South Slavic cuisine is also inconceivable without borsch, as Russian cuisine is without soup. Cooking options - a lot, in each area and in every house - your own recipe.
The basic technological stages of cooking borsch with beef remain unchanged. In step-by-step recipes, the similarities and differences in the preparation of the first dish are clearly noticeable, and you can track where you need to strictly adhere to the technology, and where you can take creative initiative.
Borsch with beef: a step-by-step recipe and basic technological principles
The main points of cooking borsch are similar to cooking soup. But in the technology of "related" dishes there are three fundamental differences:
Borsch is distinguished from the soup by the presence of beets in the ingredients, which are added to the dish in raw or stewed form, in the finished broth or during its preparation.
As part of the acidic dressing for borscht, an obligatory component is tomatoes. The exception is green sorrel borsch.
Unlike classic cabbage soup, which includes sauerkraut, classic borscht is prepared only from fresh white cabbage.
The taste of any first dish is largely determined by the meat broth, and in this cabbage soup and borsch are fundamentally the same.
The traditional technology of first courses in Russian cuisine includes the addition of herbs and roots during the cooking of the broth, at the initial stage of preparation, and before it ends.
The remaining details about cooking borsch with beef are in step-by-step recipes. Please note that the recipes give approximate standards for the laying of products, so you need to focus on observing the same proportion of liquid and solid ingredients in the finished dish. Borsch is a folk dish, and French thoroughness does not apply to its preparation. Feel free to change the norms of bookmarking products to your liking, but do not forget about a sense of proportion.
1. Classic South Russian (Don) borsch with beef - a step by step recipe
Ingredients:
Bone set, beef 1.0-1.5 kg
Veal brisket 900 g
Water 4.5 L
Spicy broth dressing:
Carrot
Parsley root
Onion
Allspice and black pepper (peas)
Bay leaf
Celery root
For borsch:
Beetroot 150-200 g
Potato 0.6 kg
White cabbage 800 g
Fresh, sweet and spicy pepper to taste
Dill and parsley (fresh herbs) 1 bunch
Ground pepper
Salt
For refueling:
Tomato paste 100 g
Onions 250-300 g
Carrot 200 g
Fat 90-120 g
To serve: sour cream
Procedure:
• Wash meat and bone set. It is advisable to soak the meat in cold water for a couple of hours. You can immediately put the bones in a pan, add cold water and cook for about an hour, removing the foam. Then remove the bones from the pan and place the pulp in a whole piece. The breast should go to a boil. Remove the foam again and put the spicy roots, bay leaf and peppercorns. Cook the meat until tender, then remove it from the pan and transfer it temporarily to the dish.
There is a second option for preparing beef broth: put the washed bones with roots on a baking sheet with pieces of peeled roots and bake in the oven at 180 ° C until brown. Remember to periodically turn over so that the bones do not burn. Transfer the bones to the pan, put the pulp on top, pour cold water. Let it boil, remove the foam and put another portion of fresh roots. When the meat becomes soft, transfer it to a plate, and strain the broth.
• The broth is ready, and you can start cooking borsch. Next - preliminary preparation of beets. Wash the root crop, peel and chop with a thin straw - it is important that the beets are boiled and lightened faster, and the potatoes that go into the pan after the beets do not turn red. Throw chopped beets into a boiling broth, reduce the heat and boil until the liquid regains its golden color.
Beets can also be prepared in another way. After cleaning and chopping it, stew it in a pan, adding a little vegetable oil and broth from the pan. You can just lightly fry the chopped root vegetable by adding a spoonful of sugar for taste. When cooking and frying beets, you don’t need to add any acidic ingredients, vinegar or citric acid, because this method will not brighten the beets anyway, and the presence of acid in the broth will negatively affect the cooking of the potato and its taste.
• Beets are cooked for a long time. During this time, you can have time to prepare the remaining ingredients for borsch. Peel potatoes, onions and carrots for dressing, chop cabbage, peppers, chop spicy greens. Cut the potatoes with medium cubes or whetstones. Grate the carrots, cut the onion into small cubes.
• Put the prepared potatoes in the clarified broth. Cook until soft.
• Melt the pork fat in a preheated pan, or heat the vegetable oil - choose your option for cooking dressing, but note: each of the selected fats will give the soup a different taste - dressing with pork fat and vegetable oil are, in fact, two different borscht recipe.
• Pass the carrots until soft, add the chopped onion, simmer for 2-3 minutes.
If desired, flour can be added to sautéed vegetables to thicken. But in this case, the soup will not be transparent. As a rule, flour during the passage of vegetables is added to vegetable broths for lean borscht. The addition of toasted flour gives richness to lean broth and a special nutty flavor. Flour whitewash - a technological technique that came from ancient Russian cuisine. Now it is used mainly in folk Russian and Ukrainian cuisine, especially in rural areas.
• Again, take 200-300 ml of broth from the pan, and dilute the tomato paste with it. Pour into a pan to sautéed vegetables. Simmer until the color of the dressing turns dark red and the liquid evaporates almost. Transfer the tomato dressing to the pan and bring the whole mass to a boil again.
If juice is used instead of tomato paste, then it is not necessary to breed it with broth. In this case, stew vegetables also to a thick consistency.
• After adding the tomato dressing, put the cabbage, chopped with a thin straw, fresh pepper, parsley and dill into the pan.
• Now you need to try the borscht, add salt, ground spices, bring to a boil and immediately remove the pan from the stove.
• After half an hour, you can serve the infused borsch, putting in a plate a piece of boiled brisket, seasoning with sour cream.
2. Green borsch with beef - a step by step recipe. Ukrainian food
Ingredients:
Beef meat and bone set 1 kg
Pork neck 900 g
Bay leaf
Carrot
Bow
A mixture of peppers (peas)
Parsley and / or Celery Root
Water 4 L
Potatoes, peeled 800 g
Young sorrel (leaves) 1 kg
Beets 200 g
Boiled eggs 10 pcs.
Dill, parsley 150 g
For refueling:
Salted bacon 200 g
Onions 250 g
Spices, salt
Order of preparation:
• Wash meat, soak in water. First put the beef in the pan, fill it with water, and cook for about half an hour, removing the foam. Add the pork. When the meat boils, remove the foam again, and put the spicy roots, carrots and onion whole. Cook the meat until cooked, adding a few minutes before the end of cooking bay leaf and peppercorns.
• Strain the broth and return to the pan. Let it boil.
• Sort the meat, remove the bones, and cut the flesh into pieces and return to the pan.
• Peel the beets, grate on a coarse grater and put in boiling broth. Cook on low heat, for 30 to 40 minutes. During this time, the beets should discolor, and the broth will turn a bright yellow or orange color.
• Cut the peeled potatoes into medium-sized cubes and lower them into the pan only after the beets are cooked.
• Cut the bacon and onions into small cubes and put in a mortar, grind to a paste-like consistency. If you do not have the patience for such an operation, use a blender. Transfer the finished dressing to the pan.
• Check potato readiness. If it is soft, add salt and spices to taste.
• Go through the sorrel, chop, add to the borsch, but only after the potatoes are ready.
• Immediately after the sorrel, lay peeled and chopped eggs, chopped dill and parsley. You can put sorrel, eggs and spicy greens in borscht together, at the same time. After a couple of minutes, from the beginning of the boil, remove the pan from the heat.
• Let the borscht brew and serve with sour cream or mayonnaise.
3. Green borsch with beef - a step by step recipe (second method)
Ingredients:
Beef broth 3 l
Low Fat Pork 0.8 kg
Bacon 150 g
Onions 300 g
Tomato puree 150 g
Beets 150 g
Sugar 30 g
Potato 600 g (net)
Sorrel, canned 0.5 L
Boiled eggs 1 pc. per serving
Spices, salt
Sour cream and chopped herbs - for serving
Cooking Technology:
• Finely chop the peeled beets, put in a boiling broth, cook until completely clarified on low heat.
• Wash the pork, cut into portions, add to the boiling broth, along with the beets. The meat will not turn red, and cooking time can be significantly reduced.
• While the beets and meat are cooked, cut the fat, very finely, and melt the fat in a heated pan.
• Remove the fried fried slices and put the finely chopped onions in the melted fat. Fry it until golden brown.
• Add tomato puree and sugar to the dressing. Put out the dressing for five minutes.
• In the clarified broth, after the beets are ready, put the diced potatoes. Cook it until cooked.
• If canned sorrel is without salt, then borsch after boiling potatoes can be salted and seasoned with ground spices.
• Add tomato dressing, chopped herbs and sorrel at the same time. Bring borsch to a boil and remove from heat.
• Peel the eggs, cut in half and put two halves in each serving, serve with sour cream.
Borsch with beef - step by step recipes and useful tips
There are dozens of varieties of table beets, and to quickly cook borsch, you need to be a little able to understand them. Varieties of type "Bordeaux" have the most saturated burgundy color, without light rings in the section. Such beets are an ideal variety for salads and vinaigrettes, as well as stewed caviar and desserts. For borsch, just, you need to choose a variety of type "Boltardi", which has a less intense burgundy color, but is not inferior in taste to salad varieties. Such beets are boiled faster and preserves more vitamins.
Try to choose medium-sized root crops, as large beets have coarser fibers, cook for a long time, and are less tasty.
For green borsch, leaf beet varieties are used - chard, but you can replace them with young leaves of table varieties. Such leaves are cut off to prepare dishes until coarse fibers appear, as in sorrel leaves.
When cooking borscht, try to take into account that the amount of water will noticeably decrease during the preparation of the broth and boiling beets, and adding raw water is extremely undesirable. Water evaporates by about 20-25% by the time the broth and beets are ready. If you made a mistake with the norm of the liquid, then add boiling water, or better, prepared in advance meat or vegetable broth, also brought to a boil.
