Borscht with meat - 6 classic recipes (from beets and cabbage)

For example, in Russia, they prefer to put sauerkraut in borscht; potatoes are not always added. In Belarus, the cooking technique is different; there they put boiled beets straight into the borscht, and don’t add cabbage at all. Ukrainian borscht differs from others by adding garlic and greaves to it, and the broth is boiled with smoked meats, which gives an unusual aroma to the dish.

Not often, but it still happens that young housewives ask the question: How to make borscht red? Naturally, the main ingredient for coloring the soup ruby color is beets. But it is not always added to this dish. The exquisite red color is colored by the broth due to tomato paste added to the fry, or to the finished soup.

The red borscht recipe offered in this description is exceptional, you will learn how to cook red borscht with the addition of fried carrots, onions, bell peppers, beets and tomato paste. In this recipe you will also read how to cook red borscht, and at the end of the step-by-step instructions you will see the final result of the finished photo of red borscht.

How to cook delicious classic borscht - secrets

It would seem that preparing the first course is as easy as shelling pears - add the ingredients one by one and the borscht is ready. In fact, sometimes borscht loses color and does not turn out rich. I’m sharing the secrets of the most delicious borscht, thanks to which you can easily cope with the preparation.

Do not place the beets directly into the pan, otherwise the borscht will lose its rich color. Be sure to fry it in a frying pan.
The color of the broth is also preserved by the addition of citric acid or vinegar.
Add the roasted beets and vegetables after the potatoes are cooked.
Do not overcook the soup; after adding the dressing, cook for no more than 5-10 minutes.
Be sure to let the dish brew, then it will become more aromatic and its taste will be much brighter.

Borscht with meat and beets - the most delicious classic recipe

Cooking borscht with two types of meat is considered a special chic.

You will need:

Beef (with bone) – 400 gr.
Pork – 400 gr.
Water – 4 liters.
Potatoes – 400 gr.
Beets – 300 gr.
Carrots – 100 gr.
Cabbage – 200 gr.
Bulb.
Fresh tomatoes – 500 gr.
Lemon juice – 20 ml.
Granulated sugar – 20 gr.
Sunflower oil – 50 ml.
Parsley, dill - a bunch.
Peppercorn – 10 pcs.
Bay leaves - a couple.
Salt - a teaspoon.

How to cook:

Place pork and beef in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat, skim off the foam with a slotted spoon. Reduce heat to low and cook meat for about 1.5 hours. Halfway through cooking, add bay leaf and pepper.
Cut beets, carrots, onions, and fresh cabbage into thin strips.
Peel the potato tubers and cut into large cubes.
Remove the cooked meat from the pan and cut into pieces.
Strain the broth and return the meat to it.
Add the cabbage, cook for 5 minutes, then add the potato slices. Continue cooking until done.
At the same time, saute the onion slices in a frying pan. When the onions lighten, add the carrots and beets. Fry for 5 minutes, constantly stirring the contents.
Pour ½ cup of broth over the vegetables. Stir the vegetables and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.
Add diced tomatoes to the dressing (it is advisable to peel them). Pour in lemon juice, add sugar. Continue simmering for another 10 minutes.
Transfer the dressing to the borscht, add salt to the broth, and adjust the taste. Let the soup come to a high boil, then turn off. Leave to infuse for 10-15 minutes.

In the collection of recipes: Cabbage with millet.

Lentil soup with meat.

How much vinegar should I add to borscht?

Now let's decide on the amount of acid. We know when to add vinegar to borscht. But what quantity and what essence is best to use?

To prepare borscht, you should use regular table vinegar (6% or 3%) vinegar. The amount of acid will depend on the volume of your pan, the amount of broth and the beets themselves. As a rule, one tablespoon of vinegar 6% is added to one liter of water. That is, if you have a three-liter saucepan, then you need to add three tablespoons of table vinegar to the beets.

Sugar is used to soften the acid. For one tablespoon of vinegar, add one teaspoon of sugar. It is poured directly after the vinegar into the frying pan with the beets. For those who like sour cabbage soup, but cook it from regular cabbage, you can reduce the amount of sugar or not add it at all. If sour cabbage soup is not your favorite dish, but you still want to preserve the color and its brightness, then you can reduce the amount of vinegar or add a little more sugar.

Classic borscht - recipe with beef

A wonderful recipe, based on the real Russian traditions of making borscht. You can add beans to the soup, and if you like first courses made from this vegetable, go to the page where I introduce my readers to recipes for bean soup with meat.

Compound:

Beef on the bone – 400 gr.
Fresh cabbage – 1.5 kg.
Potatoes – 4 pcs.
Carrot.
Onion - head.
Beetroot – 1 root vegetable.
Water – 1.5-2 liters.
Vegetable oil – 2 tablespoons.
Lavrushka – 2 pcs.
Dill and parsley - to taste.
Ground pepper, salt.
Sour cream – 100 ml.

Preparation:

Cook a rich beef broth with bone. Don't forget to skim off the foam when the water boils. Cook for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel the vegetables. Coarsely grate the beets and fry in oil in a frying pan. Add a little broth and simmer over low heat for 10-15 minutes.
Separately, fry the diced onion. Then add coarsely grated carrots. Fry for 5 minutes, then pour in a little broth. Simmer for 3-5 minutes.
Peel and cut the potatoes into large cubes. Place in a saucepan and cook until sliced soft.
Then add the shredded cabbage. Continue cooking until the cabbage seems ready to you (I write this because many people don’t like soft cabbage in borscht, so the decision about readiness is up to you).
Salt the borscht and season with pepper. Add other seasonings; personally, I often add suneli hops.
Lay out the stewed beets, add bay leaves and chopped greens.
Cook for another 3-5 minutes. Turn off the borscht and keep it on the burner for another 10-15 minutes to allow the soup to simmer.

Which meat to choose for borscht?

One of the main components of any borscht is meat. Which one to choose? This has been a debate for several years now. Of course, the best option is beef. Not too fatty, it provides great taste and richness. But it takes quite a long time to cook, and the price on the modern market is not at all pleasing.

Therefore, it is increasingly being replaced by chicken. It is much cheaper and allows you to save an hour and a half when cooking - it cooks very quickly.

The main thing is not to forget: the meat must be with bones. They give a wonderful richness to the broth. Therefore, when cutting up chicken, do not forget to throw the back into the future borscht - this seemingly useless bone makes the best broth.

Borscht with pork

For cooking, I advise you to take not pure pulp, be sure to buy meat on the bone, you can even use ribs. You might find recipes for borscht dressing for the winter useful - check them out on another page.

Take:

Pork meat – 1.3 kg.
Water – 4.5 liters.
Potatoes – 3-4 tubers.
Fresh cabbage – 400 gr.
Carrot.
Large beets.
Large onion.
Parsnip – 1 root.
Petiole celery – 2 stalks.
Bell pepper – ½ part.
Tomatoes, fresh or in their own juice – 400 gr.
Tomato paste – 1.5 large spoons.
Spicy adjika – a small spoon.
Garlic – 2 cloves.
Coriander – ½ small spoon.
Granulated sugar - a small spoon.
Bay leaves - a couple.
Sunflower oil – 3 large spoons.
Dill - several sprigs.
Parsley - the same amount.
Salt - to taste.

Step by step recipe:

Rinse the piece of pork and dry it slightly.

Place in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Place the whole onion and a couple of celery stalks in the pan. Cook the meat until cooked, periodically skimming off the foam.

While the meat is cooking, chop all the vegetables. You can use a regular grater or use a Korean one. Rub coarse shavings over beets, carrots, and parsnip root. Chop the cabbage into strips. Cut the onion into small cubes. Remove the seeds from the sweet pepper and cut the pulp into cubes. Chop the dill and parsley.

Remove the cooked meat from the pan and leave to cool. Remove the onion and celery stalks from the broth - we will no longer need them. When the pork has cooled, disassemble it into pieces and discard the bones.

Fry the vegetables. Heat oil in a frying pan, add chopped onion. After a minute, add the carrots. Stirring the vegetables, fry them for another 2-3 minutes. Place the beets, and after a couple of minutes add the chopped bell pepper. Reduce heat to moderate and fry contents for about 5 minutes.

Now it's the turn of the tomatoes. Add the pasta and tomatoes from the jar. If you decide to use fresh tomatoes, cut them into cubes.

Add sugar, coriander, add adjika. Stir the dressing and cook at slightly less than medium power for another 4-5 minutes.

Place the pieces of meat into the pan.

Add potatoes cut into large cubes and parsnips (if you don’t have them, it’s okay not to add them).

Place the bay leaf in the broth, let it boil, skim off any foam if it appears. After boiling, reduce the heat and cook at a gentle simmer until the potatoes are half cooked.

Take out the bay leaf; it’s time to throw it away. Place cabbage straws. Continue cooking the borscht for another 3 minutes. If the cabbage is of winter varieties, then add a couple more minutes of cooking.

Transfer the vegetable dressing to the pan. Be sure to add salt. At this point, you can add garlic if you can’t imagine borscht without it. Boil for literally 3-4 minutes.

Add chopped greens. Then let the soup boil vigorously, turn off the burner. Do not rush to immediately pour the borscht into plates. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes.

Classic Ukrainian borscht

I have already said that there are as many recipes for borscht as there are housewives. It would seem that the products are the same, but small nuances give the dish a completely different taste. Keep the recipe for real Ukrainian borscht.

What you will need for a 3 liter pan:

Pork with bone – 400 gr.
White cabbage – 180 gr.
Onion – 100 gr.
Beets – 150 gr.
Potatoes – 300 gr.
Carrots – 80 gr.
Bell pepper – 120 gr.
Garlic – 5 gr.
Tomato paste – 40 gr.
Ground coriander - a pinch.
Bay leaf – 2 pcs.
Black pepper, red hot pepper - a pinch each.
Sunflower oil – 60 ml.
Sugar – 5 gr.
Dill, sour cream.

How to cook:

Make pork broth. To do this, place the piece in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Add coriander, both types of pepper, bay leaf. Cook for about an hour, periodically skimming off the foam.
Finely chop the onion, cut the peeled beets, carrots, and bell peppers (pulp) into strips.
Cut the potato tubers into cubes.
Fry the beet slices for 5 minutes. Then add the onions with carrots and peppers (if desired, they can be fried separately, but then transferred to the beets).
Dilute tomato paste with a small amount of broth and pour into the vegetables. Simmer until the beets are soft.
Remove the cooked meat from the pan. Divide into small portions. Instead of meat, put potatoes. Cook for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are soft.
Shred the cabbage and add to the soup.
After 5 minutes, transfer the dressing and chopped garlic from the pan.
Salt the dish and add sugar. Boil the borscht, then turn it off and let it brew.

Borscht with chicken - classic recipe

In Kuban they prepare borscht not only with beef and pork, but also with chicken. In the South they prefer to cook without beets, but residents of the northern villages, on the contrary, add a lot.

We take:

Chicken meat – 300 gr.
Cabbage – 200 gr.
Large beets (or 2 medium ones).
Green sweet pepper.
Large onion.
Tomato.
Potatoes – 350 gr.
Salt and seasonings at your discretion.

Preparation:

Prepare the meat broth by pouring cold water over the chicken and bringing to a boil. Cook until the meat is done. Then remove, select the bones, and crumble the meat into pieces.
Grate the carrots and beets using a large-mesh grater.
Add vegetables to broth. Add whole potatoes. Since chicken borscht is more tender, in the original recipe the carrots are not fried. But here it is at your discretion.
After 5 minutes, add chopped cabbage.
Make a fry. Chop the onion into cubes, similarly cut the tomato and the flesh of the green sweet pepper. Continue cooking until the potatoes are cooked.
Place them one by one in a frying pan with a small amount of oil. Fry until beautifully golden.
Remove the whole potato from the broth, mash it, and return it to the broth.
Cut the remaining potatoes into soup strips.
Add the potato slices to the pan and continue cooking until the potatoes are tender. Place the roast. Boil the borscht for about 5 more minutes. turn off the stove and let the borscht stand for a while.

We use a slow cooker

Today you can see a multicooker in many kitchens. Let's try to cook a delicious lunch in it. The list of necessary products is already described above, in the first recipe. Having the same ingredients, you can cook borscht with tomato paste in a slow cooker.

Preparation will not take much time:

Rinse the meat and cut into small pieces.
Peel potatoes, onions, beets and carrots. Cut the potatoes and onions into cubes, grate the carrots and beets.
Remove the top leaves from the cabbage - they are usually flabby. Also cut out the stalk and finely chop the rest.
Pour some vegetable oil into the multicooker bowl. Fry the onion in the “Fry” mode for 3 minutes.
Place carrots and beets into a bowl. Fry for 5 minutes.
Add tomato paste and fry for another 3 minutes.
Add meat, potatoes and cabbage to the frying. Pour water, add pepper and salt. Run in “Soup” mode for 40 minutes, setting the pressure to maximum. After the specified time has ended, let the borscht brew before lunch.

That's all. The delicious first dish is prepared in just an hour and can delight your loved ones.