How nice it is to eat a plate of red aromatic borscht. The main thing is to cook it correctly. You can cook the first in meat broth or make it a vegetable. If you follow the recipe, then in any case you get a delicious dish.
Ingredients for borscht
In order to cook borscht, you need meat, vegetables, spices. Vegetarians and fasting people can eliminate the meat ingredient. Vegetable borscht is also very aromatic and tasty. Everyone else will need:
- 1 kg of beef;
- 3.5 liters of water;
- 4 medium potatoes;
- 300 g of beets;
- 300 g of cabbage;
- 1 medium onion;
- 1 carrot;
- 2 cloves of garlic;
- 3 tablespoons of tomato paste;
- 1 teaspoonful of 6% vinegar or the juice of half a lemon;
- 3 bay leaves;
- pepper, salt;
- vegetable oil;
- greens.
Preparation
Rinse the meat, soak it for 20 minutes in cold water. Then you need to drain it, pour a new one, put the pan on the fire. After boiling, the broth is either poured out and new water is poured, or the foam is carefully removed from its surface.
Make a small fire. The meat should be cooked in water for an hour and a half. Simmer the vegetables at this time. First, finely chop the onion, grate the carrots on a coarse grater. Lightly sauté these vegetables in vegetable oil in a skillet with high sides. If you use a low skillet, the boiling liquid will overflow.
Now you can add beets grated on a coarse grater, tomato paste to onions and carrots, fry for five minutes and pour water. It should cover the vegetables with 1 finger. Vinegar or lemon juice is added to it. If these acidic ingredients are not available, then you can replace them with 50 grams of sauerkraut juice. The main thing is to pour food acid into the beets so that the vegetable does not lose its bright red color.
Depending on whether it is old or young beets, stew the vegetables under the lid for 25-40 minutes. The young one stews faster.
Meanwhile, the broth is simmering over low heat. Place the diced potatoes in the broth 25 minutes before the end of cooking.
The end of an exciting process
It's time for cabbage. It is chopped finely enough and placed in a saucepan 5-15 minutes before the end of cooking. Late varieties will be ready in 15 minutes, summer varieties - in 5. Together with cabbage, beetroot dressing is put in borscht, which is stewed until soft, salt and pepper. The aromatic first course is ready.
Before serving, sour cream or mayonnaise is placed in each plate, and finely chopped greens are placed on top of them. Put cloves of garlic on a saucer, each one will take for himself as much as he wants. If everyone loves garlic, squeeze a couple of cloves into a saucepan through a garlic press.
Some housewives put not chopped, but whole potatoes 40 minutes before the end of cooking. After the borscht is cooked, they take it out, crush it with a crush and put it back in the pan.
25 minutes before the end of cooking, you can put sweet bell peppers, cut into slices, into the dish. It will add extra flavor to the borscht. All these additions are at the discretion of the hostess.
