The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 27, Steppe, Forest and the Reclaimed Kitchen
Borscht
Ukraine
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 89 sources in the brief
The shared base across every regional style is beetroot and cabbage in a meat stock, but the differences between regions are structural, not cosmetic. Kyivan borscht runs on a mixed beef-and-mutton stock with beans added, heavier and more protein-forward than most other regions. Poltava borscht uses a chicken stock, thickened and enriched, classically served with galushky, small dumplings, rather than bread; its beetroot is sliced thin and stewed separately with stock, fat, sugar, tomato purée and vinegar before joining the pot. Lviv-style borscht, Galician, is marked out by kovbasa, lightly fried and cut into the near-finished soup, with more boiled sausage, soured cream and dill added again at the table; its beetroot is boiled whole in its skin with vinegar, then peeled, julienned and stewed with tomato purée. Whichever regional style is cooked, the beetroot's own preparation, boiled-then-julienned against raw-grated-then-stewed, is one of the real technical choices.
As tradition built it
Lviv-style borscht, with kovbasa
About 2 hours.
Ingredients
The soup
- 2.5 litres meat broth
- 500 g (2 to 3 medium) beetroot
- 15 ml 9 per cent vinegar
- 40 g (2 tbsp) tomato paste
- 400 g potatoes, in 1.5 to 2cm cubes
- 300 g white cabbage, finely shredded
- 100 g onion, finely chopped
- 100 g carrot, in thin half-rounds
- 30 ml oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 8 g salt
- 5 g sugar
- 1 to 2 g ground black pepper
- 2 allspice berries
To serve
- 200 g sausages (kovbasky)
- 20 g parsley or dill
- to serve sour cream, rye bread and pampushky
Method
- Boil the beetroot in its skin from cold over a medium heat 40 to 60 minutes, until a knife goes in easily, adding the vinegar near the end. Cool, peel and cut into thin matchsticks.
- Braise the beetroot covered on a low heat with the tomato paste and 100 ml of the broth, 5 to 7 minutes.
- Cook the onion in the oil over a medium heat 5 to 7 minutes until soft and lightly golden. Add the carrot and cook 3 to 5 minutes more.
- Bring the broth to the boil, add the potatoes and simmer 15 to 20 minutes. Add the cabbage and cook 5 to 7 minutes.
- Add the beetroot with its liquid and the onion and carrot. Season with salt, sugar, pepper and allspice and simmer 5 to 7 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and the cabbage soft but whole.
- Stir in the garlic, cover and rest 10 to 15 minutes. Meanwhile boil the sausages 3 to 5 minutes and slice them 5 to 10mm thick.
- Put sausage in each bowl and pour the borscht over. Finish with sour cream and herbs, with rye bread and pampushky.
Notes
The recipe is the Lviv borscht of Taverna Syniy Kit's site, narrated by its house character rather than a named cook. The Lviv borscht in the cookbook Ukrainska kukhnia, as SonceSad reproduces it, has no cabbage, stews the beetroot 20 to 30 minutes, uses butter, bay and parsley root, and browns the sausages and adds them to the pot.
What a modern chef changes
A cold-smoked kovbasa and a broth poured twice
Rungs 1 and 4
Method
- Cook the Lviv variant, since kovbasa gives the elevation a genuine structural hook.
- Cold-smoke a whole kovbasa on the Big Green Egg over beech, per rung four, rather than buying it pre-smoked, and slice it to order rather than boiling it soft in the pot, finishing it separately under a hot grill for a real casing snap before it goes in.
- Clarify a portion of the finished broth with an agar clarification into a translucent, deep magenta consommé, and serve the clarified broth as a first pour at the table with the full, unclarified soup following, so a diner tastes the same borscht twice, once as pure aromatic liquid and once as the whole dish.
- Finish with a smetana quenelle judged by fat and culture per rung one, rather than a spoonful straight from the tub.