chicken or veg stock
roast a head of garlic
shred part of a cabbage, one bunch of peeled raw beets, two small raw potatoes, and a large carrot. put some lemon juice on the shredded raw beets.

heat stock and add shredded veggies and roasted garlic, a pinch of paprika, a bay leaf, and a half-teaspoon or so of allspice. add veggie scraps like parsley stalks and carrot tops and remove before serving or storing.

while this boils, make the zapravka in a separate pan. heat some lard or oil and saute one onion. when translucent, add one chopped carrot. when they begin to soften, add salt, pepper, 2 T tomato paste,

cook everything together until it tastes amazing.

when done, add tons of plain yogurt or sour cream, tons of fresh raw dill, minced pickles or pickled peppers, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and juice from half a fresh lemon.

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adapted by friedsig from ukranianguide

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kapusta

eli says kapusta means “cabbage,” but has come to mean a kraut-and-smoked-meat stew in his family.

a quick google search shows hundreds of recipes – some with allspice and bay leaf, some with canned corn.

this is a rough approximation of what eli did when he made this dish last week.

 

 

first, we made a quick kraut, though obviously real kraut would be better.

let it sit while pinto beans cooked up with tons of onion in butter or lard, along with kielbasa.

throw in the kraut and let it stew.

a high-quality kielbasa is essential.

this doesn’t sound like much, but trust me: this is phenomenal.

EDIT (5/11): adding some smoked (pork) neckbones gave a whole new dimension.