Borsch is a traditional vegetable soup. It has a characteristic red color, which is due to the presence of beets in this dish. The correct borsch is thick, cooked on a strong meat broth, bright red and fragrant. It is served as a first course, with sour cream, herbs, garlic pampushkas and lard.
Each family has its own signature recipe for borsch. Some chefs add non-traditional ingredients to it, for example, mushrooms, prunes, chicken or even kefir instead of broth. However, for the soup to have the full right to be called borsch, it must have a rich red color. Therefore, beets are an essential component of this dish.
How to cook beets for borscht? Each chef has his own tricks that help to prepare this vegetable so that it does not lose its taste and color during heat treatment.
Borscht
How to cook a classic borsch? Its mandatory components are:
- Beef broth, strong and transparent. It is cooked on the bones and cooked for at least two hours.
- Diced potatoes.
- Cabbage, chopped straws. Borsch is prepared from fresh and sauerkraut.
- Carrot. It can be cut into strips, cubes and even rings.
- Onions fried with vegetable oil.
- Spices - salt, dill, bay pepper.
- Beets, fried or boiled.
Also in the borsch can be present: tomato paste, tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and other ingredients. Beef broth is easily replaced with any other meat or chicken broth.
Theoretically, cooking borscht is very simple. First you need to make a good strong broth, then put vegetables and spices, if necessary - fry them previously. But sometimes the result is a completely different dish - colorless or orange, with vegetables cooked to transparency.
The whole secret of a good borsch is in the correct laying of products. Everyone knows that beets need to be cooked for a long time. But if you put it in boiling water earlier than necessary, the pigment will decay under the influence of high temperature. And in the end you get just cabbage soup, but not soup.
Experienced chefs advise to cook beets separately, and lay it 3-4 minutes before removing the pan from the heat. And to consolidate the result, I add 9% vinegar to the borscht - a couple of tablespoons in a five-liter pan.
How and how much do you need to cook beets for borscht? This is an interesting question, as there is no consensus. Each cook chooses a convenient option.
Boil or fry?
Beets for borsch can be pre-boiled or fried with vegetable oil. Both that and another option has the right to life. Vegetables can be boiled whole or sliced and even steamed. This process takes considerable time, although there are tricks to make it faster.
When frying or stewing, the beets are grated or finely chopped. Then it becomes soft very quickly. But there is a risk of overexposing the vegetable, because of which it will lose pigment, become dry and not so tasty.
So when frying, you also need to be careful.
What to buy beets for borsch
Before deciding how and how much to cook beets for borscht separately from other components, you need to buy the vegetable itself. Choosing the right root crop is quite simple, you just need to know what to look for:
- The size. Beets of all varieties can be divided into two categories - for food and feed and sugar varieties. For borsch, you need to choose those root crops that are intended for food. They are small, sweet, tasty, with a thin skin and a more uniform structure. Large beets are most often fodder, fibrous, with a less bright taste. In addition, when growing it, fertilizers and pesticides are used, which are not very useful for humans. Therefore, when buying, you need to take not too large root crops from the group where all the vegetables are about the same size.
- Freshness. The ideal option is beets with green tops. Unfortunately, it can only be found in season. The rest of the time you should pay attention to elasticity. Old root crops are more flabby and softer.
- Grade. For the borscht, the Bordeaux variety is well suited - round, flattened, with a thin skin.
How much do you need to cook beets for borsch? It depends on the cooking method. There are several of them, so we will consider each.
Frying in a pan with vegetable oil
The root crop can be fried in a pan with vegetable oil. Previously, the vegetable is peeled, grated and finely chopped. There are two main ways of frying:
- With onions and carrots.
- Separately.
In the first case, onions are first put in a heated oil in a pan, and after a couple of minutes - chopped carrots. And after 5 minutes - beets. This order is due to the fact that if you put everything all at once, the onions are stewed, not fried. The same thing will happen with carrots. After adding beets, the frying is kept on fire for another 5-10 minutes. Time depends on the power of the stove and the desired result. At the end, you can add tomato paste. It already contains vinegar, so it will fix the red pigment.
Sometimes cooks prefer to fry beets separately. Since it is quite juicy, and with the addition of other components, the process is greatly delayed.
Extinguishing and stewing
Beetroot soup can be stewed with a little water. First, it must be finely chopped, then stew in a pan under the lid. Time costs will be slightly higher than when frying. However, this cooking method can be used when cooking lean borsch.
Passing is essentially the same frying in vegetable oil. But at a lower temperature. At the same time, vegetables should not be fried - when passivated, they only soften.
Cooking
How long does it take to cook beets for borsch? The traditional method of preparation takes 2-3 hours, depending on the size of the root crop. Wash the vegetables, cut the tail and pour cold water. Then put on fire. After boiling, reduce the temperature and cook on low heat for 2-3 hours. Then remove and pour cold water so that you can quickly remove the skin.
After this, the root crop is diced and sent to the borscht a few minutes before being ready.
There are other cooking options. For example, cooks often use regular vegetable oil to reduce time costs. How to cook beets for borsch on accelerated technology? It only takes one hour if you put the root crop in boiling water immediately and add a few tablespoons of vegetable oil to increase the temperature of the water.
Professional chefs know an even faster way to cook beets. The root crop is dipped in boiling water, watered a little vegetable oil and set the maximum temperature on the stove. So the beets are cooked for about half an hour, then poured with cold water and left for 10 minutes. Shock cooling brings the vegetable to readiness. However, after such extreme heating in beets, a minimum of useful substances remains.
Roasting in the oven and microwave
When a cook is concerned about how much to cook beets for borsch, it means that he has a shortage of time. This problem is easily solved if root crops are prepared in advance. In addition, beets can not be cooked, but baked.
In order to bake the root crop in the microwave, they wash it, wipe it dry and prick it with a fork. Then the beets are sent to the oven for 10-15 minutes. After it you need to wrap in foil and leave to reach at room temperature.
In the oven, the root crop is baked for 15-20 minutes. Beets are pre-washed, wiped and wrapped with parchment. Then they are sent to the oven, heated to a temperature of 200 ° C.
Baked beets are drier and sweeter than boiled. It is ideal for making salads. But it can just as well be sent to borscht.
Multicooking
When cooking in a slow cooker, the root crop is cooked either in the “Soup” mode or steamed. How to cook beets for borsch in a slow cooker? In the first case, the process will take one hour. To do this, the root crop needs to be washed, poured with cold water and sent to the kitchen unit.
The second option is faster. It will take 40-50 minutes. For this, root crops are washed, large ones are cut into 2-4 parts and placed upside down on a bowl with holes. Down you need to pour 1.5-2 liters of water. Then you should set the mode "Double boiler" and wait for the end of the process.
Recommendations
Now you know how to cook beets for borsch. To make the dish as tasty as possible, you can use some more culinary tricks:
- Beets are always boiled in a peel so that pigment losses are less. And at the end they pour over with cold water so that the skin is well cleaned.
- The root crop is not salted during cooking, otherwise it will be tougher and the cooking time will increase.
- To maintain a rich red color, add a little table vinegar or lemon juice to the borsch. Similarly, you can do when cooking beets separately.
- The readiness of the root crop is checked with a wooden toothpick. If the beets are cooked, it easily pierces with minimal pressure.
- To neutralize the smell of beets during cooking, add a piece of bread to the water.
- Borsch should be infused for at least 30 minutes before serving.
- The product can be stored up to 7 days in the refrigerator.
Enjoy your meal!