Ukrainian Borscht

The first spoonful of real Ukrainian Borscht I ever had came from a chipped enamel pot in a fifth-floor walk-up in Podil, Kyiv, during the Kupala Night festival week in July. I had a ticket for a river cruise on the Dnipro. My host, Oksana, took one look at me and said no, today you cook.

The Podil Apartment and the Kupala Festival

Down on the embankment there were bonfires being built, girls weaving flower crowns, and a brass band tuning up somewhere near Kontraktova Square. I could hear it drifting up through the open kitchen window. Oksana handed me an apron that smelled of dill and told me the boat could wait.

Her apartment was tiny. A gas stove with two working burners, a wooden table under the window that got the late afternoon sun, and a jar of beet kvass on the counter that she had started three weeks earlier. She told me borscht is not a recipe. It is a conversation between whoever is cooking and whatever is in the fridge that week.

She also told me, very seriously, that borscht is not Russian. UNESCO had inscribed the cooking of Ukrainian borscht on its list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding just weeks before I arrived, and every cook in the city seemed to be walking a little taller because of it.

What Actually Goes Into a Real Borscht

Here is a fact I did not know until Oksana said it while grating beets on the coarse side of the box grater. The word borscht does not come from beets at all. It comes from an Old Slavic word for hogweed, borshchivnyk, which is the sour green that Ukrainians used to ferment into soup between the fifth and ninth centuries CE. Beets were not added until the sixteenth century. Which means for about a thousand years, borscht was green.

The other thing she was firm about. Cabbage goes in late. Fresh, shredded, not sauerkraut cooked to death from the start. You want the cabbage to still have a bite when you serve it. She said sauerkraut borscht is a Russian habit, and she said it with a little shrug that told me exactly what she thought of the Russian habit.

What I Used

• Meaty pork spare ribs, cut between the bones
• One yellow onion, whole, for the stock, and a second one, diced, for the zazharka
• Bay leaves and whole black peppercorns
• Red beets, peeled and grated on the coarse side
• Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed
• Half a small head of white cabbage, finely shredded
• Carrots, coarsely grated
• Tomato paste and two ripe tomatoes, grated
• Sunflower oil, not olive. Oksana was firm about this too
• Beet kvass from her jar, or white wine vinegar if you cannot find kvass
• A small pinch of sugar to balance the beets
• Salo, the cured pork fatback, finely chopped
• Garlic cloves, some for the salo paste, some raw at the end
• Fresh dill, a lot of it, and more for the bowl
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bringing It Home to My LA Kitchen

The salo was the piece I thought would be impossible back home. I was wrong. There is a Ukrainian deli on Santa Monica Boulevard, tucked between a nail salon and a dry cleaner, and the woman behind the counter cured her own. She wrapped it in wax paper and asked me who taught me. When I said Oksana in Podil she nodded like of course.

The beets I get at the Hollywood farmers’ market on Sunday morning. I want them small and heavy for their size, with the greens still on if possible. The greens I save for another night. The dill I grow in a pot on the fire escape because supermarket dill in California is always sad and half-yellow.

Beet kvass is the one thing I still make in advance. Three tablespoons of it is what separates this soup from a sweet vegetable stew. If you cannot get it or cannot be bothered, white wine vinegar works, and a squeeze of lemon at the end helps.

Cooking It, Watching the Pot

Inside the pot, the ribs are giving up their collagen slowly, turning the water into something golden and slightly sticky at the back of a spoon. You skim the grey foam off the top with a mesh skimmer for the first ten minutes. After that the broth clears and the whole kitchen starts to smell like Sunday.

In the skillet, the grated beets meet hot sunflower oil and the color deepens almost immediately, going from a chalky pink to a wet garnet. Add the tomato paste and it will darken again. The kvass hits and there is a quick sour steam that rises. Cover, low heat, twenty minutes. This is where the beet stops being raw and starts being sweet.

The cabbage goes in near the end and only cooks for eight minutes. You want it wilted, translucent at the edges, still snappy in the middle. This is my beet soup with sour cream and cabbage that actually tastes like the pot in Podil, and the cabbage bite is why.

The last move is the one that changes everything. Chopped salo, three garlic cloves, a pinch of salt, all pounded in a mortar into a soft grey-white paste. Stir it into the pot off the heat. The fat melts into the broth and the raw garlic sharpens the whole thing. Then the dill. Then the lid on. Then you walk away for two hours.

Twists, Variations, and Honest Notes

I have made this with beef shin instead of pork ribs when I could not get good ribs. It is good but a little heavier. I have also made a Lenten version with mushroom stock and no meat, which is closer to the monastic borscht recorded in seventeenth-century Ukrainian records. Not as rich. Still worth doing.

The first time I made this in my own kitchen I let the beets boil hard after everything was assembled. The soup went brown. It still tasted fine. It did not look like Oksana’s. Now I keep it at a bare simmer once the beets are in, and the color holds.

Serve it the next day if you can. Not the same day. Every cook in Kyiv will tell you this and they are not wrong. A spoonful of smetana at the table, a scatter of dill, and a piece of black rye bread rubbed with raw garlic if you are feeling like Oksana would want you to.

I miss the bonfires on the Dnipro when I make this. The pot cannot bring back the brass band or the flower crowns. But the kitchen fills with dill and pork and beet and I stand at my wooden table under the west-facing window, and for a little while Podil is not so far away.

Ukrainian Borscht

This is the deep, ruby-red Ukrainian borscht I learned to make from a cook in Kyiv — a proper hearty stew of pork rib stock, sweet beets sautéed with tomato, tender potatoes, and shredded fresh cabbage that keeps a gentle bite. Finished with a pounded paste of salo, raw garlic, and fresh dill, it rests off the heat until every flavor settles into something soulful.

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Prep Time 30 minutes mins

Cook Time 3 hours hrs

Total Time 3 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Servings: 8 Bowls

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Ukrainian

Calories: 420

Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 2.5 lb pork ribs meaty spare ribs, cut between the bones
• 3 quarts cold water for the stock
• 1 yellow onion peeled and left whole for the stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 10 black peppercorns whole
• 1.5 lb red beets buryak, peeled
• 1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
• 0.5 small head white cabbage about 1 lb, cored and finely shredded
• 2 medium carrots peeled and coarsely grated
• 1 large yellow onion finely diced, for the zazharka
• 3 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 medium ripe tomatoes grated or finely chopped
• 3 tbsp sunflower oil for the zazharka
• 3 tbsp beet kvass or 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tsp granulated sugar to balance the beets
• 2 oz salo cured pork fatback, finely chopped
• 5 cloves garlic peeled, divided
• 0.5 cup fresh dill finely chopped, plus more for serving
• 2 tsp fine sea salt to taste
• 0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper to taste

Equipment

• 1 large heavy stockpot, 6 to 8 quart
• 1 Large Skillet for the zazharka and beets
• 1 box grater coarse side for beets and carrots
• 1 Sharp chef’s knife
• 1 mortar and pestle for pounding the salo and garlic
• 1 fine mesh skimmer for skimming the stock

Method

 

1. Rinse the pork ribs under cold water and place them in a large stockpot. Cover with 3 quarts of cold water and bring slowly to a boil over medium-high heat. As foam rises to the surface, skim it away carefully with a fine mesh skimmer until the liquid runs clear.
2. Once skimmed, add the whole peeled onion, bay leaves, and black peppercorns. Reduce the heat to low, cover partially, and simmer very gently for 2 hours, until the pork is fork tender and the broth is rich and golden.
3. Lift the ribs out, pull the meat from the bones, and shred it into bite-sized pieces. Discard the bones, the whole onion, and the bay leaves. Strain the broth back into the clean pot and season with 1 teaspoon of the salt.
4. While the stock simmers, prepare the beets. Coarsely grate the peeled beets on a box grater. Heat 2 tablespoons of the sunflower oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add the grated beets, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often.
5. Stir in the tomato paste, grated fresh tomatoes, beet kvass, and sugar. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and let the beets stew gently for 20 minutes, until soft, deep red, and glossy. Set aside off the heat.
6. Bring the strained broth back to a gentle simmer. Add the cubed potatoes and cook for 10 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, make the zazharka. In the same skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of sunflower oil over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook for 4 minutes until soft and translucent, then add the grated carrot and cook another 4 minutes until sweet and golden at the edges.
8. Add the zazharka to the pot with the potatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the shredded cabbage and cook for another 8 minutes, until the cabbage is tender but still has a gentle bite.
9. Add the stewed beets and the shredded pork back to the pot. Bring just to a bare simmer, then lower the heat so the soup no longer bubbles hard — this protects the ruby color.
10. On a cutting board or in a mortar, pound the chopped salo with 3 of the garlic cloves and a pinch of salt into a rough paste. Stir this into the pot along with the chopped dill.
11. Finely mince the remaining 2 garlic cloves and stir them in raw. Season with the remaining salt and the black pepper to taste.
12. Cover the pot, remove it from the heat, and let the borscht rest for at least 30 minutes, ideally 2 hours, so the flavors marry. Reheat gently before serving with a spoonful of smetana and an extra scatter of dill in each bowl.

Notes

Borscht always tastes better the next day — make it ahead and gently reheat.

Serve each bowl with a generous dollop of smetana (sour cream) stirred in at the table.

Traditional accompaniments include garlic pampushky (soft yeast rolls), rye bread, raw garlic cloves, slices of salo, and pickled cucumbers or tomatoes on the side.

For vivid color, never boil the beets hard after adding them — a gentle simmer keeps the soup ruby, not brown.

Beet kvass gives the most authentic sour edge; if you can't find it, use white wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice.