🇺🇦 Ukraine
Green borscht
Ukrainian spring and summer borscht soured with sorrel instead of beet, with potato, carrot and onion in meat broth, served with halved boiled eggs and sour cream.
Origin and history
Ukrainian sources describe green borscht (sorrel or spring borscht) as an old dish made from the young greens gathered after winter, traditionally on meat broth and in lean times on vegetable broth, with eggs and sour cream. One of them says it spread beyond Ukraine in the Soviet period, and the Armyinform cook presents it as a Ukrainian dish distinct from the Russian shchi. It is cooked with plenty of fresh herbs.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 2 h 15 min
- Hands-on
- 35 min
Ingredients
- 600 g1.3 lb pork on the bone, or beef or chicken; avoid lamb
- 3 l12 cups cold water
- 1 bay leaf
- 5 black peppercorns
- 400 g14 oz potatoes, peeled, diced
- 1 carrot, peeled, diced
- 1 onion, diced; used in the NANU recipe, not in the 24 Kanal one
- 200 g7 oz sorrel, stemmed and chopped
- 1 bunch dill, chopped
- 1 bunch parsley, chopped
- 3 green onion stalks, chopped
- 4 eggs, hard-boiled, peeled, halved
- salt and black pepper, to taste
- smetana (sour cream), to serve
Method
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1. Rinse the pork, cover with the 3 l (12 cups) of cold water and bring to a boil over medium heat.
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2. Skim the foam, lower the heat and simmer for about 1 hour 30 minutes, adding the bay, peppercorns and salt near the end.
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3. Lift out the meat, remove it from the bone, cut it into small pieces and return it to the broth.
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4. Add the diced potatoes, carrot and onion, bring back to a boil and cook over medium heat for 20 to 30 minutes, until tender.
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5. While they cook, hard-boil the eggs, peel them and halve them; chop the sorrel, dill, parsley and green onion.
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6. Add the chopped greens to the pot and cook for 3 minutes.
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7. Take the pot off the heat, cover and leave for 5 minutes (a longer rest of up to 30 minutes is common in field kitchens).
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8. Serve with half an egg and a spoonful of sour cream in each bowl; never stir the sour cream into the whole pot.
Notes
- Green borscht replaces the beetroot of the parent borscht with sorrel as the sour, green element; there is no beet in this version, only potato, carrot and, in some recipes, onion in a meat broth (some cooks add a tomato zazharka). It is a spring and summer soup, made when sorrel is up. The quantities follow the 24 Kanal recipe (600 g meat, 3 l water, 400 g potatoes, 200 g sorrel, 4 eggs); the NANU recipe uses 200 to 300 g sorrel and 3 to 4 eggs.
- A military cook interviewed by Armyinform builds the soup per portion: 70 to 100 g of meat, about 100 g of potatoes and other vegetables, 20 g each of carrot, onion and tomato (a fried zazharka), 250 to 300 ml of water. She adds greens and eggs last, never puts sour cream in the pot, only on the plate, and warns that it turns sour if held for hours; she also lets it stand about 30 minutes.
- Enough greens keep the broth green even when tomato is used. If sorrel is not available, the same cook says fried tomato or tomato paste with a pinch of sugar gives the sour note; spinach plus a squeeze of lemon is our suggestion.
- The soup can be made without meat: the NANU page uses vegetable broth with celery and parsnip and adds spinach to the sorrel. It is related to Polish and Jewish sorrel soup (see the sorrel soup page), but the Ukrainian soup is a meat-broth soup with potato and carrot in the borscht manner.
- Serve with rye bread or garlic rolls if you like. Salting 2 to 3 minutes before the end, as the Armyinform cook does, keeps the greens bright. In Pidvolochysk (Ternopil region), the NANU page says, cooks simmer the sour cream into the soup.
Adapted from 24 Kanal: Green borscht, step-by-step recipe, Armyinform: seasonal green borscht from a military cook, and Visnyk NANU: How to cook green borscht.
At the festivals
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