Поїсти! A little home made borscht recipe brought to you by the red-stained Coal Speaker

The first day of spring should bring bright sunshine.. warm temperatures.. growing green grass. But in Northeastern PA, we settle in for a long winter’s nap!

It’s cold, for being the beginning of a new season of rebirth.. As usual, we are entering our third winter season of the year–after the several false springs. Real spring normally won’t hit until mid-April. . so don’t start planting yet.

But it is this cold weather that fills our bones with enough chill to we want a staple of childhood: Borscht..

Now when I was young, my Ukrainian grandmother did it her way.. ‘vegetarian’ but with a little sprinkle of added bone broth.. I was too young to know her recipe.. Quite frankly I was also too young to appreciate it. I hated the stuff! It was like red dirt mixed with sour cream and green sprigs of who knows what on top..

Perhaps the taste buds become refined later in life, enough to not only accept but be pleasured by that beet root scent as it fills the air with its splendor, those ground up carrots and yes, that beautifully scented and even better tasting dill..

SO we did some Coal Region shopping today and got what we needed.

You may have a family recipe.. you may despise what we are about to present. But it’s what we did. And how we do it.. we do us. You do you.. Borscht will do Borscht…

Fresh herbs are important. Though a family member told me to add some dry dill during the cooking process.. That advice seem to have paid off..

You need dill. Lots of it. Fresh. Dried. LOTS of fresh.. More the better actually..
An onion, chopped..
Garlic, diced
Fresh parsley.. chopped.
Vegetable stock. Or bone broth. Or a big lardy piece of meet cooked. Whatever ya fancy, bott.
BEETS. As many as you want, but get ready to shred.. we got 6 small ones today. If you find large ones you may only need 4.
Carrots (easier if they are already diced)
And cabbage. For us we settled for the purple variety.. I don’t think color matters since your entire kitchen will be a faint color of red by the time you’re done cooking it..
Sour cream *if you want it*
A lemon, a lime, or vinegar. Again optional, but better with one or both or even all three.

x x x

I like to let me diced garlic soak in olive oil on a low temperature to infuse the oil while we cut everything else… Start there.
Cabbage time! Cut it and slice it and dice it.. make it as chunky as you want (but that will take longer to cook) or as small.. that will be easier to eat and digest..less chewing in the end..
Dice your onion…
Open your bag of carrots: Do absolutely no work if they are diced. If no, prepare for that..
The red beet time.. fun moment: You must either wear gloves or be ready to have a pinkish hue about your arms and wrists for days.. I didn’t have gloves. So my keyboard, as I type, is turning a faint red… We used a blender. After removing the rough skin of the red beets, we chopped them into chunks and then used a blender to chop. You don’t want to puree.. you want some lumps in your bowl… The scenery was impressive before we began to cook..

Cooking time…

Turn the heat up to medium high.. Throw in your chopped onions.. Cook until tender.. Begin to smell the smells….
Mix in the chopped cabbage… Mix and sauté until a desirable outcome comes your way. Your home will smell a bit worse now..
Add in the diced carrots.. No change to the smell. You smell cabbage invading most rooms in the house by now…
A secret ingredient–if you roll this way–is either a tomato or tomato paste.. It thickens things. You don’t need it. We did it, and it turned out great.. You choose. That’s the beauty of borscht.
Splash in your red beets. And this is the moment when you may realize you don’t have enough room in your pot do you have to quickly dash to the sink, clean a used pot, and get it ready for the borscht overflow like we did…. Add some fresh and dried dill.
Add Salt and pepper … you will add more salt later, so don’t go crazy at the beginning.

We dumped in vegetable stock. Thankfully now that we had two pots we realized we had an extra stock in a cabinet. Crisis averted.. our borscht would be the normal wet consistency it was meant to be.

I am sure a ‘dry borscht’ is as annoying as a Ukrainian skin irritation…

Bring to a boil.. and then lower that temp to low for about an hour, maybe two.. you want soft cabbage …

The scent and aroma in your home now changes to an illustrious mixture of a fart-like scent mixed with dirt and dill.
Accept it.
Love it.. be one with it…

AS your soup begins to come together into a magical little concoction of Eastern European heaven, you have a choice to make: Add potatoes or not..

We did.. but you don’t have to. IF you do, don’t add them until the borscht is about 20 minutes or so from being done.

But what you definitely need to add is the huge amount of fresh parsley and dill that you have diced and ready.. LOTS of dill… more the better..

Also a great time to add FRESH squeezed lemon juice and a few table spoons of vinegar. All to taste. There is no rule here. You do it your way..

After about 20 more minutes of low-grade love (longer perhaps if you added those potatoes) you’re ready to roll..

Salt, pepper, more lemon juice.. whatever you want and need, just throw it in..

And when done, your final choice will be to add or not add the sour cream!! SO many do, and some even cook with it. For us, we opted out. I never liked sour cream on anything and especially in dill, it eliminates that earthy flavor. But if you want it, do it. We had it on hand just in case…

The final product will be a reddish bowl of true bliss… Top with even MORE fresh dill.. and just let that beet and carrot soup course through your veins…

Open a window, let the COLD spring air in.. And let the steam of your borscht fill your face with love…

ENJOY!