What does it take for the borscht to be red? How to make borscht red? Classic beef recipe with meat and fresh cabbage

Borscht is one of the favorite dishes of Ukrainians and Russians. Unfortunately, not every housewife knows how to cook borscht, especially if she has little experience in the culinary arts. In this article we will give useful information about how to cook borscht so that it is red.

Cook borscht. Recipe

Today you can find a large number of borscht recipes, each with its own characteristics and will appeal to connoisseurs of this first dish. To make the borscht red, you need to boil the beet. To do this, whole beets are thrown into boiling water with meat. After this, you can peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes. Pour the potatoes into the pan with the meat.

Now you can start preparing the frying. To do this, cut the onion into cubes and fry in a frying pan until golden brown. Separately, peel and grate the carrots. Mix everything and fry well. Then remove the beets from the pan, grate them too and add them to the frying. Add a couple of spoons of tomato juice or paste and mix well.

Useful video: How to cook BORSCH. Video recipe

The finished roast should be poured into a pan with meat and potatoes. Start chopping the cabbage. When the vegetables and meat are cooked, throw the cabbage into the pan and cook until done. Don't forget to add salt and seasonings to the borscht. In order for the borscht to retain its color, you need to add a spoonful of vinegar, then the dish will turn out richly red.

We hope that our article is about that how to cook borscht so it is red was helpful. Now every housewife will have borscht as a signature dish.

Borscht is a type of soup made with beetroot, which gives it a pinkish-red color. Some say that the name borscht comes from the combination of the words “brown cabbage soup,” while others say that it comes from the hogweed plant, the leaves of which were used as food. This dish was invented in Kievan Rus, although it has been prepared since ancient times all over the world. The most important thing when cooking this first dish is to know how to preserve the color of the beets in the borscht.

Types of borscht

It should be noted that there is no single method of preparing borscht. Everything is prepared differently: with poultry, lard, mushrooms, beans, fish. And according to European standards, it should not contain pork. Only one ingredient remains constant - beets. All borscht recipes are divided into two groups:

• Cold. They prefer to cook it in the hot season without using meat. Pickled and boiled beets are used as a base, parsley, onions, dill, garlic, sausage, boiled eggs and fermented milk products are added.
• Hot (red). Its preparation takes a lot of time; housewives use meat broth, beets and many other vegetables. And you must cook it so that the beets do not lose color in the borscht. The dish is served with garlic, sometimes with donuts instead of bread.

What is added to borscht?

Borscht is a source of vitamins, so all vegetables must be taken fresh and of high quality. The main products needed to prepare a tasty, rich and aromatic first meal:

• Meat. Everyone has different preferences: a mixture of beef and lamb, pork ribs, poultry (goose, duck, chicken or turkey legs), a selection of smoked meats with lard.
• Vegetables. For a rich red color, choose dark and sweet beets. Hard potatoes are taken, and for a thick soup, boiled vegetables are used, adding fresh juicy cabbage and ripe tomatoes. In addition, you will need carrots and onions.
• Seasonings. To enhance the taste, add black pepper - peas and ground. Significantly improves the aroma of garlic and herbs, consisting of dill, parsley and celery. Finally, you need to add the bay leaf.
• Various additives. You can add fish and canned fish, mushrooms, beans and even dried fruits to the borscht. The main thing is not to make a mistake in combining products.

It is advisable to try everything and not be afraid to experiment. And the most important thing is that the beets in the borscht do not lose color and that it looks bright, colorful and rich.

How to quickly cook beets?

Many dishes are prepared from boiled beets. It is not recommended to peel it and cut off the root before cooking and baking, otherwise it will lighten and lose mineral salts. After washing thoroughly, place it in boiling water and close the lid tightly. To speed up the cooking process proceed as follows:

• put a saucepan with beets on the fire and cook it for an hour;
• remove from heat and keep under running cold water for 10 minutes;
• cook large root vegetables on the fire again for a third of an hour;
• cool - and the vegetable is ready.

Beetroot in borscht does not lose color if you add half a teaspoon of sugar per liter of water when cooking it. The same effect will occur when adding citric acid and vinegar. It should be noted that in the best varieties of beets, the root crop has a flattened shape and thin skin.

How to preserve the color of beets without vinegar?

Often pureed beets are used for borscht and salads. In order for its color to remain juicy and bright, it is thickly sprinkled with table salt and left in a plate for some time until it is completely dissolved. In this case, it is necessary to stir periodically so that all the contents are completely saturated. As soon as the salt has dissolved, the beets are watered with vegetable oil to consolidate the effect. The resulting mass is added to borscht. There is no need to be afraid that the color of the beets will change when boiling. This description will answer the question of how to preserve the color of beets in borscht? You just need to remember that the beets were salted and not to over-salt the soup.

In order to be able to cook tasty and beautiful borscht, let’s listen to the advice of a professional. He makes the following recommendations:

• Meat. For borscht, a lean piece is more suitable, preferably without bones, which produces a darker and cloudier broth, and also gives off a specific smell. Before cooking, meat must be thoroughly washed.
• Bouillon. It is definitely recommended to cook over low heat. With strong bubbling, the broth becomes cloudy. To improve the taste, onions are added to it - it clears the turbidity, carrots - it gives a beautiful color, celery - it improves the taste.
• Beet. For borscht, only raw beets are used.
• Roasting. It is made from carrots, onions and beets. To prevent the beets from losing their color in the borscht, the vegetables are stewed in a small amount of oil with the addition of broth over low heat. At the same time, they give off all their aroma and acquire a rich hue.
• Acidify. A small amount of tomato paste is added to the finished frying to add a special taste and color. Lemon juice or dry wine is sometimes used for acidification.
• Salt. Salt is added before the beets are planted so as not to spoil the color.
• How to preserve the color of beets in borscht? To do this, only after the potatoes and cabbage are ready, they put the fry into the pan and do not boil anymore.
• Insist. Cooked borscht must sit for at least half an hour; during this time, the vegetables will give their flavor to the broth.
• To warm. The finished soup can be heated, but cannot be boiled, otherwise it will become cloudy and its color will deteriorate.

Add acid to make borscht red

The aromatic and rich color of the soup stimulates the appetite and brings pleasure while eating. But here’s the problem: beets often lose color in borscht. What to do? You can give the soup a bright burgundy hue in different ways. One of them is adding acid. For this use:

• Apple or wine vinegar - sprinkle the beets before stewing them.
• Tomato paste - added during the preparation of stewed beets.
• Lemon juice - add a small amount of juice at the beginning of sautéing. It is used by those who do not like vinegar.

In order for the borscht to turn out beautiful and bright, you need to try several methods and choose the best one.

A few secrets to keep borscht bright

Some people don't like or can't eat fried vegetables, then there are other ways to make borscht a rich, bright color. How to preserve the color of beets when cooking borscht without resorting to frying? To do this proceed as follows:

1. Remove the meat from the prepared broth and place in the previously peeled and halved beets. Add the remaining vegetables to the broth. After a third of an hour, take out the beets, grate them and, after all the vegetables are ready, add them to the pan. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat, leaving to infuse.
2. Boil the beets in their skins. To do this, after thoroughly washing the vegetable, place it in boiling unsalted water and cook for an hour. Grate the beets and add to the prepared borscht, which is left on the fire for another two minutes.
3. Grate cleanly washed and peeled raw beets. Place in a bowl and pour boiling water over it. After this, start preparing the borscht. Add beets to the fully prepared soup and simmer for about five minutes.

If the option you chose did not give the desired result, experiment again. Next, we will discuss why beets lose color when cooking borscht.

Cooking tricks

Many are at a loss as to why the beautiful red color of borscht at the beginning of cooking loses its attractiveness towards the end and becomes yellowish. The secret is this:

• Long-term processing of beets. When adding beets immediately after the broth is ready, the pigment is digested and the broth takes on an unattractive color. The beets are added when the soup is completely ready and kept on the fire for no more than five minutes. On the second day, when heating the borscht, do not bring it to a boil so as not to spoil the color of the broth.
• Use special varieties of beets. The beauty and taste of your borscht depend on the type of root vegetable you choose. Salad varieties of beets that have a dark burgundy color when cut are well suited.

Considering these two features when preparing borscht, you can count on success.

How to cook red borscht without meat?

The shade of the borscht broth, in fact, does not affect its taste, but the burgundy color stimulates the appetite and makes it more attractive. How to preserve the red color of beets in borscht if you cook it without meat? Let's consider two ways:

1. The beets are cooked separately: they are washed, placed with the peel in a pan of boiling water and cooked until tender for about an hour. It is not advisable to add salt, as this will make it hard. Take out the finished beets, grate them on a coarse grater or cut them and add them to the already prepared borscht, bring to a boil and turn off the heat. Infuse and serve with sour cream.
2. The vegetable is baked in the oven: pre-washed beets are wrapped in foil and placed in a preheated oven for about 50 minutes. After this, they are taken out, cooled, rubbed and added to the prepared borscht without meat. Leave the pan on the fire for another one or two minutes - and the soup is ready. Let it sit for at least 30 minutes and you’re ready to eat.

Everything is done very simply. To make it beautiful and tasty, try different options.

Housewives' secret: the reddest borscht

Many housewives try a large number of different recipes for preparing borscht - a soup that has millions of fans. The trick is how to cook the borscht to preserve the color of the beets. Here is one of them:

• Peel the beets and cut them into 4-6 pieces.
• Dip the pieces into the prepared boiling broth and cook for a quarter of an hour.
• Add to the pan everything that is needed according to the recipe: vegetables, meat, herbs, spices in the usual order and quantity.
• After the potatoes and cabbage are ready, turn off the heat and remove the beet pieces. They will look pale and undercooked, but the housewives claim that this is how it should be.
• Cool the beets a little and grate them. It turns out that the color stays bright inside.
• Add it to the soup, stir and leave for about 15 minutes. You can no longer boil the borscht.

According to the proposed recipe, the borscht turns out to be bright, very rich beetroot color and pleasant taste. Housewives claim that they have never seen more colorful borscht.

Why do beets lose color in borscht?

Real borscht is a soup that is always rich pink-red in color. But many housewives complain that after cooking, the borscht takes on a pale orange or even brown tint. What is the reason? Improper preparation of the product. Experts give the following advice:

• To stew, vegetables must be chopped, not grated.
• Particular attention is paid to the beet variety. It should be salad-like with a thin peel and slightly flattened in shape. The cut is dark, without whitish streaks.
• Vegetables must be stewed and before finishing, add a little acetic acid, lemon juice or tomato paste.
• After adding the frying, the borscht is not boiled, but only brought to a boil and immediately turned off.

Once ready, the soup is infused and served. It does not lose color the next day.

Red borscht in a slow cooker

The ingredients are still the same, nothing new:

• The meat is washed and cooked in a separate pan for five minutes. Then the contents are poured into a multicooker, chopped vegetables, except beets, are added. Add salt, herbs and seasonings. The timer is set for 20 minutes.
• While everything is boiling, prepare the beets: they are washed, peeled and grated or cut with a knife. Add oil to the frying pan and simmer the vegetable until tender, adding a little water. To preserve the color, you can add a little sugar and pour the entire contents into a slow cooker. The borscht, tasty and bright in color, is ready.

It should be noted that any skill comes with experience.

Instead of a conclusion

How to preserve the color of beets in borscht? This is the main task when cooking everyone's favorite first course. A housewife is often judged on her ability to cook borscht. Like any other folk dish, it is prepared according to numerous recipes, and as a result of experiments, you can find the optimal one. Each housewife has her own subtleties and secrets of its preparation, which allow it to preserve the bright beetroot color and excellent taste.

Being the main first course in Ukrainian cuisine, bright, tasty borscht has long “got out” beyond the borders of this country. Various versions of this beet-based soup exist in Russia, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Romania and other countries. What is it about this soup that captivates gourmets from different parts of the world? Of course, with its satiety and rich color that beets give to borscht. But many novice housewives, having taken up the preparation of such a simple, at first glance, dish, are often faced with the fact that the beets lose their color, and the borscht does not look as appetizing as the novice cook expected. Or the dish turns out to be too bland to taste, and not multifaceted, as real borscht should be. How to avoid such problems?

How to make the color of borscht rich?

The fact is that when chopped beets are boiled along with the rest of the ingredients directly in borscht, they are not doing exactly the right thing. This will have virtually no effect on the taste of the dish, but the appearance will noticeably suffer. Pale, discolored beets do not look very attractive, which may be noticed by eaters. Therefore, to prepare the perfect borscht, it is not enough to know only the basic recipe. It’s difficult to do without culinary tricks, which we will tell you about below. So, what should you add to borscht so that the beets don’t lose their color?

Of course, not only the taste, but also the color of the future borscht largely depends on the quality of the beets that you plan to use for cooking. However, if the best beets are used for borscht, this will not guarantee that the color of the dish will be rich, as planned.

How to avoid such a situation? It is best to pre-cook the beets separately from other ingredients, for example: steam or bake (in the microwave or oven). The finished beets are peeled, cut into strips or grated on a coarse grater and added to the borscht at the very end of cooking. If beets are baked in foil or steamed, they will retain not only their rich color, but also much more useful substances. And if you like rich borscht, then the finished beets can be additionally fried in lard.

By the way, another great way to prepare delicious borscht with rich color is to add. This homemade convenience food will make your meal delicious.

But if discolored beets don’t bother you too much, and the main goal is to achieve a bright color for the borscht itself, you can boil small beets separately and grate them using a fine grater. Then the color of your delicious borscht will be very rich and super appetizing.
It is also worth noting that beets retain their rich color and do not discolor in the presence of acid. But what can you add to borscht to make it red without spoiling the taste of the dish? Many housewives recommend stewing raw beets in vegetable oil with a small amount of vinegar or sprinkling them with lemon juice before adding them to borscht. And some cooks add kefir, which plays the role of an acidifier, a fixative for the color of beets and at the same time an original dressing for borscht. So we gradually approached the topic of the famous “sourness”, which must certainly be present in borscht.

How to acidify borscht?

The simplest ingredient that can give borscht the desired sour taste and at the same time preserve the color of the beets is table vinegar. However, many housewives avoid using this ingredient, citing its harmfulness to the stomach. Therefore, many do not know what to add to borscht for sourness to make it tasty and healthy. Vinegar is usually replaced with lemon juice or fresh tomatoes. In addition, table vinegar can be replaced with natural analogues - apple, wine or grape vinegar. But it should be taken into account that the dish may acquire unusual flavor shades. Also, a sour taste can be achieved by adding sour and sauerkraut to the borscht, or even a small amount of brine from it (if fresh cabbage is used when preparing the borscht).

You can also add a sour taste to the dish and at the same time make its color more intense by adding beet kvass to it. You can prepare such kvass in advance or immediately before preparing borscht. To stock up on fermented beet juice (kvass) in advance, you need to thoroughly wash and peel the beets, and then cut them into not too thick slices. After this, pour cold water over the chopped vegetable and place it on a windowsill or other warm place for 6 days. Then put the future kvass in the refrigerator, where you can keep it for another 2-3 days. When the beet juice thickens and acquires a rich color, it can be considered ready. Be sure to strain the resulting liquid. You need to add kvass to the borscht at the very end of cooking. With beet kvass you can cook any borscht: either in a saucepan, or borscht with various meats.

This addition is made quickly as follows: peel and grate the beets, put them in a saucepan and add lemon juice (can be replaced with citric acid). Then add a little broth in which the borscht will be cooked (about 200 ml) and bring the future “kvass” to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook for 2-3 minutes, cover and remove from heat. After half an hour, the beet broth can already be added to the borscht.

In addition, you can add the desired sourness to a dish by adding tomatoes: fresh, canned in their own juice or in the form of tomato juice or paste.
Sometimes it happens that housewives abuse the sour taste, so the borscht does not turn out as desired. In this case, the most common granulated sugar will help balance the taste of borscht. Some housewives generally consider sugar an essential ingredient of this famous dish. And this is easy to explain, because there are as many recipes for borscht as there are housewives in our country. Each has its own signature techniques and secrets that help make its borscht special and unique.

How to cook borscht so that it turns red? The question of how to cook borscht so that in the end it turns out really red, and not orange or even yellow, worries many housewives. There are, of course, some subtleties here, but no less important is the question of how to cook borscht in general. After all, it has many recipes, types and analogues. Therefore, we will try to describe only the standard case, after learning which you can proceed to other options. Red borscht - recipe What distinguishes borscht from ordinary soup is that it contains many different components. If only one or two of all the necessary components are present in it, then it will already lose the status of borscht as such. So, its composition: 600-700 grams of meat on the bone (beef or pork), 6 pcs. large potatoes, 1 medium-sized beet, 1 large carrot, 1 onion, 2 pcs. tomato, 2 tbsp. tomato paste, 1 pc. bell pepper (you can use any), 1 small head of cabbage, 2 cloves of garlic, herbs, salt, bay leaf, pepper. Cooking method: 1. The very first thing to do is to cook the meat and thereby provide the borscht with a good base in the form of a tasty broth. Pork or beef ribs are most suitable in this case. They need to be washed well under cold water, cut into pieces, and then thrown into a pan of water and put on gas. Cook the meat until fully cooked, about 40 minutes. 2. While it is cooking, peel and chop all the vegetables. So, potatoes can be chopped into cubes or cubes, as you like. Grate the carrots (you can use a coarse one), and chop the onion very finely. Three raw beets are also grated. Cut the bell pepper into thin slices (or cubes). 3. After the meat boils, cook it for another 30 minutes and throw in the potatoes. Salt the broth. 4. Now let's start preparing the frying. To do this, first place onions and carrots in a hot frying pan. We make sure that they acquire a golden color. As soon as they brown, add beets, tomato paste and tomatoes. The latter must first be peeled and turned into puree by grating. When the mass thickens a little, you can add a little broth from the pan. After this, add the bell pepper and keep it on the fire for literally another 10 minutes. 5. By this time the potatoes should be almost ready. If this is the case, then feel free to throw the prepared roast into the future borscht. 6. Finely chop the cabbage and place it in the pan after the water in it boils for the second time. Add pepper and bay leaf to taste. Cook for another 5 minutes. 7. Now it's time to throw in the chopped herbs and garlic. Literally in a minute we turn everything off. The borscht is ready. What is the secret of red borscht? As many women know from practice, borscht does not always turn out to be the coveted red color. We will describe several techniques that allow you to achieve this. So, as shown in our recipe, the first rule is to grate raw beets, fry them in a frying pan over low heat and throw them into the pan in the last minutes before the end of cooking. It is very important not to let it cook in the pan for a long time, as it begins to lose color when it boils. Next, you can resort to another method - fix the desired shade using an oxidizing agent. This could be adding vinegar to the broth, using sauerkraut, adding pickled tomato brine, or even a little lemon juice. Another thing you can do is pay attention to the quality of the tomato paste used. It should be good and fairly concentrated. For example, it can be diluted with hot broth and poured into a pan. These are the basic rules for preparing borscht that every housewife should know. Of course, everyone has their own secrets about how to prepare it and, especially, what to add to it. Therefore, we can say with confidence that it is simply impossible to cook two identical borscht.

If you throw raw chopped beets directly into the soup and cook for a while, then instead of remaining red, the broth will turn out to be a light burgundy color. The beets can also be boiled whole, but purified, in the soup itself, but in this case the broth acquires a characteristic beetroot flavor, which not everyone will like.

The second rule follows from the first. With prolonged heat treatment, the color of the beets lightens and becomes either orange or light pink. To prevent this from happening, add the prepared beets at the very end of cooking. The same applies to heating the finished dish; when reheated, the color of the soup is no longer so appetizing. We recommend that you reheat the borscht in parts and not for long; just bring the soup to a boil over high heat and immediately remove from the warm stove.

The acid contained in tomato paste, vinegar or lemon juice fixes the color of beets well. If you don’t want a sour soup, then you can use regular sugar instead of acid. It not only fixes the color of the beets, but also gives the soup completely new shades, enhancing its taste.

Well, and a variety of beets. It is preferable to choose beets that are dark burgundy in cross-section, without light inclusions.

Number of servings – 6. Cooking time – 2-2.5 hours.

Ingredients:

• beef on the bone – 600-700 g;
• white cabbage – 300 g;
• beets – 1 pc.;
• potatoes – 2 pcs.;
• carrots – 1 pc.;
• onion – 1 pc.;
• tomato sauce – 2 tbsp;
• vegetable oil – 2 tbsp;
• table vinegar (6%) – 1 tbsp;
• salt - to taste;
• bay leaf – 1-2 pcs.;
• water – 2 l.

How to cook red borscht with beets and vinegar

We rinse the beef under cold water and place it on the bottom of the saucepan. There is no need to cut or divide the meat unless you want to reduce the cooking time. Pour cold water over the beef and cook over medium heat. After boiling, remove the abundant foam, then reduce the stove to the minimum mark and cook the meat for about 1.5-2 hours until cooked.

At the same time, put the beets to cook in a separate pan. Wash it thoroughly first to get rid of dirt. In this case, neither the tail nor the top of the head needs to be cut off. Cook the beets for about 40-50 minutes, check the readiness with a knife.

Peel small potatoes and cut into cubes.

Finely chop the cabbage.

When the meat becomes soft and comes off the bone easily, remove it from the broth and strain the broth itself. This way we will rid it of sediment and possible bone fragments. The meat itself is either returned to the soup at the end of cooking or served separately.

Dip the shredded cabbage into the prepared broth and cook for about 5-7 minutes.

Then add potatoes to the soup and cook until soft. If the cabbage is young, then it can be tossed in at the same time as the potatoes or after them.

Peel one large carrot and cut into thin strips.

Cut the onion into medium pieces.

Fry the vegetables until half cooked for about 7-9 minutes, adding vegetable oil.

Peel the boiled beets and cut into thin strips. If you grate the beets, the color of the borscht will be richer, but at the same time, the soup turns out tastier when the vegetables are chopped.

Add the beets to the vegetables, immediately add tomato paste and a little table vinegar. Vinegar will not only fix the color of the beets, but will give the borscht a pleasant sourness. If you don’t like vinegar, you can omit it or replace it with citric acid or juice. Mix everything and simmer under a closed lid for about 5-7 minutes.

When the cabbage and potatoes are ready, add the roasted vegetables and a little salt to the borscht. Mix everything carefully and bring to a boil over high heat.

As soon as the soup boils, add bay leaf to it, reduce the heat and cook for literally 3-5 minutes.

Our borscht is ready! Pour it into plates and serve along with herbs and sour cream. Bon appetit!

If you don’t have beets, but you really want borscht, cook some delicious