Borsch

This soup can be made with pretty much whatever veggies you have lying around. If you skip the beets, you’ll have a hard time convincing anyone it’s borsch. The nitrites in celery help preserve things, so don’t skip the celery. Borsch tastes even better after a couple or three days in the fridge.

Overview

• Makes about 4 1qt canning jars.
• Day before: Roast soup bones and then pressure cook them to get a beef stock.
• ~1h before eating: Chop up a bunch of veggies, throw them a bit of meat and

Ingredients

Bone Stock

• as many soup bones as your InstaPot / pressure-cooker / stock pot will easily hold
• generous glug of acid (white or apple vinegar) ~ 1/2 cup (to extract minerals from bones)
• beef short ribs, chuck roast or whatever meat you’re using (added half way through the roast)

Broth

• bone stock from above
• kitchen scrap veggies (I keep a bag in the freezer and add to it over the week)
• OR 1 onion, 2 carrots, 2 stalks celery (unpeeled, cut in half. Use if you don’t have enough scrap)

Soup

• broth from above
• 3 large potatoes peeled and cubed (keep separate from other veg)
• 2 or 3 bay leaves
• 3 tbsp tomato paste
• 3 large beets peeled and cubed
• 2 onions chopped or cubed or shredded
• 4 carrots chopped or cubed or shredded
• 2 tomatoes, de-seeded, chopped or cubed or shredded
• 5 stalks celery sliced thin or chopped
• 1/2 cabbage chopped or cubed (shredded is nasty)
• lemon or vinegar to taste (about 3 lemons)
• salt to taste (about 3 tbsp, depending how salty the tomato paste is)

Presentation

• fresh onion, diced about 1 tbsp per bowl
• fresh dill (or cilantro if you can’t get dill)
• sour cream or mayonnaise (optional)
• pickles or sauerkraut (optional)

Technique

Bone Stock

5 min prep + 1 ~ 2 hrs roasting + 5 min prep + 15 min simmer & skim + 1.5 hrs pressure OR 4 to 8 hrs simmer

The day before, put your bones on a parchment covered pan and put it in the oven to roast. 325F is fine. Don’t go over 375F or you’ll risk scorching the fat that renders off the bones. Roast them about an hour or so. Maybe 1.5 hrs. The fat should render into the bottom of the pan. There should be lots of fond (brown stuff) on the bones. It should smell pretty good.

Bonus: If you’re lucky there might be some marrow bones in the mix. Keep an eye on these while they’re roasting and you can pull them out for a roasted marrow treat. My partner loves that stuff.

About half way through add your meat. Your goal is to get a nice golden brown on the meat.

Once the bones are roasted, pour off the tallow (the beef fat in the bottom of the pan) and reserve for other recipes. This is awesome stuff for making roasted potatoes, for example.

Get out your InstantPot or stock pot. Separate out the meat. Pull or cut the meat off the bones, if any, and put the bones in the pot. Reserve meat for Soup step (I usually put it in a canning jar in the fridge). Put your roasted soup bones in your stock pot, too, along with a good glug of acid. Get all the fond from the roasting pan and parchment paper into the stock pot, too. Some boiling water will loosen up any fond that’s stuck to your roasting pan.

If using an Instant Pot, add water to the fill marker. Otherwise, top your pot up with water to cover the bones. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Skim any foam or brown scum from the top for the first 10 to 20 minutes.

Cover it and let it simmer for a good 4 to 8 hours. Or pressure cook it for at least an hour on high. Your goal is to pull out all the

Strain and discard solids. You now have stock. If you’re into it, you can take the bones at this point and accumulate them in your freezer. When you have a bunch, bake them again to make bone-meal for your plants.

Broth

Reheat your stock if necessary.

Add your veggie scraps from the freezer. If you don’t have enough scrap, supplement with the ugliest carrots / onions / celery you have.

Top up with water as needed. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for about 30 to 40 minutes. Be careful with the time and temperature here. Overheating or overcooking the aromatics will cost some of the more delicate and brighter flavours.

Strain out the broth and send the solids to your compost.

You can totally skip these steps and use just broth from a tetra-pack.

Your borsch will still be good. Making the broth is how you get excellent borsch.

Timeshifting Opportunity

Faux can the meat in the boiling hot broth. Let it cool and it will last in the fridge for a week or two.

Soup

15 min prep + 10 min + 15 min

• Meat should be in bite size chunks.Chop across the grain if necessary.
• Optional: Remove the leafy tops of your beets, thoroughly wash them and chop them. NOTE: while I like beet tops in my borsch, they’re not for everyone.
• Peel & cube beets and potatoes.
• Wash tomatoes and slice in half. Squeeze out and discard the seeds then chop.
• Wash and chop the rest of your veggies (onions, carrots, celery stalks, tomatoes, cabbage, whatever).

About 30 min before you want to eat, everything EXCEPT POTATOES goes in the pot. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer for about 10 minutes. Add the potatoes and cook until they’re fork-tender. About 15 min. Remove from heat Remove and discard the bay leaves.

Season with salt and lemon juice or vinegar to taste. You’ll be surprised how much salt you need.

Storing the Extra

NOTE: This is not proper canning. The soup must still be refrigerated. This is assuming you didn’t skip on celery, acidity, and salt. If you don’t have the nitrites from the celery and acidity, then you must eat the soup promptly. That said, I usually make a doubleish recipe. My stock pot will produce about 10 x 1qt canning jars of soup, plus 3 or 4 bowls for eating fresh off the stove. To preserve this soup, faux-canning works really well. Put the soup into sterile 1qt canning jars, using a sterile jar-funnel and ladle. Leave about 1cm of air at the top. Cap on loosely, slosh to get the remaining air hot. Gently tighten the cap. Rinse. You should hear the lid pop as it seals. Loosen the ring, let the jars cool for 20 or 30 minutes and then refrigerate. If you do this promptly, while the soup is near boiling hot, the first few jars will last for weeks in the fridge.

Presentation

5 min or less

• Fill your bowls with the hot soup,
• a generous tbsp of sour cream or mayonaise (optional),
• some chopped pickles or sauerkraut (optional),
• and a good bunch of fresh herbs

Don’t even bother with dried dill. Tastes best after at least 2 days in the fridge.