The most common, popular and loved Russian soup. There is no classical recipe, almost every family has one of its own. Just three mandatory ingredients needed: beets, cabbage and tomatoes. Better to say tomato component, it doesn’t have to be fresh tomato, most of the time it’s not. Borsch is usually cooked over winter and you need really ripen tomatoes. You can use canned or diced tomatoes, tomato juice, ketchup, tomato paste or sauce or a combination of thereofs. Tomatoes and beets is what gives borsch the distinctive beautiful color. The rest is very flexible – broth can be beef, chicken or vegetable. Vegetarian version is good in summer, but during winter you better have a nice soup bone, take a big pot, there will be a lot going on there – potatoes, cabbage, beats, so you will have a lot of it. But don’t worry – it can stay in the fridge for 3-4 days easily and is even better the next days.
I cooked borsch many times and it’s never the same, it depends on the freshness and juiciness of the vegetables, combinations of the herbs, sweetness and acidity of the tomatoes, flavorings and spices you have in your fridge or pantry, and how mild or spicy you want it to be.
But the result is always delicious and comforting, with intense sour-sweet umami flavor. And the color is unbeatable.
