Red Beef/Beet Borscht

Was married to a Ukrainian for 10 years and his mom taught me to make it. It's GREAT stuff. Make it in a very very big pot!

Ingredients:
1-2 lbs. stew meat (depending on how meaty you like your soup)
Salt & pepper
1 onion (whole)
3 avg. size beets, peeled
3 large carrots
3 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/8ths
1 heads of cabbage, sliced thin crosswise
1 small can of tomato paste or reg size can of tomato sauce
Sour salt (aka citric acid) - I can never remember how much. 1/2-1 tsp I think? I eyeball.

Add meat and cover with water. Simmer for 1 hour; skim.
Add the onion, carrots, and beets. Simmer for 1 hour.
Remove the onion, carrots, and beets. Toss the onion or keep it for something else, but you're done with it.
Add the potatoes and cabbage, plus salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for 20-30 minutes while the carrots and beets cool.
Grate the carrots and beets and when the potatoes and cabbage are done, add to the pot and watch the soup turn BRIGHT PINK. My favorite part!
Add the sour salt a little at a time; taste to make sure it's not too much.
Add the tomato sauce.
Bring everything back to a boil for about 5 minutes.

Done!

Eat with a spoonful of sour cream. This recipe easily doubles and even my kids like it.

Thanks for the recipe! I'm going to try it but only when I have my own veggies.

Oh yes, it is great soup! It is very popular here in Poland too!

This is one of the most overlooked soup/stew ,that I make also. I make mine slightly different but very close. I leave the onions in. I also make it once in a while with pork instead of beef. I also use some thyme. Thanks for sharing.

As a Ukrainian myself, I gotta pitch in my 2 cents - use meat with bones. Bones make everything tastier. You can use same stewing meat, but add a soup bone (knuckle, joints, rib bones) and cook the heck out of them before adding vegetables.

For vegetarians out there, here is a very refreshing summer version of borscht, made with younger tender beets:

http://www.grouprecipes.com/34779/summer-cold-borscht.html

We have here in southern B.C. several communities of Doukobor Russians who came here late1800s/early1900s and they make a delicious vegetarian borscht that does not use beetroot.

Being so used to eating that kind, I was not thinking when I went into a restaurant and ordered borsct that turned up red instead of the pale creamy coloured stuff that I was used to.

Kelejan wrote: ... delicious vegetarian borscht that does not use beetroot ... pale creamy coloured stuff ...

I wonder what this is made of? "Borscht" is an ancient slavic word for "beets", so to make borscht without beets is like making clam chowder without clams. That's not to say it's not tasty, but it sounds highly unusual. Now I am really curious. Do you know what it was made of?

Weedless_in_Atlanta wrote:

Kelejan wrote: ... delicious vegetarian borscht that does not use beetroot ... pale creamy coloured stuff ...

I wonder what this is made of? "Borscht" is an ancient slavic word for "beets", so to make borscht without beets is like making clam chowder without clams. That's not to say it's not tasty, but it sounds highly unusual. Now I am really curious. Do you know what it was made of?

I do know that it contains light coloured veggies such as carrots, celery, potatoes, peas, and cream is added. I will ask one of my Russian friends and get back to you.

ETA:

In Doukhobor cuisine, the main ingredient is cabbage, and the soup also contains beets, potatoes, tomatoes and heavy cream, along with dill and leeks. This style of borscht is orange in colour, and is always eaten hot.

Well, all I can say, is that in the thirty years I have lived here I have never had borscht that contained beets. Perhaps it is a local variation?

A group of about 5,000 people came from Russian and settled in a couple of areas

and no doubt their cuisine was due to what they could plant.

great thread here.
My husbands mother came over from Poland, in 1927, they were Ukranian, and escaping the Russians. (her father was on some LIST)
Her family settled in Saskatchewan and she grew up there, but eventually moved to Grand Forks, Christina Lake area of BC, which is in your neck of the woods, Kelejan. Although the community was mostly Doukabours, she made her borsch with beets, because she was Ukranian.
However the main hotel in Grand forks, until it burned down last summer, was famous for its borsch, which was cabbage borsch.