“Little Flame” Borscht with Chicken Thighs
Borscht is the beet soup of Ukraine, and this version turns on one decision: the beets never enter the main pot raw. They are boiled apart, grated coarse, and returned with their own cooking liquid at the very end. That is why the bowl comes out ruby rather than brick brown — betanin, the pigment in beets, breaks down over long boiling, and the acidity of lemon juice holds it together.
The second trick is the potatoes. They cook whole in the 3-4 litres (roughly 3-4 quarts) of chicken broth, then get lifted out and mashed directly onto the shredded raw cabbage. The hot starch half-steams the cabbage so it softens quickly, and the soup gains body without a spoonful of flour.
Three things that decide the bowl
- Two tablespoons of sugar with the juice of half a lemon are one unit, not two options. Drop either and the sweet-sour balance falls apart.
- Always cook the tomato paste in the butter with the onion. Raw, it reads sharp and metallic; two or three minutes over heat make it mellow.
- Garlic goes into the bowl raw and crushed, never into the pot. Boiling flattens it completely.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 464 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Cover the chicken thighs with water, add the whole peeled potatoes and the carrots, and set the pot on to cook.
At the same time, boil three small peeled beets in a separate pot. Don't pour out the cooking liquid.
Shred the cabbage. Lift out the cooked potatoes and mash them right on top of the cabbage, then slide everything into the pot with the thighs and season with salt.
Take the cooked carrot and beets out of the borscht and grate them on the coarse side of a box grater.
Sauté the onion with the tomato paste in butter, then return the vegetables to the pot along with the sauté.
Pour in the beet cooking liquid, squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, season with pepper, and add 2 tablespoons of sugar.
Bring to a boil — and the borscht is ready.
Squeeze a clove of garlic into each bowl and add chopped dill.
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