Czech-Style Borscht Recipe: Perfect with Beef or Duck

Do you love borscht as much as our journalist does? Perhaps, but she is ready not only to eat it every day but also to cook it often, in different varieties. She believes her borscht is ideal in both taste and appearance. We decided — why let good things go to waste — and asked her to share the recipe with readers.

The classic borscht is considered to be made with beef bone broth. It turns out good but more dietary with chicken legs, but especially excellent and original in taste and aroma — with duck.

Ingredients

This recipe is designed for a five-liter pot. For the borscht, you need to take half a kilo of meat on the bone (about 1.1 lb), 150 grams of shredded cabbage (about 5.3 oz), 3-4 potatoes, 1-2 carrots, 3 beets, 2-3 tablespoons of tomato paste or ketchup, 2 bay leaves, 3-4 peppercorns, 3 tablespoons of vinegar, 2 cloves of garlic, salt, a pinch of sugar. If you«re making borscht with duck, use a quarter of a large carcass or half a small one, otherwise it will be too fatty. In this case, caraway seeds will also come in handy.

How to Cook

So, cook the meat broth on low heat for about an hour or even 1.5 hours (duck is better boiled for a couple of hours). Add a small onion to the broth immediately, but do not salt it.

When the broth is ready, add a little cabbage to it, but literally a small handful. If you put too much, the cabbage flavor will dominate, and it will turn out like a solyanka. Next, add thinly sliced potato pieces and cook for about 15 minutes. Add salt to taste or a universal salt and spice mix like «Vegeta» or «Maggi».

While that«s cooking, grate or finely chop the carrots and fry them in a pan with chopped onion. After about three minutes, add shredded beets (using a coarse grater), put in two tablespoons of vinegar, a pinch of sugar (about half a teaspoon) to enhance the flavor, bay leaf, peppercorns, mix and sauté. Some like to do this with sunflower oil, others with butter — you can use any. At the end, add three tablespoons of tomato paste or ketchup to the sauté. Mix again and fry for literally about five minutes.

Add the resulting dressing to the pot and cook for about 25 minutes until fully done on low heat without a lid. Taste, add salt and vinegar if necessary. At the end of cooking, add garlic pressed through a press. If you«re making borscht with duck and want a Czech version, you can also add caraway seeds at the end.

Leave the soup on the heat for another five minutes, turn off, cover with a lid and let it stand.

What to Serve With

The classic version with beef is served with black bread, sour cream, lard or speck. Borscht with duck doesn«t need lard accompaniment; it can be served simply with black bread, toasted in the oven on a rack or in a toaster, with sour cream or mayonnaise.

Thanks to not skimping on beets, the borscht turns out a rich burgundy color. But during cooking, you can vary the quantity and ratio of ingredients: if you add tomatoes, increase the amount of cabbage, and decrease the beets, you«ll get a rougher peasant version, but it»s also interesting. The color of such soup will be more pink.

Earlier we told how to prepare kuchmachi (a Georgian dish). What it is and how to cook it, read in the recipe from our journalist«s Georgian mother.