Borscht Recipes

Hot and cold Borscht

There are two main variants of borscht, generically referred to as hot and cold. Both generally are based on beets, but are otherwise prepared and served differently.

Hot Borscht

Hot borscht (mostly Ukrainian and Russian), the kind most popular in the majority of cultures is a hearty soup with many common optional ingredients, depending on the cuisine, including various vegetables (beans, cabbage, carrots, cucumber, potatoes, onions, or tomatoes), mushrooms, and meats (chicken, pork, or beef). It is more akin to a stew than most soups, and may be eaten as a meal in itself, usually with thick dark bread.

Pink color of traditional Lithuanian cold borscht. Often eaten with a hot boiled potato, sour cream and dill.

Cold Borscht

Cold borshch exists in a number of cultures.

Polish variants

The basic Polish borscht (barszcz) recipe includes red beetroot, onions, garlic, and other vegetables such as carrots and celery or parsley roots. The ingredients are cooked for some time together to produce kind of clear broth (when strained) served as boullion in cups or in other ways. Some recipes include bacon as well, which gives the soup its distinctive, “smoky” taste.

Other versions are richer as they include meat and cut vegetables of various kinds where beetroots aren’t the main one (though this soup isn’t always called barszcz, but rather beetroot soup). This variation of barszcz isn’t strained and vegetable contents are left in it. Such soup can make the main course of obiad (main meal eaten in the early afternoon).

Barszcz in its strictly vegetarian version is the first course during the Christmas Eve feast. It’s served with ravioli-type dumplings called “uszka” (lit. “little ears”) with mushroom filling (sauerkraut can be used as well, again depending on the family tradition). Typically, this version does not include any meat ingredients, although some variants do.

As other Christmas traditions, barszcz served at that time has its own symbolic meaning. Most of food served at that time isn’t quite the food of the living ones, but of those that passed away. Dried fruit, mushrooms — all symbolise death of the old year as opposed to birth of the new one a day later. Change of food on December 25 (Christmas) is a visible sign that old traditions are still preserved in those little, sometimes unclear ways.

A key component to the taste of barscz is acidity. Whilst barszcz can be made easily within a few hours by simply cooking the ingredients and adding vinegar, lemon juice or citric acid; the traditional way is to prepare barszcz several days before and allow it to naturally sour. Depending on the technique; the level of acidity required and the ingredients available, barszcz takes 3-7 days to prepare in this way.