Borsh food
Borsch”, “Borshch”, and “Borsht” redirect here. In North America, borscht is borsh food linked with either Jews or Mennonites, the groups who first brought it there from Europe. East Slavic languages, such as Ukrainian.
North America by Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. Depending on the recipe, some of these components may be omitted or substituted. The stock is typically made by boiling meat, bones, or both. The vegetables most commonly added to borscht are beetroots, white cabbage, carrots, parsley root, potatoes, onions and tomatoes. Potatoes and cabbage are boiled in the stock for about 15 minutes before the precooked vegetables are added. The soup is typically flavored with a wide selection of herbs, spices and condiments. Salt, black pepper, garlic, bay leaves and dill are among the most commonly used.
The dominant tastes in borscht are sweet and sour. This combination is traditionally obtained by adding beet sour. Apart from its employment in borscht, it may be also added to prepared horseradish or used as pot roast marinade. As the traditional method of making borscht with beet sour often requires planning at least several days ahead, many recipes for quicker borscht replace the beet sour with fresh beetroot juice, while the sour taste is imparted by other ingredients.
Many regional recipes for borscht have also developed in Russian cuisine. It is made by combining strained meat-and-vegetable stock with wild mushroom broth and beet sour. In some versions, smoked meat may be used for the stock and the tartness may be obtained or enhanced by adding lemon juice, dill pickle brine, or dry red wine. Christmas Eve borscht, is a variant of the clear borscht that is traditionally served during the Polish Christmas Eve supper. In this version, meat stock is either omitted or replaced with fish broth, usually made by boiling the heads cut off from fish used in other Christmas Eve dishes. Ashkenazi Jews living in Eastern Europe adopted beetroot borscht from their Slavic neighbors and adapted it to their taste and religious requirements. Lithuanian cold soup”, blended with sour cream or yogurt, and sprinkled with chives, as served in Poland.
In the summertime, cold borscht is a popular alternative to the aforementioned variants, which are normally served hot. It consists of beet sour or beet juice blended with sour cream, buttermilk, soured milk, kefir or yogurt. The mixture has a distinctive pink or magenta color. This soup was known in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which comprised the territories of modern-day Lithuania and Belarus, and it is still part of the culinary traditions of these and neighboring nations. In Lithuanian, it is known as Šaltibarščiai. Coated” dressed herring salad resembles Šaltibarščiai cold borsht as well, despite not being a soup.
The similarity includes strong color from using beets, similar choice of vegetables, and the “decorative” addition of boiled eggs. Although borscht is mostly used to describe a beet-based soup, there are some exceptions. In some culinary cultures, there are soups with the same name or similar names. In such soups, beetroots are not used or merely optional. The principal common trait among such borschts is a tart flavor from sour-tasting ingredients.
In the Carpathian Mountains of southern Poland, variants of borscht are also made in which the tart taste comes from dairy products, such as whey or buttermilk. The Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian version of borscht is a hot soup made with beef stock, green peppers and other vegetables, which may or may not include beetroots, and flavored with chopped red chili and fresh cilantro. Chinese borscht”, it originated in Harbin, close to the Russian border in northeast China, and has spread as far as Hong Kong. The diversity of borscht styles is matched by the wide choice of garnishes and side dishes with which various kinds of borscht may be served. The sour cream may be served in a separate pitcher for the diners to add the desired amount themselves or the borscht may come already “whitened”, that is, blended with sour cream.
Individual helpings may be spiced up with minced hot peppers or garlic. Meat, removed from the stock on which the borscht was based, may be cut into smaller chunks and either added back into the soup or served on the side with horseradish or mustard. Bacon and sausages are also commonly used as borscht garnishes. Borscht, like any other soup in East Slavic cuisines, is seldom eaten by itself, but rather accompanied by a side dish. At a minimum, spoonfuls of borscht are alternated with bites of a slice of bread. An even more exquisite way to serve borscht is with a coulibiac, or a large loaf-shaped pie. Eastern Europe to Siberia, to northwestern North America.
The Slavs collected hogweed in May and used its roots for stewing with meat,. 1830, “Poles have been always partial to tart dishes, which are somewhat peculiar to their homeland and vital to their health. One of the earliest possible mentions of borscht as a soup is found in the diary of German merchant Martin Gruneweg, who visited Kyiv in 1584. After Gruneweg reached river Borshchahivka in Kyiv’s vicinity on 17 October 1584, he wrote down a local legend saying that the river was so named because there was a borscht market. 16th-century Russian compendium of moral rules and homemaking advice. It recommends growing the plant “by the fence, around the whole garden, where the nettle grows”, to cook a soup of it in springtime and reminds the reader to, “for the Lord’s sake, share it with those in need”. Hogweed borscht was mostly a poor man’s food.
