Why is borscht not red? Secrets of cooking real borscht The secret to making borscht red.

Even the chefs did not agree on which borscht recipe can be considered “correct”. In the article we will reveal to you the secrets of red borscht with beets, the photo below will allow you to see the final result and make the cooking process more convenient. Perhaps the most important thing is that the borscht is tasty. There are several secrets of its preparation.

The secret of making delicious borscht in broth

A good rich broth is obtained from a brisket with a bone. You can also use chicken. The main secrets of making broth for a delicious borscht:

If the pieces of meat are pre-fried, the taste of the finished dish will be much richer.
The meat is placed in cold water, and after boiling, the foam is removed and spices are added. Usually these are laurel leaves and black peppercorns.
The meat is cooked for about three hours. After that, it is removed from the bone, crushed and placed back in the pan.

Secrets of red borscht with beets

If you put the beets along with all the vegetables at the beginning of cooking, the borscht will turn out not red, but faded. There are several secrets to keep the color vibrant:

You can grate the beets, sprinkle with sugar, sprinkle with lemon juice or vinegar, and simmer in a separate bowl until soft.
Beets can be pre-boiled. This is done in water with the addition of vinegar. The vegetable is not peeled.
Beets can be baked in the oven, wrapped in foil. The baking time will be about 30 - 40 minutes.

This vegetable can be pre-fried, which will give the borscht a new taste. Cabbage is a must-have in tasty borscht.

Usually it is white cabbage.
You can add red cabbage.
There are variants of borsch with the addition of chopped cauliflower.
There are those who like to add sauerkraut to borscht after stewing it.

Red borscht traditional additions

Onions and carrots. They are cut into strips and pre-sautéed. For dietary reasons, you can refuse sautéing, but the taste of the finished dish will lose from this. After frying, tomato paste is added to the onions and carrots, after which they are stewed under the lid for several minutes. It is better not to replace the pasta with fresh tomatoes. It is the paste that allows you to get the rich color of red borscht.

Other vegetables. In addition to the above, it is customary to add potatoes, sweet peppers, and tomatoes to borscht. Sweet pepper can be any color.

Cooking rules and secrets of red borscht

All vegetables should be cut into pieces of the same size.
Most of it should be occupied by beets and cabbage.
Potatoes and other vegetables should account for a smaller proportion of the volume. Approximate ratio 2:1.

The secrets of red borscht provide many options for cooking, among them it is no longer possible to single out a classic, or especially “correct” recipe. Like any homemade dish, it should be enjoyable.

The rich taste and aroma of borscht bring great pleasure while eating. However, for some housewives, this soup turns orange during cooking, and the dark cherry color goes somewhere. How to make borscht red? There is nothing difficult in this. The main thing is to figure out why the dish gets a different color. You can give the soup a burgundy hue using different methods. We also need samples that will later help to cook red borscht.

Add acid to make borscht red

The color of borscht largely depends on the beets: choose a salad that has a maroon hue. Do not put it in the soup too early and cook for about 10-15 minutes. Acid is also added to borscht to preserve color. It includes:

tomato paste - it is put in beets, which are sautéed in a pan separately from other vegetables;
wine or apple cider vinegar - sprinkle beets with them before overcooking, but try not to overdo it;
lemon juice is suitable for those who do not like vinegar; put a small amount at the beginning of sautéing.

What to add to make borscht red?

When frying beets, so that it retains its color, you can add 1-2 tbsp. l. Sahara. This vegetable is put into the borscht last, otherwise it will affect the color of potatoes and cabbage during the cooking process.

How to keep borscht red: ways

Not all people like fried vegetables, which are then added to the first dish. In this case, borscht can be made burgundy without this process. There are other ways to fix the desired shade:

Remove the meat from the finished broth and lower the peeled beets there. Put the rest of the vegetables in the dish and cook it further. Remove the beets after 15 minutes. Wait for the soup to cook, and then grate it into a bowl.
Boil the vegetable in the skin. To do this, first wash the beets, and then lower them into the pan for an hour. Do not add salt to the water, otherwise the vegetable will become tough. Now grate it and place it in the boiled borscht, which then cook for another 2 minutes.
Clean the beets. Grate it raw. Place in a metal bowl and cover with hot water. Now start making borscht, and when you bring it to readiness, put beets in the dish. Boil for 5 more minutes.

There is sometimes more controversy around borscht than around politics. In fact, no one knows what the right borscht is. It should be delicious - that's the main rule, - says Ilya Lazerson, President of the St. Petersburg Guild of Chefs. - Personally, I do not like it when there are potatoes and sweet peppers in borscht. In my version, they are not, and this is my right. Someone loves sauerkraut, and pre-boil or bake beets. I prefer raw beets. I cut it into thin strips, add a little sugar, water, vegetable oil, after 5 minutes - tomato paste. Then I add the carcass of beets and ready-made ones at the very end of cooking into the pan. Thanks to this, the soup acquires a rich, appetizing shade. And this is just one of the secrets of delicious borscht.

1. With or without broth?

Vegetarian borscht does not require meat broth. But, if you are a fan of the classic soup, then you need to cook a rich broth. For him, you can take beef brisket, chicken or pork and beef in a 1: 1 ratio. For flavor, it is better to pre-fry the pieces of meat. Or immediately put the meat on the bones in cold water and put on fire. As it boils, remove the foam, add salt, bay leaf, a few peas of black and allspice and cook for 2-3 hours until the meat is fully cooked. Then the broth must be filtered, remove the meat from the bones, chop and return to the pan.

2. Stew beets separately!

If you put the beets in a common pan and then cook for about an hour, all the color from the vegetable will go away and the borscht will turn out faded. To avoid this, you need to grate the root crop on a coarse grater or cut it into thin strips with a knife. Then add water, a teaspoon of sugar and be sure to add a little acid (a couple of tablespoons of wine vinegar or lemon juice), this will help the root crop retain its color. Put the beetroot on the fire and simmer until it becomes soft.

3. Or maybe cook?

The second popular option for preparing beets for borscht is to boil it in advance. It is important that before you lower the vegetable into the water, rinse it thoroughly without cutting off the roots and top, otherwise the juice will “leave” into the pan. For better preservation of a bright shade, do not salt the water, but pour 1/2 tsp into it. vinegar or citric acid. Cooking time depends on the size of the fruit and the season - young small root crops are usually cooked for 20-30 minutes, old ones - 1-1.5 hours. However, today most chefs advise not to boil, but to bake beets. To do this, wrap the fruit in food foil and send it to the oven for 30-40 minutes (the time depends on the size of the tuber) at + 180 ° C. In baked beets, the taste and color do not “dissolve” in water, so this cooking method is considered the most successful.

Borscht classic Photo: shutterstock.com

Ingredients:

Beef brisket - 500 g
Pork - 500 g
Carrot - 1 pc.
Onion - 1 pc.
Beets - 2 pcs.
Cabbage - 300 g
Sweet pepper - 1 pc.
Potato - 200 g
Tomato paste - 1 tbsp. l.
Bay leaf, pepper, salt - to taste

How to cook:

Put the meat in a saucepan, pour 3 liters of cold water, bring to a boil, cook for 2 hours.
Cut carrots into strips, onions into half rings, fry until golden brown. Place in a bowl along with chopped peppers.
Ten minutes later, add cabbage, then potatoes.
Cut the beets into thin strips, simmer for 10 minutes, then add the tomato paste, cover and cook for another 20 minutes.
Put in borscht 10 minutes after the potatoes. Cook for 10 more minutes.
Add bay leaf, salt and pepper. Remove from heat, let stand 20 minutes.

4. Don't Forget the Cabbage

Many people call borscht beetroot soup. In fact, they are different soups. There is cabbage in borscht, but not in beetroot. Most often, fresh white cabbage chopped into strips is used for borscht. But there may be variations on the theme. For example, you can put red or Savoy in a saucepan - outwardly it looks like a white head, but it has a bright green color and corrugated bubble leaves. There are even variants of borscht with cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, but with them you still get a soup that is far from the classic one. Someone likes to add sauerkraut instead of fresh. It must be washed, cut, stewed separately until soft and only then added to borscht.

5. Unsweetened couple: onion and carrot

Nutritionists are against all kinds of passerovka, which add calories to the dish. But speaking from the point of view of taste and gastronomic rules, then borscht without sautéing is not borscht. First, in vegetable oil, you need to fry the onion into strips, then add the carrots chopped into strips. When the vegetables acquire a golden hue, you need to put the tomato paste and simmer everything together for a few more minutes. Some housewives believe that instead of pasta it is better to use tomatoes - fresh or in their own juice. Nevertheless, many professional chefs insist that only pasta has a concentrated taste that is so necessary for the soup, which will give borscht a beautiful shade and pleasant sourness.

6. Vegetables - to taste

In addition to beets, carrots, onions and cabbage, other vegetables are put into borsch to taste: potatoes, tomatoes and fresh sweet peppers, which are also chopped into strips. In general, do not forget that all products in the soup should be cut approximately the same. You can use any color of pepper: green, yellow, red, orange. The main thing is to keep the proportion: there should be a lot of beets and cabbage in borscht, and potatoes, tomatoes and peppers - 2-3 times less.

7. Who is first in line?

Borsch, like most other soups beloved by Russians, belongs to the filling first courses. It is in the West that pureed soups are preferred, but we should have a broth in which various tasty additives float. In order for these additives to harmoniously combine with each other and get the right consistency (and not when one product is overcooked and the other crunches on the teeth), you must observe the correct dressing of the soup.

First of all, shredded cabbage should go into the pan, it is cooked longer than others. Then - sweet peppers and potatoes. At the very end, you need to put browned onions with carrots and tomato paste in the borscht, and in the final - ready-made sour beets. After that, cook the soup should be no more than 5 minutes. If you cook borscht with sauerkraut, it must also be added in the final. If you put sour beets or cabbage first, and then potatoes, the latter will cook for a very long time (acid will interfere).

8. The final touch - lard with garlic

Many borscht lovers simply cannot imagine this soup without garlic dressing on lard. It gives the dish a bright juicy taste and a very appetizing garlic aroma... For dressing you will need skinless lard, garlic and fresh herbs: dill and parsley. Products must be cut and crushed in a mortar or blender to a puree state. Then this gruel, with a delicious aroma, is added to the finished hot borscht, the lid is closed, and the soup is infused for at least 15 minutes. You should not boil the contents of the pan after this, otherwise the aromas of garlic and herbs will disappear.

9. Pampushki lush, ruddy

We say "borscht", and the word "pampushka" comes to mind! Pampushka is a round bun made from yeast dough. It is better to start cooking it immediately after you put the broth on to boil, because the yeast dough should rise properly and have time to bake. Water, egg, salt, sugar, vegetable oil, yeast, flour - the ingredients for buns are simple. When the dough has risen, roll the balls and put them on a baking sheet, but remember that the donuts will rise during baking. If you want to get perfectly rounded buns, place them at a decent distance from each other. However, even if they stick together, they can be separated hot and sprinkled with garlic dressing. For dressing, take vegetable oil, crushed garlic, chopped dill with parsley and a little water. Mix everything and pour on freshly baked puffy donuts.

10. Without sour cream anywhere!

If a soup tureen has been gathering dust on the shelf of your sideboard for a long time, take it out and use it for its intended purpose - it is in this beauty that it is customary to serve borscht for a large company. Next, put the appropriate supplements and snacks for the dish - donuts, bread, chopped herbs and, of course, fatty sour cream. Well, what a borscht without sour cream!

Borscht with beans Photo: shutterstock.com

Borscht with prunes and mushrooms

Ingredients:

Prunes - 200 g
Dried white mushrooms - 20 g
Potatoes - 4 pcs.
Fresh cabbage - 300 g
Beets - 3 pcs.
Onion - 1 pc.
Carrot - 1 pc.
Tomato paste - 2 tbsp. l.
Sugar - 1 tbsp. l.
Parsley root - 1 pc.
Flour - 0.5 tbsp. l.
Vegetable oil - 3 tbsp. l.

How to cook:

Soak mushrooms for 2 hours. Then boil for 1 hour. Remove the mushrooms, chop, save the broth.
Rinse prunes, pour 2 cups of water, add sugar and cook until soft for 10 minutes.
Cut the beets into strips. Heat half the oil in a frying pan, add beets, 1 tbsp. l. tomato paste and mushroom broth, simmer, stirring, over low heat for 15 minutes.
Cut the onion, carrot and parsley root into strips and sauté with butter, tomato and flour for 5 minutes.
Dip the cabbage into the boiling mushroom broth, after boiling add the potatoes and cook for 15 minutes.
Put stewed beets and sautéed vegetables in a saucepan. Add mushrooms, boiled prunes along with the broth. Salt, pepper and cook for another 10 minutes.

Garlic donuts Photo: shutterstock.com

Garlic donuts

Ingredients:

Wheat flour - 200 g
Rye flour - 120 g
Milk - 200 ml
Eggs - 2 pcs.
Yeast - 7 g
Vegetable oil - 50 ml
Sugar - 1 tsp
Flax seeds - 50 g
Garlic - 4 cloves
Salt - a pinch

How to cook:

Warm milk to room temperature. Add dry yeast, mix.
Put sugar, 1 egg, vegetable oil, a little sifted flour and flax seeds. Mix.
Add the remaining flour, knead the dough and leave it to rise for 1 hour.
Put on the table and let rise for another 1 hour, covered with a towel.
Make 7-8 round donuts, grease the top of the buns with yolk and bake for 20 minutes at 180°C.
Grease still hot donuts with crushed garlic, mixed with a small amount of vegetable oil, salt and water.

1. As a rule, borscht is cooked on meat, bone or mixed meat and bone broth.

2. Properly prepared broth is the basis of a good borscht.
Borscht broth is usually made from brisket, less often from thin and thick about the edge or curl.

3. Water at the beginning of cooking should be poured twice as much as it is supposed to get the broth.

4. To make the broth transparent - as soon as the water boils, drain it. Rinse the meat with hot water, pour boiling water over it and cook under the lid for 1.5-2 hours.

5. It is very important to consistently put vegetables in the broth - in strict accordance with the duration of their cooking. Potatoes are laid 30 minutes before the borscht is ready, cabbage - 20 minutes, beets in prepared stew - 15 minutes, sautéed vegetables (onions, carrots, parsley) - 15 minutes, spices - 5-8 minutes, garlic (separately from other spices) - for 2 minutes.

6. The finer you chop the cabbage, the tastier it will be.
Put in the spices. 10 minutes before ready. Salt, peppercorns, bay leaf. For flavor 4 peeled whole garlic cloves.

7. To keep the color of the vegetables when stewing - simmer with 1 tbsp. l. sugar and 1-2 tbsp. l. table vinegar or 1-2 tbsp. l. lemon juice 15-20 minutes under the lid.

8. Borsch will turn out tastier and richer if you put 3-4 tbsp. l. canned red beans

9. If the borsch has lost its color, prepare a decoction. Cut the beets into slices, pour hot water (0.5 kg. 1 liter of water), add 1 tbsp. l. vinegar. Boil for 15-20 minutes. Take out the beets and pour the broth into the borscht. Such an additive will give borscht a bright color and refresh its taste.

10. To make borscht thick, boil one whole potato in it. When the borscht is ready, take it out, knead it well and return it to the borscht.

11. When cooking beets, its color and the color of its broth are muted.
To make borscht a juicy bright color, put about a quarter of the beets chopped for borscht into a bowl, pour boiling water over it and leave for at least 20 minutes. When the borscht has already been removed from the heat, squeeze the beets and pour the resulting juice into the borscht.

12. To improve the taste of borscht, it is recommended to take a piece of good lard, grind it with salt and garlic, add the resulting mixture to an almost ready borscht.

13. Do not serve borscht immediately after cooking! Let the borscht brew for at least an hour.

:) If this article was useful to you, click "I like", so you will express your gratitude to the author. (author of the article: Artur Protchenko

Borsch is a very mysterious and unusual dish, the methods of preparation of which are still disputed. In different Slavic countries, borsch is cooked in its own way - with sausages, smoked meats, fish, horseradish, zucchini, beans and even apples. Each family has its own secrets of delicious borsch, which are passed down from generation to generation, but one thing remains unchanged - the love for this amazingly delicious dish, which is impossible to resist. small children also love it, so in cookbooks for newborns there are tips and tricks for preparing this soup for babies. Now borscht has become almost an international dish, and if you want to please your family with borscht, choose any recipe - Ukrainian with donuts, Moldavian with chicken, Old Lithuanian with mushrooms and kohlrabi, Polish with bread kvass or Siberian with meatballs. Borscht has always been a symbol of home warmth and comfort, so it is important that it be tasty and fragrant.

Borscht starts with broth

Borscht is usually boiled in a strong meat broth made from good beef, pork or chicken, and if you decide to use beef, use the brisket as it is softer and juicier. Some housewives add lamb bones to the broth to make the soup more rich, others cook borscht with duck, goose and rabbit, others manage with minced meat and stew, and some manage to cook a vegetarian version of real Ukrainian borscht. If you are making meat broth, boil it as long as possible to make it richer. Bones are boiled for 5–6 hours, and meat for about 2.5 hours, just do not forget to remove the foam. During the cooking process, onions, carrots, celery and a bunch of greens can be added to the meat to enrich the taste of the broth. After cooking, the vegetables are removed from the pan, the broth is filtered, the meat is separated from the bones, cut into pieces and added to the broth, sometimes with ham, sausages and homemade sausage.

How to cook delicious red borscht

After the broth is cooked, it's time to put beets into it - it is the presence of beets that distinguishes real borscht from other first courses. The exception is green borscht, which can be prepared with or without beets, with the addition of sorrel, spinach, nettles and wild garlic.

Raw finely chopped beetroot can be added to the broth long before the meat is ready, or, having boiled it in a peel and cut into pieces, lay it in the soup at any stage of cooking borscht. You can put half a teaspoon of sugar in a saucepan with beets for a pleasant sweetness. Boiled beets are also stewed with carrots, onions, tomatoes or tomato paste - a delicious dressing is obtained. You can use pickled or pickled beets, beetroot brine or tops. Czech housewives let the beets ferment a little in warm water, and in the villages they insist on kvass. To enhance the red color, a little lemon juice or beet extract is added to the borscht, which is obtained after boiled or raw beets are passed through a juicer. However, for this purpose, you can add beetroot infusion to the soup. There is a rule - you can't spoil beetroot soup!

Tricks with vegetables when cooking borscht

If the chopped onion is put into the broth immediately after the beets, by the end of cooking the borscht it will be so boiled that it will be invisible in the soup, but will give it a spicy taste and aroma. Carrots are introduced into the broth a little later, cut into strips, and then potatoes are sent into the pan - while it is better to put a couple of tubers in the whole soup. Carrots and onions are added to borscht either raw, or with preliminary stewing or frying, and whole boiled potatoes can be mashed or mashed potatoes can be added to the liquid to make the borscht thicker.

At the end of cooking, you can do cabbage by finely chopping it and adding it to borscht, although some housewives introduce cabbage immediately after beets. Additionally, you can add zucchini, fresh or canned beans, bell peppers, apples, pea pods, turnips and corn to the borscht - the choice of product depends on the recipe and the taste of the eaters. Do not neglect spices, use dried dill, parsley, roots, garlic, black pepper, cilantro, marjoram and fresh ginger. And the finishing touches are tomato paste added directly to the pan with borscht or tomatoes chopped in a blender with pre-skinned.

Secrets of cooking borscht with frying

Frying makes fragrant, rich, bright, because fried vegetables have a more pleasant taste. Zazharka is prepared simply - carrots and onions are fried until golden brown in lard or oil, and then tomato paste or fresh tomatoes are added to the pan. You can first fry the onion with a little flour until it becomes creamy, and only then add chopped carrots, bell peppers and boiled beets. In the process of frying vegetables, you can and should add water so that the vegetable mixture does not burn, at this stage, many people add vinegar or lemon juice to vegetables, for piquancy, you can add sugar and garlic.

Modern culinary traditions are aimed at simplifying the cooking process as much as possible, and many housewives are mastering recipes for how to cook borscht in a slow cooker in order to feed the family with delicious food in record time. But sometimes you want to devote the whole day to cooking dinner and slowly boil the broth, chop and fry vegetables, experiment with products, choose fragrant spices and let the borscht brew for half an hour, as it should be. Don't be surprised if the saucepan is empty by the end of the weekend, and don't skimp on the sour cream for dressing. And you can serve this miracle not only with donuts, but also with any delicious bread. In the old days they knew - if there is borscht in the house, the household will not calm down until it is eaten. As the people said, "where there is borscht, look for us there."