How to cook red borscht with beets quickly, tasty and according to tradition

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 it is believed that borscht is a rich, fatty soup, from which kilograms are added in geometric progression. 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.

A simple recipe for borscht 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.

Borscht recipe

The borscht needs to be cooked for a long time so that it is rich, and the vegetables are well cooked in the broth, saturated with each other and release their aromas. Ideally, borscht is cooked in an oven in clay pots; in urban conditions, it can be an oven or a slow cooker. But most often, borscht is prepared in the most common way - on a gas or electric stove in a saucepan.

Ingredients:

0.5 kg meat
2 medium beets
1 carrot
3 large potatoes
1 onion
1/4 of a small head of white cabbage
2-3 tbsp. tomato paste or 1 large ripe tomato
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic
2 liters of water.

Cooking method:

For this set of ingredients, you should choose a saucepan of at least 4-5 liters so that during the process of adding food, excess liquid does not splash out. First you need to boil the beets until tender. This will speed up the process of preparing borscht.

1. Place meat cut into portions into boiling water. When it boils, skim off the foam and let it simmer for about 30-40 minutes. During this time, grate the beets, chop the cabbage, peel and cut the potatoes into cubes.

2. Place the beets in a frying pan with vegetable oil and simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, while the other ingredients are prepared.

3. Add potatoes and cabbage to the meat. Cook for 15 minutes, add salt and pepper a little.

4. Cut the onion into small cubes and add to the beets. Add grated carrots here. Simmer until the vegetables are ready. Then add tomato paste or tomato pulp, crushed in a blender. Simmer everything together for about 2-3 minutes. Then add the stewed vegetables to the meat and potatoes. All ingredients cook together for about 3 minutes. At the end of cooking the borscht, squeeze the garlic into it through a garlic press, cover with a lid and turn off the heat. At this stage, housewives often add finely chopped herbs.

5. Ready borscht should be allowed to brew for about half an hour before eating. Although for a rich taste, the borscht should sit for at least a day.

Ukrainian borscht is served hot with sour cream and herbs sprinkled on top.

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 rich burgundy color, 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.

Vegetarian borscht with pickled apples

On the day of fasting, even without meat, you can prepare no less tasty borscht. This recipe is also suitable for those for whom rich broths are contraindicated.

Will be required:

1 beet;
1 onion;
2 soaked apples;
1 carrot;
2 potatoes;
0.5 heads of cabbage;
1-2 bay leaves;
100 ml. cream (sour cream);
60-70 ml. apple cider vinegar;
a pinch of marjoram;
3-5 peppercorns;
2-3 tbsp. olive oil.

Preparation:

Heat oil in a frying pan, fry carrots, beets, onions, cut into strips, for about 10 minutes. Add a pinch of sugar to the vegetables, pour in vinegar, add quartered tomatoes, salt and pepper, stir, simmer for about a quarter of an hour.
Boil 2 liters of water, add stewed vegetables, diced apples and potatoes. Let it boil again, add shredded cabbage, peppercorns and bay leaves, marjoram, stir, boil for a quarter of an hour. Add chopped herbs, cover with a lid, and let stand. In addition to sour cream, serve Borodino bread croutons with the borscht.

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.

Borscht with meat

The most delicious borscht, like dumplings, is obtained if you cook it from different meats: beef, lamb and pork, but you can take, for example, only beef with a marrow bone. The final touch to the flavor palette, in addition to a couple of spoons of good sour cream, will be thin, almost transparent pieces of frozen lard on slices of black bread with slices of garlic, sprinkled with dry basil!

Will be required:

0.5 kg beef on the bone;
0.5 kg lamb;
0.5 kg pork;
2 pcs. carrots;
one beet;
celery root;
4 things. tomato;
4 onions;
0.5 tbsp. cognac;
6 sugar cubes;
head of cabbage;
bell pepper;
2 pinches of citric acid;
dill, parsley, cilantro, green onions
vegetable oil;
allspice peas;
salt.

Preparation:

Place the processed meat in a saucepan, add 2.5-3 liters of water, add peppercorns, celery, cut into quarters, cook for about 3 hours.
During this time, prepare the vegetables for storing, thoroughly wash the root vegetables with a brush, peel, cut the onion into cubes, coarsely grate the carrots and beets, finely chop the tomatoes or chop them in a blender. Cut the potatoes into medium cubes or pieces, add water so that they do not turn dark and are “freed” from nitrates.
Fry beets, onions, carrots and tomatoes separately with oil. Chop the cabbage, cut the pepper into 4 parts, and then lengthwise into strips.
After a couple of hours, remove everything from the broth, add potatoes, and boil for a quarter of an hour at medium heat.
Next – cabbage with sweet pepper, cook for 10 minutes. Add citric acid and sugar to the broth with vegetables and stir.
Add all the fried vegetables, add salt, pour in a portion of skate, and boil for 5 minutes.

During this time, chop all the greens, pour into a saucepan, add bay leaves, boil for another 5 minutes, check for salt, add salt if necessary. Before serving, let it sit covered for 30-40 minutes (ideally overnight) to develop the flavor.

Classic borscht with beets: ingredients

And now we bring to your attention a simple recipe for borscht with beets. 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 for borscht with beans, dumplings, 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.

Create your own recipe

Nowadays, more than one recipe for borscht is known, there are a great many of them, and it is impossible to choose the best one. There is a classic Ukrainian borscht, which is cooked for several hours. And there is a completely simple, Polish one, in which only beets were cooked. It is served with potato dumplings. At the same time, you often want to whip up a quick borscht. And this is quite possible. This soup is very good in the summer heat - you don’t have to add fat to it, and it’s very tasty when served cold. And for acidification, kvass or whey is sometimes added to it.

Or maybe you want it and you will create your own unique recipe and make it a signature dish in your family. All you need is a base, which is the same in almost all of them.

So, as they say in Ukraine, “borscht and cabbage, then the house is no longer empty!” Let's try to cook one like this.

What do we need

You will need the same products as for regular borscht. The only thing that will distinguish it is the lack of frying. The vegetables will only need to be simmered a little before adding to the soup. This recipe does not include lard and garlic for the borscht. This will be the easiest and fastest way to cook.

You can prepare it in literally 40 minutes. This is if you take ready-made canned beans. Or in the summer, when it is fresh and soft, fresh from the pod. Instead of beans in the summer, you can take green peas.

There are recipes for borscht without beans, but it turns out less filling.

You will have to wait the longest for the beets to cook. This medium-sized root vegetable takes about 90 minutes to cook in winter. In summer, young beets are ready in 20 minutes. But there is also the simplest option for borscht - take raw beets. True, the color of the finished dish will not be so bright.

It will be great if you already have any ready-made broth. Then it’s better to cook on it.

It can be seasoned with unrefined vegetable oil, not necessarily sunflower oil. A variety of spices will add flavor.

Adviсe

To make fresh beet borscht brighter, squeeze a little juice out of it. It will need to be added just before the end of cooking. To give the borscht an original taste, the recipe recommends adding a handful of unsweetened cherries to it.

Take a few broiler chicken wings and place them at the very beginning of cooking. The result will be a light broth, and there will be practically no foam from them. The soup will be tastier, and they won’t take up much time—these wings take about 20 minutes to cook.

Many recipes call for adding 3% vinegar to borscht to maintain its bright color. Try adding a tablespoon of lemon juice or half a glass of apple juice instead.

So, you need to take:

potatoes - 2-3 medium tubers;
onion - 1 pc.;
medium carrots - 1 pc.;
bell pepper - 1 (optional);
tomato or tomato paste - 2 tablespoons;
cabbage - 300 grams;
beans - 0.5 cups raw or 0.5 cans canned;
beets - 2-3 pcs. medium size;
garlic - 1 head;
various greens - 100 grams;
water - 2-2.5 liters;
bay leaf - 1-2 pcs.

These products are enough to prepare 5-7 servings of borscht. It will take approximately 40-50 minutes to prepare. The recipe calls for flavoring the soup with sour cream.

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.

Borscht with garlic pampushki

Rich, bright, thick and with fragrant garlic donuts - this is not just borscht, but a real “love potion”!

To cook it you will need:

2 beets;
2 potato tubers;
carrot;
bulb;
2 tomatoes;
1/2 head of cabbage;
2 cloves of garlic;
100 ml vegetable oil;
salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar to taste;
2 bay leaves.

For donuts:

250 g wheat flour;
0.5 tbsp. milk;
6 g dry yeast
egg;
4 cloves of garlic;
0.5 tbsp sugar;
salt to taste;
Art. l. butter;
a handful of sesame seeds;
2 tbsp. vegetable oil.

Preparation:

Cut the prepared root vegetables into strips, the onion into cubes, and finely chop the cabbage. Pour boiling water over the tomato, remove the skin, cut into cubes.
While the broth (or water) is boiling, prepare a sauté of onions and carrots, fry for 5 minutes, add one chopped beet, a little sugar, pour in vinegar, stir, cook for 10 minutes, add tomatoes, salt and pepper, simmer for about a quarter of an hour.
Pour boiling water with tsp in a bowl over the second beets. vinegar, add the resulting liquid to the borscht at the end of cooking for color.
Place potato slices into boiling, slightly salted liquid so that the vegetables do not turn out bland. Completely add salt to the finished dish to taste. When the liquid boils again, add the cabbage.
Boil after resuming the boil for a couple of minutes, add the contents of the frying pan, stir, add bay leaves and garlic, pour in the beet juice, stir, cover with a lid, remove from the heat, let it brew for about half an hour.
Prepare pampushki with garlic. Pour slightly warmed milk over the yeast, add sugar, let the yeast “come to life” for 15 minutes, add flour, salt, add butter, knead the dough, cover the container with a cloth, keep warm for 40-50 minutes.
Turn on the oven to preheat to 180 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment, place small balls of dough, cover, and let stand for about half an hour.

Whisk the egg with a fork, make a cross-shaped cut on the donuts with scissors, brush with egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds, bake for about 20 minutes. Pour oil into a blender, add garlic, chop it, grease the finished donuts with the oil-garlic mixture, and serve along with the borscht.

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.

Ukrainian borsch

There is simply no single general recipe for Ukrainian borscht. Each region has its own special brew, but they are all incredibly tasty, thick and with an appetizing aroma.

Will be required:

for the broth

800 g beef on the marrow;
bulb;
parsley root;
peppercorns;
carrot;
a bunch of parsley;
2 bay leaves;
salt.

for refueling

2 beets;
3 potatoes;
2 carrots;
red bell pepper;
2 tbsp. l. apple cider vinegar;
4 ripe medium tomatoes;
a quarter of a head of cabbage;
80-100 grams of lard;
4 cloves of garlic;
lard.

Preparation:

Pour water over the prepared meat, bring to a boil, remove the foam, reduce the heat so that the boiling is barely noticeable. Heat a frying pan, cut the parsley root, carrots and onions lengthwise into 2 halves, put them cut side down, bake until brown, put them in the broth along with the peppercorns and parsley stems, cook for 2.5 hours. A quarter of an hour before the end, add salt to the contents of the pan and add a bay leaf. Carefully strain the broth, let the meat cool slightly, and cut off the bone.
Wash and peel the vegetables for the dressing, coarsely grate the beets and carrots, cut the potatoes into medium-sized slices, dice the peppers, finely chop the cabbage, “break” the tomatoes with a blender.
Fry the onion in melted lard in 1 frying pan, after 5 minutes add peppers and carrots, fry for another 5 minutes, add tomatoes, simmer for 5 minutes. At the same time, fry the beets for 5 minutes in another frying pan, add vinegar to it, simmer for another 5 minutes, remove from the stove.
Let the broth boil, add the potatoes, counting from the moment of boiling, boil for 10 minutes, add cabbage, cook for 5 minutes, put beets and fried carrots with tomatoes in the pan, bring to a boil again, add the “secret” addition of Ukrainian borscht - garlic, crushed with lard, boil for 15 minutes.