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Q&A about Borscht

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Clarissa

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The only “green borscht” I know of is the Russian soup called щи. I never made it but I do know that the original recipe is very complicated. You must use pickled cabbage, then freeze the whole thing and thaw it 3 days later. I don’t put pickled cabbage in soups, and the whole thing sounds weird to me.

A real borscht must have beets, cabbage, and potatoes. Anything else is not a borscht, and I insist on this statement. It’s like “vegan Schnitzel” or “meatless pot roast.” A true abomination, in my view.

10 responses to “Q&A about Borscht”

  1. Occasional Reader Avatar
    Occasional Reader

    I have a green borscht recipe! My Ukrainian grandmother made it all the time. I personally prefer it to red borscht!

    There are two steps here: making the broth and then turning that broth into a soup!

    Broth:
    3 country style pork ribs. You can also use beef but you need something with fat and that has a bone. Turkey might also work well.
    1 onion
    1 bay leaf
    1 bunch of celery including tops.
    Salt and pepper

    1) Put all ingredients in large stock pot and bring to a boil.
    2) After soup comes to a boil, immediately turn to low heat.
    3) Simmer for a couple of hours until meat is soft and there is a nice broth. Skim every time
    it looks bubbly and fatty. You want a clear–yet hearty broth.
    4) Remove meat and set aside. Discard vegetables.

    Making the soup:
    1) Peel 2-3 potatoes. Chop.
    2) Shred cooking meat.
    3) Cook 2-4 hard boiled eggs. Peel and chop and set aside.
    4) Bring broth to a boil. Turn down to a simmer. Add peeled and chopped potatoes and meat
    and simmer.
    5) When the potatoes are cooked through, add a large head of roughly chopped spinach. You can also use Swiss chard. Note: You can also add more spinach. I’ve used as much
    as two or even two and half heads before.
    6) When spinach has wilted, turn off the fire and add juice of one lemon.
    7) Serve each bowl with a large serving of hard boiled eggs.

    One last note: if you can find sorrel, that’s the “classic” and would work better than spinach or any other leafy green. If you do find sorrel, no need to add lemon.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Oh, I know this one! We do it without meat or potatoes. Ideally, the green used is sorrel because it’s sour and it gives a lot of flavor but it’s impossible to find in the US. We call it “sorrel soup.” That’s the only soup I accept with no potatoes or carrots.

      Thank you for the recipe!!

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      1. Occasional Reader Avatar
        Occasional Reader

        Yes. Sorrel is hard to find unless you grow it yourself. But my grandmother’s answer to this was spinach/chard plus a lemon. I’ve had both and they taste very similar.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I should make it. It sounds great.

          Thanks for the suggestion!

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      2. stille Avatar
        stille

        Right, it was a linguistic false friends situation 🙂 The sorrel soup, and other similar soups with spring greens picked in the woods, are called ‘green borscht’ in a close-to-Ukraine part of Romania, so I thought that’s how you guys call it as well. Depending on the season, we’d do them with wild garlic, nettles, sorrel, whatever was fresh, and mix beaten eggs in it at the end. Lady at whose house we used to go to on holiday also mixed mashed potatoes in it, for a kind of cream-soup-without-a-blender effect. Supermarket version is spinach + lemon, you’re right.

        Thing is, it’s not a recipe my family used to cook, and your regular borscht recipe is absolutely amazing, so I was wondering if you had any tips for this. Sorrel access is not an issue in season 🙂

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  2. Astrophil Avatar
    Astrophil

    You seem to be confusing two kinds of щи. The traditional variant is made with fresh cabbage and is basically your run-of-the-mill vegetable soup with cabbage. All the usual suspects: spuds and carrots plus finely sliced green cabbage leaves. Basically, borscht’s ugly cousin without the beets. Stock can vary depending on your preference, beef, chicken, pork. Some people use porcini stock for the vegetarian version, which is also an option for borscht. We always add some chopped fresh tomatoes and sliced red peppers at the end of cooking to brighten things up. It’s a boring soup, a poor man’s food in essence, so use lots of fresh herbs (dill, parsley) to spruce things up. Like borscht, cabbage soup is commonly served with sour cream (disgusting, if you ask me).

    Now, кислые щи (sauerkraut soup) is slightly different. It uses the same base it’s made with pickled cabbage (see Clarissa’s fabulous recipe). Since it’s considered a winter, hearty kind of soupe, popular in the north and in Siberia, pork stock is preferred but can be substituted with any meat broth. A vegetarian option would be weird because the whole idea of this soup is that in the sauerkraut cuts through the fatness of the pork broth. Yes, in some mythical past it was occasionally frozen as a form of preservation but not as part of the cooking process. Having said that, it’s one of those soups had actually benefits from being left alone for a day or two for all the flavors to come together.

    Some people also refer to sorrel soup as щавелевые or зеленые [green] щи, presumably because it combines root vegetable with something leafy. It’s a spring soup made with one of the earliest greens to appear, I think. A variant uses nettles, which pop out even earlier.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      In the USSR, the dishes of the traditional Russian cuisine – which was among the healthiest and richest in the world – were bastardized and reduced to ridiculousness. The famous Olivier salad is a great example. The original recipe includes crab meat, which wasnt something a Soviet person could hope to find. So cheap bologna made out of cellulose was used instead because it had a similar sweetish taste.

      And it’s all like that. This is where the glorified vegetable soup you describe arose instead of щи. I love the vegetable soup and cook it all the time. But I can’t call it щи because it’s nothing like the original recipe.

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    ““green borscht””

    I was going to say that some people in Poland refer to soup with szczaw (sorrel) as ‘barszcz zielony’.

    There’s another version with nettles that I’ve never had.

    I like sorrel soup the few times I’ve had it because it reminds me of greens (mustard, collard, turnip) from the US South. But apparently having it a lot is not good for the kidneys.

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  4. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    For the record, kimchi soup is truly delicious, and it is made from pickled cabbage.

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “kimchi soup is truly delicious, and it is made from pickled cabbage”

      A winter staple for me is kapuśniak. It’s basically local chicken soup* (chicken, carrots, onion, parsley root or celery root, maybe a leek) with chunks of potato, some pieces of sausage and sauerkraut added.

      *Noodles aren’t added to the pot, they’re made separately and only combined in the bowl.

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