Borscht
Борщ
Borshch
Beetroot and cabbage soup built on beef broth, with the grated beetroot added late and with acid so it stays red.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 2 hr 45 min
- Resting
- 20 min
- Total
- 3 hr 35 min
- Serves
- 6
- Revisions
- 5
Allergens
- Milk
- Sulphites
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Method
Put the beef shin in a large heavy pan and pour over the 3 litres of cold water.
Bring it up slowly over about 20 minutes, to the point where the first lazy bubbles break the surface.
Start it in cold water and bring it up slowly. Meat dropped into water already boiling seizes and holds its scum inside, and a broth clouded at this stage never clears afterwards.
Skim the grey foam off with a ladle as it gathers, and go on skimming until the surface stays clear.
Add the halved onion, the halved carrot, the bay leaves and the whole peppercorns.
Hold it at a bare simmer with the lid ajar for 2 hours, until the meat has shrunk back from the bone and gives under a fork.
Lift the beef onto a plate and strain the broth into a clean pan, discarding the boiled aromatics.
Pull the meat off the bone once it is cool enough to handle, discard the fat and gristle, and shred it into pieces that will sit on a spoon.
Warm the sunflower oil in a wide pan over medium heat.
Cook the diced onion and grated carrot for 8-10 minutes, stirring now and then, until soft with the first hint of gold at the edges.
Add the grated beetroot, the tomato puree, the 2 tbsp of cider vinegar and the sugar, and turn everything over together.
Stew the beetroot in its own pan with the acid rather than tipping it raw into the broth. Betanin is destroyed by long heat and held by acid, and beetroot simmered for an hour in a neutral pot gives a soup the colour of weak gravy.
Cover and stew gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the beetroot has softened and the pan has gone deep red rather than raw purple.
Bring the strained broth back to a simmer while the beetroot cooks and slide in the potatoes.
Simmer for 10 minutes, until a knife tip meets only slight resistance in a cube.
Add the shredded cabbage and cook for 5-8 minutes, until it is tender but still has some bite.
Stir the beetroot mixture and the shredded meat into the broth.
Bring it back to a bare simmer for 5 minutes and no longer. Every extra minute of heat from here costs colour, and a pot boiled hard after the beetroot goes in turns brick brown.
Stir in the chopped garlic off the heat, so it stays sharp rather than cooking out.
Season with the ground peppercorns and then with fine salt, tasting as you go.
Taste for the balance of sour and sweet, and correct it with more cider vinegar a teaspoon at a time. It should taste distinctly sour rather than merely savoury.
Cover the pan and stand it off the heat for 20 minutes before serving, which lets the flavours settle and takes the raw edge off the garlic.
Ladle into warm bowls, scatter the dill over and put the smetana on the table.
Let each person stir their own spoonful of smetana in. Soured cream stirred into the whole pot over heat splits into grains in a soup this acidic, and it cannot be brought back.
Cool any left over in a shallow container, refrigerate within two hours and eat it within three days.
Expect it to be better on the second day and a duller red. Reheat it to a simmer and no further.
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What to expect
- Taste
A sour-sweet balance is the whole point — cider vinegar and a little sugar working against the earthy sweetness of the beetroot and the savoury depth of the long-simmered beef broth. The cabbage adds a faint bitterness and the garlic, stirred in raw off the heat at the very end, gives a sharp, fresh bite that a garlic cooked into the broth from the start would never provide. It should taste distinctly sour rather than merely savoury — the vinegar is meant to be noticeable, not just a background correction.
- Aroma
Earthy beetroot and sweet stewed onion first, with a savoury meaty depth underneath from the long-simmered broth, and dill's bright, grassy top note the last thing to register as the bowl is set down.
- Texture
Substantial and chunky rather than smooth — tender beef, soft but intact potato, cabbage with a little remaining bite, all suspended in a broth with real body from the reduced, grated beetroot and carrot.
- Sound
A slow, heavy bubble at a bare simmer, and the specific sound of a spoon stirring smetana into an individual bowl at the table, which is part of the ritual of eating it rather than incidental.
- How the flavour moves
Sourness and sweetness arrive together at the front from the beetroot and vinegar, the savoury broth and beef underneath carrying through the middle, and the raw garlic's sharp bite the last thing to land, right before the dill's freshness on the exhale.
- Serve it
Served properly hot, though many people consider it better the next day once reheated, when the flavours have had longer to settle even as the colour dulls slightly.
- Goes with
Rye bread, and pirozhki on the side in the traditional pairing this collection's own history notes — a filled bun alongside a bowl of borscht is one of the most standard combinations in the whole cuisine.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Moderate. Nothing in it is technically difficult, but there are several separate cooking stages to coordinate and the colour genuinely can be lost through carelessness.
- Cost
Moderate — beef shin is the main cost, with cheap root vegetables making up the bulk of the pot.
- Equipment
A large heavy pan for the broth, a separate pan for stewing the beetroot, and a ladle.
- When to make it
Any season, though it is especially a cold-weather dish given its long-simmered meat broth and substantial vegetables.
- Best season
Root vegetables and cabbage are available year-round, though the dish leans toward a cold-weather meal given its long cook time.
- You know it is done when
A deep, clear red broth rather than a murky brown one, with the beef fully tender and falling from any connective tissue.
- And it feels like
The beef should give easily under a fork; the potato should be tender but holding its shape rather than disintegrating.
- Food safety
A meat broth needs proper cooling and refrigeration within two hours if not eaten straight away, given the volume and the length of time it sits at warm temperatures during preparation.
- Where it goes wrong
- Adding raw beetroot straight to the main broth rather than stewing it separately with acid first, which loses most of the red colour to a long simmer.
- Boiling hard once the beetroot has gone into the broth, which continues to cook the colour out even after the stewing stage.
- Adding the garlic too early, so it loses the sharp, fresh bite that's meant to arrive last.
- Stirring smetana into the whole pot over heat rather than into individual bowls, which splits it into grains in a broth this acidic.
- If it does go wrong
Dull brown rather than red: the beetroot was boiled too long or too hard, either in its own pan or after being added to the broth. Not sour enough: add cider vinegar a teaspoon at a time rather than relying on salt alone. Split, grainy smetana: it was stirred into the hot pot rather than an individual bowl.
- Making it ahead
Genuinely improves made a day ahead and reheated, which is standard practice rather than a compromise.
- Keeping it
Three days refrigerated.
- Reheating
Reheat to a simmer and no further; it is widely considered better on the second day, though the red will have dulled slightly.
- Freezing
Freezes reasonably well, though the texture of the potato softens further on thawing.
- Leftovers
Improves overnight in the way many long-simmered soups do, with the flavours settling and rounding out.
- Scaling it
Scales up cleanly in a larger pot, keeping the same proportions of broth to beetroot mixture.
- Substitutions
White wine vinegar or lemon juice can replace cider vinegar. A vegetarian version drops the beef entirely and uses a rich vegetable stock, though the dish's traditional identity is built on a meat broth.
- Dietary swaps
Contains milk from the smetana garnish, which is easily served on the side rather than stirred in for anyone avoiding dairy. Naturally gluten-free as written. Not vegan or vegetarian in this version, owing to the beef broth.
- Shopping for it
Genuine smetana, where available, is noticeably thicker and less prone to splitting than standard supermarket soured cream, and worth seeking out from an Eastern European grocer.
- Keeping the cost down
Beef shin is a cheaper cut than most, chosen for how well it responds to long, slow simmering rather than for cost alone, though it also happens to be economical.
- Sustainability
Beef shin is an economical, lower-demand cut relative to prime steaks, making good use of the whole animal.
- Nutrition
A substantial, protein-rich main-course soup owing to the beef shin and the volume of vegetables.
- Worth it?
A dish whose cultural identity is worth stating plainly and correctly, and a genuinely rewarding one to cook precisely because so much of its result depends on a handful of small, deliberate technique choices around timing and heat.
Where it comes from
- Origin
Ukraine.
- Also called
Borshch (борщ) in Ukrainian and Russian.
- Said out loud
BORSHCH, with the final consonant cluster pronounced roughly as in the English 'wash' followed by 'ch'.
- What the name means
The word borshch originally named common hogweed, which was fermented into a sour broth long before beetroot took its place as the dish's defining ingredient — the name has always tracked the soup's sour character rather than any one fixed vegetable.
- History
Borscht's status as a specifically Ukrainian dish, cooked with regional variation across the wider former Soviet space, was given formal international recognition in 2022 when UNESCO inscribed the culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, a decision made explicitly in the context of the full-scale Russian invasion that year and the disputes over the dish's cultural ownership that surrounded it.
- Why it matters
Everyday food in Ukraine, eaten year-round in dozens of regional forms, and a household staple across Russia, Belarus, Poland, Moldova and the Baltic states. It carries significant identity weight, evidenced directly by its 2022 UNESCO listing.
- When it is eaten
An everyday soup rather than an occasion dish in most households, though a meatless version is traditionally served at the Ukrainian Christmas Eve table alongside garlic buns.
- The traditional way
A long-simmered meat broth as the base, with the beetroot stewed separately with acid and added late to protect its colour — a technique this recipe follows closely.
- How it changed
There is no single fixed borscht; it runs from a green version made with sorrel and no beetroot at all, to a cold summer version soured with kefir, to the meatless Christmas Eve version — the dish has always been a broad family rather than one recipe.
- Regional variations
Poland, Russia, Belarus and the Baltic states each cook their own versions with local variation in the meat, the vegetables and the souring agent used; the cold, kefir-soured summer version is a distinct regional form.
- How this version differs
This version uses beef shin specifically and rests the finished pot for 20 minutes off the heat before serving, which the recipe's own steps note takes the raw edge off the garlic stirred in at the end.
- Sources and credit
No individual can be credited with borscht; it is a national and regional culinary tradition rather than an invented or composed dish, and its Ukrainian origin — as distinct from its being cooked across the wider region — is the fact best stated plainly rather than left vague.
Shchi
Golubtsy
Okroshka
Rassolnik
Solyanka
Vareniki