With the onset of summer, the time comes for refreshing cold soups. But many cooks are limited only to cooking okroshka on kefir or kvass with the addition of sorrel leaves and a fresh cucumber from the garden. But the options for cold first courses for the summer menu are much larger. Cold beetroot is especially popular with experienced housewives.
The dish is quite simple, it is prepared quickly from available products. Very often it is called "cold cabbage soup." And in vain. There is not much in common in these soups as it might seem at first glance. The cold beetroot is more similar in recipe and taste to a refrigerator or lighting okroshka.
Recipe Options
Beetroot soup is a universal dish that allows housewives to experiment and fantasize with a recipe and a set of ingredients. Most often, the soup is made lean. However, no one forbids avid meat-eaters to add boiled beef, pork, smoked pork, and even ordinary doctor's sausage to cold beetroot.
Varied and refueling options. According to the classic recipe, this is beetroot broth, but you can use sour cream, kefir, yogurt and even bread kvass. It turns out that when cooking one dish and a small replacement of products, you can get a variety of cold summer soups.
From the history
Initially, the cold classic beetroot was called the "cold store." The first mention of the dish is found in the culinary archives of the Eastern European states (Poland, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania). Later, having slightly changed the composition of the products, the "cold" appears in Russia, but with a different name. Neither time, nor distance, nor geographical location have changed the main ingredient. In any recipe, even the most forgotten and ancient, for the preparation of cold beetroot, beetroot broth is used as the basis.
List of ingredients
- Beets - 400 g. It is advisable to use young root crops. If fresh beets are not at hand, then the pickled version is also suitable. You can add to the soup and marinade, in which there were root vegetables. In this case, do not forget to reduce the amount of salt and vinegar.
- Chicken eggs - 5 pcs. For a change, you can take 3 chicken and a couple of quail eggs.
- Fresh cucumbers - 4 pcs.
- Potato - 350 g.
- Boiled beef or smoked ham (optional) - 300 g.
- Lemon - 1/2 pcs.
- Sugar - 1 tbsp. l
- Wine / apple vinegar - 3-4 tbsp. l
- Fresh parsley.
- Salt.
- Kefir - 750 ml.
- Ground pepper.
- Sour cream.
- Water.
Even in beetroot soup on kefir, sour cream will be an important attribute. Without this product, as experienced housewives say, the "cold" is quite bland. It is also important to use fresh herbs in large quantities. As they say, not a single summer cold soup can be spoiled with a bunch of parsley.
How to cook cold beetroot
One of the most important ingredients of this dish is beets. In some recipes, it is recommended to boil it, in others - bake. Experienced housewives believe that in the second version, beets are tastier, more aromatic and give a better decoction for the “cold” than boiled.
Stage one
Before baking, beets should be washed, trimmed with “tails” and wrapped in foil. It is important that each root crop has its own "house" of foil. Depending on the size of beets, the baking time will vary from 45 minutes to one and a half hours. The temperature inside the oven is 200 degrees. Young beets will cook for 30-35 minutes.
Readiness is best checked with a fork or wooden skewer. A sharp knife, passing easily and through not steamed beet pulp, gives an erroneous result. We recommend sticking in the center. If the beets are soft in the middle, then the root crop is prepared along the edges. We take the beets out of the oven, unfold and leave to cool for 15-20 minutes.
Stage Two
While the beets are baked, the hostess will have plenty of time to prepare the remaining ingredients for the cold beetroot. Chicken eggs are boiled for about ten minutes, cooled and diced. Quail eggs are boiled in the same way. You can cut them into cubes or just in half.
Stage Three
In a prepared in a large pot, put the chopped eggs. You can leave one half of the quail boiled testicle to decorate it with cold beetroot later (the photo in the article shows the options for serving and serving the dish).
We send finely chopped fresh cucumbers there. If the peel of the cucumbers is too stiff, then it is best to cut it off. Boiled potatoes are also cooled and cut into long cubes or even cubes.
We recommend adding more fresh greens to the “cold”. It can be a decent bunch of dill, basil or parsley. Cold summer soup is not complete without feather green onions. Finely chop all the greens with a knife and send to the pan.
Stage Four
As for beets, there are two options. According to one recipe for beetroot on cold kefir, baked beets are simply chopped with a grater and sent to a common pan. Kefir is mixed with lemon juice, a pinch of sugar and salt, wine vinegar is added.
According to the second recipe, it is recommended to pour boiled chopped beets with water and lemon juice and leave for 30-40 minutes. Then the resulting beet brine is mixed with kefir and spices. They will be seasoned with beetroot. Beetroot from pickle is simply taken with a slotted spoon and added to other products.
Which option to choose is up to you. If it was decided to cook cold beetroot on kefir, then it is better to take the first recipe on the basis. If the “fridge” is on kvass or just on beetroot broth with sour cream, then the second recipe will do.
How to serve
Experienced housewives advise before serving to let the beetroot stand in the refrigerator. For a full "rest" of the dish and better impregnation of all the ingredients with beet marinade, an hour or two will be enough.
Served "cold" in deep bowls or tureens. Do not forget about sour cream. It is important that this product is added to the soup immediately before serving. If sour cream is added to the total volume, then the whole beetroot in the pan will quickly turn sour. Without dressing, cold summer soup will stand in the cold for a couple of days.
We decorate the dish with half a boiled quail egg, which was left in advance specifically for this purpose. And a sprig of fresh parsley will also not be superfluous.
Useful Tips
- Cooked meat in beetroot can be replaced with sausage, sausages, ham, mushrooms or seafood.
- A more delicious and rich broth for the dish is obtained from beets and carrots.
- In summer cold soup, you can add not only fresh cucumbers. Great for beetroot sorrel, green feather onions in large quantities, radishes and even tomatoes.
- When serving, you can add not only sour cream, but also table mustard or horseradish.
- No fear of experimentation!