Lenten Borscht with Mushrooms
Borscht built on mushroom broth is Lenten-table cooking, where depth comes from braised mushrooms rather than meat — loosely Lenten, mind, given the tablespoon of butter and the three of smetana at serving. (Smetana is the thick, high-fat cultured sour cream of Slavic kitchens; crème fraîche is the closest Western match.) The mushrooms braise in butter before any water touches them, because fat pulls out aroma compounds that water alone leaves behind.
- Dried porcini give the most flavor — soak them, strain the liquid, pour it into the broth. Fresh cremini make a gentler version, so use a bit more of them.
- Sauté the flour with the onion rather than tipping it raw into simmering liquid, or it seizes into lumps.
- Boil the beets separately and add them sliced; hold the tomato purée and the vinegar until the last minutes.
That last point is about color: betanin, the pigment that makes beets red, degrades with long boiling and the soup goes brick-brown. Acid stabilizes it, so the vinegar at the finish is doing more than seasoning. The recipe was written down in Sevsk, in Russia’s Bryansk region.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 464 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cut the mushrooms and braise them in butter, then use them to make a broth.
To the broth add the boiled beets cut into strips, potato strips, and carrot cubes.
Add the shredded, sauteed onion and the flour.
Put everything into the broth, season with salt, and cook for 10 minutes.
At the end of cooking, add the tomato puree and bay leaf.
Before serving, stir in sour cream and sprinkle with parsley and celery greens.
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