How to cook red borscht in 4 steps

Every housewife carefully keeps in the secret places of her culinary skills a recipe for an old soup that is well known to everyone from childhood.

A dish that was once adored by Catherine the Great and Anna Pavlova.

And the method of its preparation was given in the ancient Russian code of rules of social and domestic life "Domostroy" back in the 16th century. This dish, praised in literature and in beliefs, is everyone's favorite borscht, says Yulia Arkhipova .

It's easy to conjure it. You'll need:

• meat (0.8-1 kg beef);
• vegetables (2 small beets, 5 potatoes, 1 small head of cabbage, 1 medium carrot, 1 onion and 1 tomato, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 or 2 sweet peppers);
• additional ingredients (olive/sunflower oil for frying, 3 tsp unsalted tomato paste, 1 tsp flour, 1 cup water, salt and spices to taste, finely chopped herbs, sour cream or mayonnaise);
• a little inspiration and love for cooking.

Step #1. Broth

First, you need to boil the meat. Preferably beef, preferably on the bone. But if not, any will do. Skim off the foam, add salt and leave to simmer on low heat for about an hour. To make the soup even tastier, you can collect the yellow spots of fat floating on the surface in a separate plate and put them in the finished borscht at the very end.

Step #2. Preparing vegetables

First, you need to wash and peel the prepared vegetables. Then, pass the carrots and beets through a coarse grater, shred the cabbage. Chop the onion into half rings, cut the tomato into cubes, and cut the pepper with the core removed into thin strips. The potatoes must be prepared at the very last moment so that they do not turn black and do not change the taste of the broth.

Step #3. Refueling

In preheated oil, fry the onion, then add the beetroot and carrot. Then pepper, tomato and, if desired, garlic, finely chopped or squeezed through a garlic press. And leave to stew.
Meanwhile, thoroughly mix the tomato paste with flour and dilute with water. Add to the vegetables and simmer. As soon as the dressing changes color to bright orange, you can turn off the heat.

Step #4. Adding ingredients

Remove the meat from the pan. This will make it easier to cut up the beef and free up some space in the pan. Add the potatoes and cabbage to the broth. Wait until the water boils, add the dressing, spices, and fat collected in a separate plate, reduce the heat and leave to cook. A few minutes before turning off the heat, throw 2-3 bay leaves into the soup.

And that's it, the magnificent red borscht is ready. The dish only needs to simmer for about half an hour and then it can be served. With sour cream, mayonnaise or Greek yogurt. With whatever you like. And don't forget to arm yourself with an appetite and sprinkle the dish with fresh herbs!

Earlier we talked about preparing a spicy snack for beer .