Cooking time for classic borscht with beef is 2.5 hours, including half an hour of infusion. It is required to spend 1 hour of pure time at the stove. If chicken is taken for borscht, then the total cooking time for borscht will be reduced to 1.5 hours, since chicken for broth is cooked for only 1 hour, and such borscht does not need to be insisted.
How to cook borscht with beets
Products
A classic recipe for a 4-liter pan
Beef on the bone – 500 grams, about 400 grams of meat and 100 grams of bone.
Traditionally, bone-in beef is used, as the bone deepens the flavor of the broth. However, sometimes beef is replaced with pork, then the dish will turn out to be more fatty, and, as a result, high-calorie. Less often they cook borscht with chicken or turkey meat. In this case, cook less and, as a rule, is cheaper. In general, it is better to take fresh meat on the bone. If meat is frozen, thaw beforehand.
Beets – 2 medium or 1 large, 250-300 grams
Carrots – 1 large
Cabbage – 300 grams
Potatoes – 3 large or 5 small
It is better to take larger potatoes in borscht to make it easier to peel
Tomatoes – 3 pieces
In the classic variation, put a tomato + vinegar. Sometimes this tandem is replaced with tomato paste. Tomato paste is slightly more acidic than tomatoes, but it helps to preserve the bright color of borscht, as it contains vinegar. Or a few canned tomatoes or juice from canned beans (if it includes tomatoes). Cooking in the same way – fry with vegetables. Or you can cook the tomato paste yourself – peel the tomatoes, chop and boil over low heat until the state of the sauce. It’s good to add bell pepper to such a home-made tomato-borscht paste.
Vinegar 9% – 2 tablespoons
To make the color of the dish become rich red and the taste more spicy. For a 4 liter pot, you need 1 teaspoon of 9% vinegar or 2 teaspoons of 6% vinegar; sometimes a tablespoon of sugar is added along with vinegar. Vinegar in cooking can be replaced 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 cloves
Dill, parsley – 50 grams
Salt and pepper, parsley – to taste
These are products that are added to classic borscht. If you want to deviate from the rules, here’s what else is often added to borscht :
1. Mushrooms and beans. Beans will make the dish much more satisfying, and mushrooms will add flavor.
2. Sugar – then borscht will be especially good with sour cream. If the beets are sweet varieties, then you do not need to add. Sugar is added at the very end, so try it and decide for your particular case whether sugar is needed or not.
How to cook borsch – 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, put the peeled onion and peppercorns, bay leaf, put the meat in the water, cook over low heat under the lid for 2 hours after boiling. Salt the water at the beginning of cooking – you need half a tablespoon of salt. After boiling the broth, the meat is slightly cooled and disassembled (cut) into pieces, and returned to the broth. The pot is covered with a lid.
Stage 2. Chop and cook vegetables in the correct order – about half an hour.
Finely chop the onion, rub the garlic or finely chop it, rub the beets or chop them into pieces – here to taste. And similarly with carrots, you can rub it, or you can cut it into semicircles. Someone even grinds in a meat grinder. In the classic recipe, variations are acceptable to your taste. We add vegetables to the borscht in this order:
– Cabbage – if ordinary, then in front of the potatoes, and if the cabbage is young and tender, then it can be added 5 minutes after boiling the potatoes. If you like the cabbage to be crispy – add along with potatoes
– Potatoes
– Vegetable fried with beets – which you have to cook while the vegetables are cooking.
Stage 3. Make vegetable frying and add flavoring additives – 15 minutes.
Heat the pan, fry the onion for 5 minutes over high heat, stirring occasionally. Add carrots and garlic to the onion, fry for 5 minutes. Add the beets, fry for 5-10 minutes over medium heat (some people like it when the beets are fried). Then add tomatoes or tomato paste, pour a ladle of broth from a pan with meat into a frying pan with vegetables, additionally add sugar and vinegar to taste, simmer for a couple more minutes, add to borscht – all the vegetables in it should already be cooked by this moment. It is better to taste both potatoes and cabbage, at the same time check the broth for salt. Boil the roast in borscht for 3 minutes.
Stage 4. Insist borscht – half an hour. The pot with borscht is tightly closed with a lid, carefully placed on a blanket and wrapped around it from all sides, preferably in several layers.
This completes the preparation of borscht. Now it remains only to pour it into plates and serve with sour cream and fresh chopped herbs.
Tasty Facts
How to serve borsch
Sour cream, bread with bacon or basturma, green onions and garlic, hard-boiled chicken eggs , cheesecakes with cottage cheese, donuts are served on the table.
How to store borscht
Cover the pan with borscht tightly with a lid and store in the refrigerator for up to 7 days (remember that vinegar is a strong preservative). Borsch can be frozen in a bag – frozen, it is stored for a month.
The cost of food
The cost of food for the preparation of a 4-liter pot of borscht is 400 rubles. (on average in Moscow as of July 2019).
How to make dietary borscht
A dish can be made less nutritious if you do not cook frying. It is enough to peel and cut vegetables – and add them to the soup: beets, cabbage after 10 minutes, potatoes, carrots and onions after 5 minutes. And 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 multicooker
1. Put 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, tomatoes in a pan.
3. Add frying to borscht along with potatoes and cabbage.
4. Set the multicooker to the “Extinguishing” mode, cook borscht for another 1 hour.
How to cook borscht in a pressure cooker
1. Wash, peel and grate the beets on a coarse grater.
2. Put 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 a 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 is suitable, fry for a couple of minutes.
4. Put potatoes and cabbage.
5. Add salt and spices to the borscht, additional lemon juice from half a lemon
6. Pour in water, cover the pressure cooker with a lid and cook for 20 minutes, then wait for the pressure to drop, add greens and serve.
How to make donuts for borscht
Products
Flour – 1.5 200-gram cups
Water – 100 milliliters
Sugar – 1 tablespoon
Salt – a quarter of a teaspoon
Sunflower oil – 1 tablespoon
Yeast – 10 grams
Chicken egg for lubrication – 1 piece
Recipe
1. Heat water to 40 degrees, dilute 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. Pour in the remaining flour and knead the dough, then cover it and leave it in a warm place for 40 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
6. Form donuts from dough balls, put 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 donuts for 20 minutes.
Serve warm pampushki with borscht.