As you know, the birthplace of borscht is Ukraine and the southern regions of Russia. But it is prepared not only there, it is also a favorite first course in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Moldova.

It is prepared from a large amount of vegetables and meat. In some versions, mushrooms and beans are also added. But the main product that characterizes it is, of course, beets. It is this that makes its color red, rich and gives the broth its characteristic sweetish taste.

In different regions of Russia, and especially Ukraine, it is prepared differently. Therefore, a lot of recipes for its preparation have already accumulated. And this suggests that this first course is very respected, and for many it is generally the most delicious and favorite of the first courses.

I want to bring to your attention Ukrainian and Russian recipes today. So that those who love it can cook it as often as possible without repeating it!

My grandmother, when she cooked this tasty and aromatic dish, always said: “To cook delicious borscht, you need to walk around it!” I was still small then, and did not quite understand the meaning of this statement. Now I’ve been cooking everything myself for a long time, and I know exactly what this expression means.

In order for everything to turn out tasty and correctly, you first need desire and time! Nothing worthwhile will come of neither without one nor the other. Therefore, stock up on them, as well as the necessary products, and we will prepare the most delicious first course of its kind.

And the first one we will have is the recipe that is prepared most often - this is a classic one!

A classic recipe is one that is prepared in the traditional way. Today we will look at various options that may be quite surprising for you, but it’s still worth starting with the classics.

My grandmother and mother prepared this dish this way, and now I cook it too.

We will need:

• beef on the bone (you can add a little pork) - 600 g
• cabbage - 250-300 gr
• carrots - 1 pc.
• parsley or parsnip root - 50 g
• potatoes - 3 pcs.
• beets - 2 medium pieces
• tomato - 1 pc. or tomato paste
• onion - 2 pcs
• lemon - 1/3 part (or vinegar 3% - tablespoon)
• flour - 1 tbsp. spoon
• sugar - 1 teaspoon
• salt, ground black pepper - to taste
• dried herbs - to taste
• bay leaf - 1 pc.
• vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. spoons
• butter - 1 tbsp. spoon
• fresh dill, parsley, green onions, garlic - for sprinkling
• sour cream for serving

Preparation:

1. To prepare a delicious rich broth, you must take meat on the bone. If the bone is brain-shaped, it will be simply wonderful. You can also add a sugar pit. The difference is that the marrow ossicles contain the brain, while the sugar ossicles contain cartilage and connective tissue.

Both give a wonderful fat and make the dish especially tasty.

The meat is used depending on which one you like best. It turns out very tasty from beef and pork. So, for example, you can take a beef marrow bone, a piece of beef meat and add pork ribs. The taste will be simply divine.

2. The meat should be washed, put in a pan and filled with water. How to cook meat - there are two options. I will describe both of them, and you choose which one you like more.

• Option 1. Pour water over the meat so that it is only slightly covered, and let it cook. Foam will appear throughout the boiling process and will need to be skimmed off constantly. As soon as the water boils, remove the foam and wait 3-4 minutes. Then we take out the meat and pour out the water.

The pan will need to be rinsed to remove any meat deposits; you can also rinse the meat. Then place the meat back in the pan and fill it with 2.5 liters of water. You will get 3 liters of finished soup. This makes about 6 good quality servings.

• Option 2. Pour water over the meat, 2.5 liters at once. Place a saucepan with water and meat on the fire. During boiling, foam will appear and will need to be skimmed off constantly. As soon as the water boils, throw a pinch of salt into a pan of water; all the foam will float up, and it will be easier to remove it.

The transparency of the finished broth depends on how carefully you remove the foam. Therefore, this stage cannot be ignored. It is very important for both the taste and color of the future dish.

And I want to note that the second option is more preferable. In this case, we do not pour out the healthy broth. But you will have to stand by the pan while foam forms for some time.

If you missed the moment, and the foam has already transformed into flakes, and the broth has been boiling for at least 10 minutes, then there is no need to pour out the broth. Just strain it through cheesecloth.

3. As soon as the water with the meat boils (in both cases), the heat will need to be reduced to a minimum and the meat should be cooked until fully cooked. I cook until the meat begins to completely come off the bone.

Throughout the entire time, it is necessary that the broth boils quite a bit, just gurgles slightly. Active vigorous boiling will make the broth cloudy and tasteless.

4. As soon as the meat is ready, you need to remove it from the pan and strain the broth so that there are no small bones left in it.

5. Then cut the meat into pieces and place it back into the broth, bring it to a boil and you can slowly add all the other ingredients.

6. While we were cooking the meat, we can cut and prepare all the vegetables.

7. Cut the onion into cubes or thin half rings.

Grate the carrots and parsley or parsnip root on a Korean carrot grater or cut into thin strips.

8. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan and lightly fry the onion in it. As soon as the onion begins to brown slightly, pour half a glass of boiled water into the frying pan and simmer the onion until the water evaporates. The onion will become translucent and you won't be able to find it in the soup.

9. Add carrots and parsnip or parsley root, fry them with onions for 3-4 minutes, if you grate them. Or a little longer if cut into strips. In both cases, the carrots should soften slightly.

10. Add sugar and flour, mix. Flour will give a slight nutty smell when fried, and sugar will slightly caramelize the carrots.

However, sugar can also be added to beets.

Add a piece of butter. If you have ghee, then it is best to sauté vegetables in it. But if not, then just add a piece of butter, the soup will have a very pleasant aroma and taste.

You can also add dried herbs - dill, parsley. Simmer for 3-4 minutes, then turn off the heat and leave for a while.

11. Cut the cabbage into thin strips. Cut it thinner, so it will taste better and also cook faster. After all, you know that vegetables should not be cooked for too long to avoid loss of vitamins.

Do not try to cut the potatoes right away so that they do not darken. Clean it and put it in water, when the time comes to put it in the broth, we’ll cut it.

Chop the garlic. To do this, crush it with the back of a knife on the board. And then chop finely. Chop the greens as finely as possible.

Don't throw away the long garlic stick. It can come in handy if someone suddenly has a runny nose. If you set this stick on fire, extinguish the fire, and inhale the smoke that comes from the stick through one or the other nostril, then the runny nose will go away. And if you do this several times a day, you can even cure it.

12. Beets can be prepared using one of four options, which I will offer you a little later. It must either be boiled, fried, baked, or cut fresh (details below, in a special chapter).

I decided to cut the beets into thin strips. You need to squeeze lemon juice on it (you can pour vinegar on it) and fry it in the remaining oil.

Add tomato paste or tomato sauce. Or you can add a fresh tomato; to do this, make a cross-shaped cut on it, pour boiling water over it for 4-5 minutes, remove the skin and cut it into small cubes.

13. And so, the broth is ready, the meat is removed from the bone, chopped and sent back to the broth. Let's continue cooking.

The first thing you need to pay attention to is what kind of cabbage we use. If it is autumn cabbage, then it is most likely tough. Nowadays they grow some special hard varieties that can be stored for a long time, but the leaves of such cabbage are hard and even difficult to ferment.

If the cabbage is spring, early, then its leaves are thin and tender.

So in the first case, add cabbage to the broth and cook it for 15 minutes. Then add potatoes.

14. If the cabbage is early, with tender thin leaves, then add potatoes and cabbage at the same time. Potatoes can be cut into either small strips or cubes.

Along with adding vegetables, you will need to add salt to the broth. We didn't do this before because the salt could draw all the juice out of the meat, and the meat would turn out tough and tasteless.

In general, it is believed that in order to get tasty meat, you need to salt it at the end of cooking. And if we want to get a tasty broth, then we need to salt it at the beginning of cooking.

Therefore, there is debate on this matter: when is it better to add salt? I usually salt exactly as I described, that is, when I add vegetables to the broth.

15. Cook for 15 minutes, then add carrots, onions and white roots, and let it boil. Cook for 5 minutes.

16. Add beetroot dressing, chopped garlic and bay leaf. Cook for 5 minutes, add ground black pepper to taste and cook for another 2 minutes.

17. Turn off the heat, add fresh herbs and cover tightly with a lid.

18. Leave to infuse for 15-20 minutes.

19. Then pour it into plates, sprinkle with fresh dill and season with sour cream.

20. Eat with pleasure!

Delicious homemade recipe for real Ukrainian borscht

In Ukraine, this is the main first course and it is prepared according to many different recipes. Every housewife has her own little secrets and tricks for preparing it. And everyone ends up with such a rich dish that you don’t have to eat anything else at all.

Of course, we can’t cover all the recipes in one article. Therefore, in the future I will continue to look for interesting recipes and try to cook according to them. And then I will share them with you, maybe you will like something too!

Now I’ll tell you how you can cook beets in one of four ways.

Delicious recipe for borscht in a slow cooker for preparing for the winter in jars

Today we have already looked at many different recipes where we prepared our favorite dish with all types of meat, and even fish. Did you know that you can prepare it for the winter by wrapping it in a jar.

It’s very convenient, I cooked it during the season, when all the vegetables from my garden were saturated with warmth and sun, and hid it all in a jar. In winter, open it, add it to the meat broth and the dish is ready.

And to make cooking quicker, let's see how to cook the product in a slow cooker.

It's that simple! I like this idea, what do you think about it?

How to cook borscht with beets so that it is red

Of course, everyone wants to cook a dish with a rich, bright color. But not everyone succeeds. How to cook it so that it always turns out beautiful, dark red or burgundy?

The first thing you need is to choose ripe, burgundy beets. If the beets are red, then the borscht naturally will not turn out a rich burgundy color, but will appear faded.

It is also necessary to properly prepare and lay beets, and as I said above, there are four ways to do this.

1. Cut the beets into thin strips and simmer them in a small amount of oil or fat with tomato and vinegar. For a three-liter pan and about 1 - 2 beets, it is enough to add 1 teaspoon of 9% vinegar or 1 tablespoon of 3%. Tomato paste also contains acid, and it will also help keep the beets dark and the broth bright and beautiful.

2. Beets can be peeled and boiled whole; vinegar should be added to the water during cooking. When the beets are ready, cool them and cut into strips. Add it 10 minutes before the end of cooking along with sautéed vegetables.

3. Beets can be boiled in their skins, then peeled and grated. Sprinkle with the juice of 1/2 - 1/3 lemon and add to the soup along with sautéed vegetables 10 minutes before readiness.

4. Beets can be baked in the oven or microwave. Then also grate, sprinkle with lemon juice or vinegar and then add to the pan, also 10 minutes before the end of cooking.

I usually use the second or third method. So, in my opinion, the taste of the finished dish is more delicious, and the color is more saturated and bright.

However, there is another way to prepare beets that may be useful for our recipes. Unfortunately, I don’t always use it, but it’s simply necessary to write about it.

Pickled beets for delicious borscht

In the old days, my grandmother always fermented beets; I was still very little then, but I remember it. Having already grown up and started cooking, I asked my mother how my grandmother did it, and my mother gave me the recipe. She also said that pickled beets were used not only for first courses, but also vinaigrettes and other salads and appetizers were prepared with it.

Borscht with pickled beets turns out to be completely special and has a very pleasant taste. And fermenting it is easy and simple.

1. Take as many beets as you want to ferment, peel them and cut them in any of the known ways. It all depends on how you are going to use it in the future.
2. Place the beets in the jar quite tightly, leaving, however, space for the brine, which should cover the beets by 5-6 cm.
3. Prepare the brine. To prepare it, boil water and add salt to it at the rate of 0.5 liters of water - 25 grams of salt (less than a tablespoon). Let the brine cool completely and pour it over the beets.
4. Place a weight and place a deep plate under the jar.
5. Leave the beets to ferment. The fermentation time may vary. Minimum 5 days, maximum 12 days.
6. During fermentation, foam will form, which will need to be skimmed off. Excess juice will also leak out, which will also be formed during the fermentation process.
7. It is believed that the fermentation process is complete when foam stops being released. This depends on the ambient temperature.
8. When the foam stops releasing, the jar can be placed in the refrigerator. And use it as needed.

I hope that today’s selection will be interesting for you and the material useful. And you can cook the kind of borscht you want!

After all, as it turns out, you can cook it from any meat, as well as poultry and even fish! In addition to the traditional cabbage, carrots and beets, you can add beans or mushrooms. Today we did not touch upon them with our attention, but if you want to add mushrooms, you can safely do so.

Dried mushrooms must first be boiled and then added along with cabbage. Add fresh mushrooms before adding vegetables, bring to a boil and skim off the foam, and then add all the ingredients according to the recipe.

It should also be remembered that potatoes are always placed in the broth either before the cabbage, if it is fresh from spring, or after, if it is firm from autumn. It is better not to use potatoes with sauerkraut, or add cabbage only after the potatoes are cooked.

Beets with vinegar and tomato paste should also be added only after the potatoes are cooked, otherwise they will turn out tough and tasteless.

But the rest seems to be clear and understandable! I wish that the borscht cooked by you always turns out thick, rich, aromatic and tasty. And also so that it is always bright and beautiful!

Bon appetit!

Borscht is a seasoning vegetable soup. It is loved not only in Russia and Ukraine, but also in Poland (barshch), Lithuania (barshchiai), Romania and Moldova (borsh).

In Kievan Rus, borscht was prepared from edible hogweed leaves (hence the name). Later they began to cook it with beets (hence the color). Potatoes have been added since the 19th century.

The average cost of borscht in Russia is 220 rubles. The cheapest borscht with delivery in Kazan is 37 rubles per serving. The most expensive borscht in the capital: a plate can cost 700 rubles or more.

What to take

For the broth:

• water - 1.5–2 l.;
• pork or beef on the bone - 400 g.

For frying:

• beets - 2 pcs. (small);
• carrots - 1 pc.;
• onions - 3 pcs. (average);
• tomato paste - 2 tbsp. l.;
• sunflower oil - 4–5 tbsp. l.;
• citric acid - a pinch.

For the borscht:

• fresh white cabbage - 300 g;
• potatoes - 4 pcs. (average);
• salt, bay leaf, herbs - to taste.

To submit:

• sour cream - 1 tbsp. l. (on each plate);
• greenery.

How to cook

Step 1. Cook the broth

Take a 3 liter saucepan. Pour 1.5–2 liters of water into it, put. Place on medium heat. Keep an eye on the broth and skim off the foam before boiling.

The broth will be tastier if you use meat on the bone.

When it boils, cover the pan with a lid and simmer over low heat for an hour and a half.

Step 2. Frying

While the broth is cooking, fry the vegetables. Wash and peel the beets, carrots and onions. Grate the beets on a coarse grater, and grate the carrots on a medium grater. Cut the onion into cubes.

Pour sunflower oil into a frying pan and turn on medium heat. First fry the onions and carrots (5 minutes), then add.

Sprinkle the beets with citric acid or sprinkle with fresh lemon juice. Thanks to this, the borscht will be truly red.

Fry the vegetables for another 5 minutes. After this, add tomato paste, stir and leave on the gas for another 5-7 minutes.

Step 3. Assembling the borscht

When the broth is cooked, remove the meat from it. While the meat is cooling, add shredded cabbage to the broth. After 5-10 minutes, add the potatoes cut into strips.

iravgustin/Shutterstock.com

For now, separate the meat from the bone and cut into cubes. Return meat to soup.

Add salt to taste.

Add frying. Stir. Add bay leaf and finely chopped herbs. Cover the pan with a lid and cook for another 5-7 minutes.

The borscht is ready.

Serving

Borscht can be eaten immediately after cooking. But, as a rule, it tastes even better the next day.

Borscht is a traditional peasant dish. Lard and pampushki were served with it only on holidays.

Pour the borscht into deep bowls. Add fresh herbs, ground black pepper (if you like it spicier) and a slice of lemon (if you prefer it sour). Borscht is eaten with rye bread or buns rubbed with garlic.

Bon appetit!

Cooking time for classic borscht with beef is 2.5 hours, including half an hour of infusion. You need to spend 1 hour of clean time at the stove. If you use chicken for the borscht, then the total cooking time for the borscht will be reduced to 1.5 hours, since the chicken for the broth is cooked for only 1 hour, and such borscht does not need to be infused.

How to cook borscht with beets

Products

Classic recipe for a 4-liter saucepan
Beef on the bone- 500 grams, approximately 400 grams of meat and 100 grams of bone.
Traditionally, bone-in beef is used because the bone deepens the flavor of the broth. However, sometimes beef is replaced with pork, then the dish will be fattier, and, as a result, high in calories. Borscht is less often prepared with chicken or turkey meat. In this case, cooking is less and, as a rule, cheaper. In general, it is better to use fresh meat on the bone. If the meat is frozen, defrost it in advance.
Beet- 2 medium or 1 large, 250-300 grams
Carrot- 1 large
Cabbage- 300 grams
Potato- 3 large pieces or 5 small ones
It is better to take larger potatoes for borscht to make peeling more convenient.
Tomatoes- 3 pieces
In the classic variation, add tomato + vinegar. Sometimes this tandem is replaced with tomato paste. Tomato paste is a little more acidic than tomatoes, but it helps preserve the bright color of borscht, as it contains vinegar. Or a few canned tomatoes or juice from canned beans (if it contains tomatoes). Cook in the same way - fry along with vegetables. Or you can cook the tomato paste yourself - peel the tomatoes, chop and simmer over low heat until it becomes a sauce. It’s good to add bell pepper to this homemade tomato-borscht paste.
Vinegar 9% - 2 tablespoons
So that the color of the dish becomes rich red and the taste becomes sharper. For a 4 liter pan you need 1 teaspoon of vinegar 9% or 2 teaspoons of vinegar 6%; sometimes a tablespoon of sugar is added along with the vinegar. When preparing vinegar, you can replace it with freshly squeezed lemon juice (from half a lemon). Also keep in mind that added canned tomatoes or store-bought tomato paste, if they replace tomatoes, already contain vinegar.
Onion- 2 heads or 1 large
Garlic- 3-4 teeth
Dill, parsley- 50 grams
Salt and pepper, bay leaf- taste

These are products that are added to classic borscht. If you want to deviate from the rules, this is what else is often added to borscht:
1. Mushrooms and beans. Beans will make the dish much more filling, and mushrooms will add flavor.
2. Sugar - then borscht will be especially good with sour cream. If the beets are sweet varieties, then there is no need to add. Sugar is added at the very end, so try it and decide for your specific case whether sugar is needed or not.

How to cook borscht - explained step by step

Stage 1. Boil the meat broth - cook for about an hour and a half.

Wash the beef, pour 3 liters of water into a 4-liter saucepan, add the peeled onion and peppercorns, bay leaf, put the meat in the water, cook over low heat, covered, for 2 hours after boiling. Salt the water at the beginning of cooking - you need half a tablespoon of salt. After cooking the broth, the meat is slightly cooled and disassembled (cut) into pieces and returned to the broth. Cover the pan with a lid.

Stage 2. Chop and cook the vegetables in the correct order - about half an hour.

Finely chop the onion, grate or finely chop the garlic, grate or chop the beets into pieces - depending on your taste. And similarly with carrots, you can grate them, or you can cut them into semicircles. Some even grind it in a meat grinder. The classic recipe allows for variations to suit your taste. Add vegetables to borscht in this order:
- Cabbage - if it’s ordinary, then before the potatoes, and if the cabbage is young and tender, then it can be added 5 minutes after boiling the potatoes. If you like your cabbage crispy, add it along with the potatoes.
- Potato
- Vegetable frying with beets - which must be prepared while the vegetables are boiling.

Stage 3. Fry the vegetables and add flavorings - 15 minutes.

Heat a frying pan, fry the onion for 5 minutes over high heat, stirring. Add carrots and garlic to the onion, fry for 5 minutes. Add beets, fry for 5-10 minutes over medium heat (some people like the beets crispier). Then add tomatoes or tomato paste, pour a ladle of broth from the pan with meat into the frying pan with vegetables, add additional sugar and vinegar to taste, simmer for a couple more minutes, add to the borscht - all the vegetables in it should already be cooked by this point. It’s better to taste both potatoes and cabbage, and at the same time check the broth for salt. Cook the fry in borscht for 3 minutes.

Stage 4. Let the borscht sit for half an hour.

The pan with borscht is tightly closed with a lid, carefully placed on a blanket and wrapped on all sides, preferably in several layers.

This completes the preparation of borscht. Now all that remains is to pour it into plates and serve with sour cream and fresh chopped herbs.

Fkusnofacts

How to serve borscht
Sour cream, bread with lard or basturma, green onions and garlic, hard-boiled chicken eggs, cheesecakes with cottage cheese, and donuts are served on the table.

How to store borscht
Cover the pot with borscht tightly and store in the refrigerator for up to 7 days (remember that vinegar is a strong preservative). Borscht can be frozen in a bag - once frozen, it will keep for a month.

Cost of products
The cost of ingredients for preparing a 4-liter pan of borscht is 350 rubles. (average for Moscow as of October 2018).

How to make diet borscht
The dish can be made less caloric if you do not fry it. Just peel and cut the vegetables and add them to the soup: beets, after 10 minutes cabbage, after 5 minutes potatoes, carrots and onions. Or you can cook borscht without meat at all - lean borscht is also very good.

How to cook borscht in kitchen gadgets

How to cook borscht in a slow cooker
1. Place the meat in a multicooker pan, add water, salt and cook in the “Stew” mode for 1.5 hours.
2. Separately, fry onions and carrots, beets, and tomatoes in a frying pan.
3. Add the frying to the borscht along with potatoes and cabbage.
4. Set the multicooker to the “Stew” mode and cook the borscht for another 1 hour.

How to cook borscht in a pressure cooker
1. Wash the beets, peel them and grate them on a coarse grater.
2. Place the beets in a pressure cooker, fry them in an open pressure cooker in vegetable oil for 10 minutes, then add onions and carrots, after another couple of minutes, tomato paste - and simmer for 5 minutes all together.
3. Add meat - for borscht in a pressure cooker, boneless meat, cut into small pieces, fry for a couple of minutes.
4. Place potatoes and cabbage.
5. Add salt and spices to the borscht, additionally lemon juice from half a lemon
6. Pour water, close the pressure cooker with a lid and cook for 20 minutes, then wait until the pressure drops, add herbs and serve.

How to make donuts for borscht

Products
Flour - 1.5 200 gram glasses
Water - 100 milliliters
Sugar - 1 tablespoon
Salt - a quarter teaspoon
Sunflower oil - 1 tablespoon
Yeast - 10 grams
Chicken egg for greasing - 1 piece

Recipe
1. Heat the water to 40 degrees, dilute the yeast in it, cover and leave for 10 minutes.
2. Measure out 0.75 cups of flour, add sugar and salt, butter and mix well.
3. Add diluted yeast to the flour mixture.
4. Add the remaining flour and knead the dough, then cover it and leave in a warm place for 40 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
6. Form dough balls into donuts and place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. The distance between the donuts should be at least 1.5 centimeters so that they do not touch during the lifting process.
7. Beat the chicken egg and brush the donuts with a pastry brush.
8. Bake the donuts for 20 minutes.

Serve the donuts warm with the borscht.

Who among us doesn’t like to eat delicious food? There are probably no such people at all. Even representatives of the fair sex who carefully monitor their figure will not refuse a tasty and healthy dinner or lunch. What distinguishes lunch from a regular meal? That's right - the first course. It may vary.

Why is it beneficial to include liquid foods in your diet?

Even if someone doesn’t like soups, they still need to eat liquid dishes from time to time, because broth is good for the stomach. It helps digest food better and protects against unpleasant diseases such as stomach ulcers, gastritis or inflammation of the pancreas, which is called pancreatitis. All these misfortunes can be avoided if you regularly include, for example, soup in your diet. But in our article we will tell you about preparing such a hearty and tasty first course as borscht. Each housewife has her own way of preparing the best borscht. A simple recipe with a photo, which is given in the text, will make the cooking process understandable and accessible.

A little about the options for a delicious first course

It is in vain that borscht is believed to be a rich, fatty soup that adds pounds. Of course, real Ukrainian borscht is like this - hearty, buttery, and even with donuts. But there is also a lean version of borscht, which contains the bare minimum of high-calorie ingredients; sometimes it is cooked without meat at all. Those people who strictly observe fasting know how easy such borscht can be. Below are the most interesting recipes for delicious borscht, prepared both in a saucepan and in a slow cooker.

Simple with chicken

To prepare this dish you need to prepare:

• approximately 3 liters of water;
• chicken leg or 3 chicken thighs, or you can take a whole chicken;
• potatoes - 5-6 tubers;
• half a head of cabbage;
• carrots - 1 piece;
• onion - 1 piece;
• herbs, salt, vegetable oil;
• tomato paste 75 grams or 2 tomatoes.

A simple borscht recipe begins with preparing the broth: to get a tasty dish, you first need to defrost the chicken and boil it by dipping it in boiling water. The whole chicken must be cut into small pieces in advance. After the water boils, you need to pour it out and add cold water again. This will be the basis for our borscht broth. The chicken should be cooked until half cooked. While the process is going on, you need to wash and peel the potato tubers, carrots, cabbage and onions. Then you need to put potatoes, cut into not too large pieces, into the saucepan with the half-cooked chicken. Finely chop the onion and grate the carrots. When the water boils again after adding the potatoes, add finely shredded cabbage to the broth.

How to make delicious fried borscht: continuation of the previous recipe

At the same time, we are preparing the frying, the recipe for simple borscht, although, excuse the tautology, is simple, it still cannot do without this important stage - fried vegetables are much tastier and more aromatic than raw ones. To do this, you need to fry carrots and onions together in a frying pan; all this is done in sunflower oil. When the frying takes on a golden hue, add tomato paste or finely chopped tomatoes to the pan. When the roast is ready, transfer it to a saucepan with broth. Stirring the borscht periodically, add salt or your favorite spices to taste. To prevent the borscht from losing its richness, you can pour a spoonful of vinegar into it. This is a little trick. A few minutes before turning off the heat, you can sprinkle the contents of the pan with herbs. Before serving the dish, season the borscht with sour cream or mayonnaise.

A simple recipe for borscht in a slow cooker: necessary ingredients

The multicooker has recently become a faithful assistant for housewives in the kitchen. More and more women prefer cooking in this miracle of technology, saving their time and effort. She cooks porridge, bakes muffins, and prepares pilaf.

You can cook borscht in it, it will turn out absolutely as tasty, no worse than cooked on the stove in a pan. So, the products for the future borscht:

• pork with ribs - 300 grams;
• water - 2 liters;
• fresh cabbage - 200 grams;
• beets - 2 pieces
• carrots and onions - 1 piece each;
• potatoes - a couple of tubers;
• fresh tomatoes - 2 pieces;
• melted butter - 1 spoon, 2 cloves of garlic;
• seasonings, salt, chopped herbs.

Let's start cooking

Perhaps this is the simplest borscht recipe that even a novice housewife can do; it won’t cause much trouble. First, you need to peel the beets, carrots and onions, then grate the carrots and beets on a coarse grater, and finely chop the onion with a knife. Finely chop the fresh cabbage, finely chop the tomatoes, and either chop the garlic finely or pass it through a garlic press. Place onions and carrots in a multicooker bowl, lightly greased with oil, set to “fry” and fry the vegetables for about five minutes. Mix it all with a silicone spatula so as not to scratch the coating of the bowl. There is no need to close the multicooker lid. After about five minutes, add the pork ribs and tomatoes to the vegetables and fry for another 5 minutes. After this, you need to put half of the grated beets, cabbage, and potatoes into the bowl. For taste, you can sprinkle everything with a little granulated sugar. Salt and pour hot boiled water from a kettle over everything. Then select the “stew” program (if there is a special “soup” program, then you need to select it). Cooking time - 60 minutes. After this, close the multicooker lid until it clicks. At the same time, pour a glass of boiled hot water over the other half of the beets, add a little lemon juice and bring to a boil. This broth must be filtered through gauze or bandage. Then pour the broth into the multicooker container, add garlic, seasonings and finely chopped herbs. On the multicooker program panel, set the “Warming” mode and leave for 10 minutes. Separate the finished meat from the bones, return the pieces of meat back to the borscht. The bones can be thrown away. It is best to serve borscht with sour cream.

Classic borscht with beets: ingredients

And now we bring to your attention a simple one. In general, each housewife has a different recipe, many use several types of meat or even replace it with stew. In cookbooks you can find recipes with dumplings, with smoked ribs, and many other different cooking methods. And all this will be a variation on the theme of classic borscht.

We present to your attention a recipe for simple borscht, which will not take much time from the housewife. To prepare you need to take:

• 1 kilogram of beef;
• half a kilogram of potatoes;
• 300 grams of fresh cabbage;
• 300 grams of beets;
• 200 grams of carrots;
• 200 grams of onion;
• 3 small jars of tomato paste (metal);
• 3 garlic cloves;
• bay leaf, salt, allspice or any spices;
• greenery.

Cooking process

First you need to wash the meat. If it was frozen, it must first be thawed. Next, fill the meat with water and put the pan on the fire for an hour and a half. Once ready, remove it from the pan, cut it into pieces or sticks and put it back into the meat broth. Finely chop the onion and grate the carrots on a medium-sized grater. Chop the cabbage into strips. Beets are also cut into small pieces or grated. You can chop it, like cabbage. Fry the beets in a frying pan with the addition of sunflower oil. Pour a tablespoon of vinegar into it (to preserve the color) and tomato paste. If you don’t have tomato paste at home, you can replace it with finely chopped tomatoes. Mix everything and simmer for 5-7 minutes. In a separate frying pan, fry the carrots and onions in oil. When they acquire a beautiful golden hue, remove the pan from the heat.

Sequence of ingredients

The recipe for simple borscht implies, like other similar ones, the sequential addition of ingredients. Cut the potatoes into pieces and place them in the boiling broth. During cooking, taste the dish and add salt to taste. After the broth boils again, add the cabbage to it. It should be cooked over low heat for about five minutes. Then add the beets to the pan and cook for another ten minutes. At the last moment, add the fried carrots and onions (the so-called frying), as well as the bay leaf.

If necessary, add a little more salt and pepper. After this, add garlic to the almost finished borscht, which was previously squeezed through a garlic press. Almost ready - remove the pan from the heat and let it sit for about twenty minutes. Pour the aromatic, beautiful and tasty borscht into deep plates and serve, sprinkling with herbs and adding sour cream. It will be no less tasty if you put mayonnaise or a thick sauce with spices on the plate instead. And with black rye bread you will get almost a culinary masterpiece. A plate of this first course will give you energy for the whole day. Now you know how to cook borscht. A simple recipe and its variations are given in our article; you just have to choose the one that suits you and your family members more.

All fans of delicious food know for sure that traditional Ukrainian cuisine is not complete without borscht. Every housewife should know the recipe for the most delicious borscht, because it is an excellent first course that can capture the heart of any man. Of course, this is provided that it is prepared correctly, without any errors.

A little history

This dish has all the features traditional for Ukrainian and South Russian cuisines; it was prepared by our ancestors - the Slavs. It got its name because the main ingredient in this dish is beets, and in ancient times the vegetable was called “borscht”. From the territory of Kievan Rus, where the dish was invented, it spread throughout the surrounding area and even to neighboring states. That is why it is currently in countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Belarus. This dish was very fond of the Russian rulers Catherine the Second and Alexander the Second, as well as the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova, whose name also went down in history.

Varieties of borscht

There are a considerable number of varieties of this soup, and which borscht is the most delicious remains a mystery to this day. This diversity is due to the fact that each nation put something of its own into the obtained recipe, characteristic of the national traditions of its native state - this changed the taste of the finished dish in the crust.

All presented varieties are divided into two large categories: red borscht and cold borscht, which is also popularly called kholodnik. Kholodnik is more common in Belarus, where it is eaten as a snack with hot boiled potatoes.

Kholodnik

It is very simple to prepare such a dish - it is based on pre-prepared beets, which must first be pickled. As a rule, all ingredients are added raw to such a dish. All ingredients are diluted with kefir or other fermented milk products, the desired amount of hard-boiled chicken eggs is added to a common pan, and then everything is seasoned with sour cream and served.

There are a considerable number of fans of such a bright and tasty dish in the world. It is prepared mainly in summer or spring, when all the ingredients can be easily obtained fresh.

Red

However, as many gourmets admit, the most delicious borscht is red, which is prepared by heat treating food and served hot. Its main ingredients are vegetables, which should initially be taken fresh. As a rule, the standard set includes carrots, potatoes, beets, cabbage, tomatoes and herbs. If desired, you can prepare lean borscht, but many housewives prefer to pre-cook meat broth from different types of meat. Many step-by-step recipes for the most delicious borscht recommend using chicken or pork broth. With such a combination of meat in the broth, the finished soup turns out to be the most aromatic and delicate in taste.

Before serving the finished dish, season it with sour cream or mayonnaise. In Ukrainian culture, the tradition of eating such soup as a bite with garlic and bread is especially widespread.

The most delicious borscht: step-by-step recipe with photos

In order to prepare an excellent soup, which is the king of traditional Ukrainian cuisine, you do not need to have a lot of culinary skills. It is enough to simply understand the order of cooking the ingredients, and also know how to properly cook a tasty and clear broth for the future soup.

Step 1: Preparing the broth

Many famous chefs recommend using pork or, in extreme cases, chicken to prepare the most delicious borscht. If you choose the first option, it is best to use the breast part and bones for cooking, which can be bought inexpensively at almost any butcher shop.

Preparation of the broth should begin by boiling the bones, which should be filled with cold purified water. After this, cover the pan with a lid and put it on the stove to cook. As soon as the contents begin to boil, you should reduce the heat and begin to gradually remove the resulting foam. Correct actions at this stage will ensure a tasty and clear broth.

As practice shows, for the most delicious borscht, the bones need to be cooked for a couple of hours, without turning off the heat and skimming off the foam regularly. After this, you need to add meat to them in the amount indicated in the selected recipe. In this composition, the pan should be kept on low heat for a couple of hours.

If the broth is made from chicken, it will take about an hour or two to prepare. If this type of broth is chosen, it is not recommended to add another type of meat to it, so as not to interrupt the taste.

Ingredients

In the classic recipe for the most delicious Ukrainian borscht, he recommends using a standard set of ingredients. It necessarily includes bright red beets (called beets in some recipes) - a couple of root vegetables, no more than 0.5 kg of fresh cabbage, a couple of medium-sized carrots, the same number of onions, five potatoes. This is a basic soup set, which is designed for broth made from 800 g of pork meat.

Step 2. Preparation of ingredients, their pre-processing

All components of borscht must be washed and peeled in advance. After this, the potatoes need to be cut into medium-sized cubes. As practice shows, root vegetables cut in this way give the finished soup a special taste.

Grate the beets into a separate plate on a coarse grater. Many people prefer to cut it into strips or cubes by hand, but the recipes for the most delicious borscht often say that the vegetable, chopped in this way, gives the final result that original red or even burgundy color. After the beets have been grated, they should be sprinkled with the juice of half a lemon and, after mixing thoroughly, left in a cool place for 15-20 minutes.

The cabbage needs to be chopped, which most housewives do with a regular kitchen knife. However, in the modern world there are a considerable number of devices that can also be used. Some chefs recommend chopping the vegetable into cubes, but this does not change the taste of the soup.

Step 3. Preparing the borscht dressing

Ukrainian borscht becomes the most delicious only if the housewife uses lard, grated with garlic, as a dressing. To prepare it, you need to take a small piece of this product (about 50 grams) and grind it thoroughly. After this procedure, a couple of cloves of garlic are added to a common bowl, and in this composition the mass is crushed in a mortar until a state of homogeneity is formed. When ready, the dressing should be covered with cling film and refrigerated until needed.

Some experienced housewives advise using old lard, which has a slightly yellowish color, to prepare such a mixture. However, along with them, there are recommendations regarding the use of aromatic lard with spices.

Step 4. Preparing the roast

Properly prepared frying is the element without which the most delicious borscht cannot be obtained. Photos depicting bright red borscht are taken to clearly convey the color that the dish should have if it was properly fried.

At the very beginning, you need to heat a frying pan, preferably with a non-stick coating, into which you should pour a small amount of sunflower oil. After it heats up, you need to put grated carrots and chopped onions into the frying pan. After this, 3-4 tomatoes, previously peeled, or 2-3 tablespoons of tomato paste should be sent to them. Vegetables need to be mixed well during frying. After some time, add beets to them and mix well. Everything in the pan is covered with a lid and simmered for 10-15 minutes.

Step 5. Cooking borscht

First, you need to heat the prepared broth to boiling water, into which you should add the prepared potatoes and chopped meat. In this composition, the dish is cooked for 10 minutes, after which you need to add shredded cabbage, continuing to cook over high heat for a short period - about 10 minutes.

After the vegetables begin to become more or less soft, the heat should be reduced and the prepared frying should be added to the pan. In this composition, everything is boiled until the vegetables are completely cooked; a dressing made from lard and garlic is added to the borscht, as well as finely chopped herbs, salt, pepper and other seasonings to taste. Be sure to add 1-2 bay leaves here, which give the dish not only a pleasant aroma, but also some piquancy.

Tricks for cooking borscht

Any good housewife should know how to cook the most delicious borscht. This dish can become special if you follow the basic instructions and know some small tricks in the process of creating it.

A large part of success lies in the right products. To prepare borscht, do not be afraid to use too fatty pieces of meat - the juiciness and softness of the broth, as well as its richness, have never harmed the finished dish. A separate trick lies in the choice of beets: it is better to take them in small sizes. In such root vegetables there is a smaller number of veins, which ensures greater juiciness of the fruit and, as a result, a brighter color of the finished borscht.

If the potato chosen for cooking is too boiled, you can cut it larger - by the time the cabbage is cooked, the potatoes will not have time to boil to a puree. Some families prefer to pre-fry it before storing it - the vegetable turns out not only dense, but also especially tasty.

You can use bell pepper in the general composition of the ingredients - it will add some zest to the taste of the finished borscht. It is best to choose this vegetable at the market. The ideal fruit is green in color and rather unprepossessing in appearance - this will be the most aromatic and rich in useful components.

If different types of meat are used to cook borscht, it is best to use it in a 1:1 ratio.

You can use more than just lard and garlic as a dressing. For variety, at the final stage of preparing the soup, you can use ghee, fried cracklings or simple sour cream with the maximum percentage of fat content.

In order for the soup to be as aromatic as possible, after cooking it is advisable to wrap the pan with it in a towel and leave it to steep for six hours - the result will pleasantly surprise you.

The recipe for the most delicious borscht (with photo), which is presented here, is not a standard. It can be varied in any way the housewife wishes. Some people add their own secret ingredients to this soup, which improve the quality of the finished dish. Examples of these could be legumes, mushrooms or some special spices.