Letters from Ukraine, 2022
Borshch is not soup
A foreigner’s observations of Ukraine’s national dish
I’m on an evening walk in our neighborhood. Amongst the faintest smell of manure and the earliest mosquitos, there is something fascinating happening that I wouldn’t be witnessing in American suburbia — in yard after yard, families are working together to get their gardens ready for the year. Tilling the soil, spreading the seeds. The motivated babucyas seem to be taking charge; the kids often dilly-dally, spilling into the street and noisily riding their bikes around.
It’s a beautiful sight, really (not just because families are spending time together outside).
As the grandmothers carefully spread seeds, I have a general idea of what’s being planted, and it will lead to something amazing — borshch.
Beetroot. Cabbage. Potatoes. Carrots. Onions. All of these sturdy, winter-resistant vegetables are called for in Ukraine’s national dish, and come autumn, they’ll be harvested in these gardens.
You could say that many Ukrainians living outside of large cities literally grow borshch in their backyards (even more so for those who keep pigs, since borshch is pork-based). I can practically envision the enormous, steaming pots of stunningly magenta, extra beet-y, wonderfully savory borshch floating above the rows of tilled soil, like the floating candles of the Great Hall in Harry Potter.
I give a cordial nod to the chickens hopping around in the nearest yard (they are totally clueless about the fate that they’ll escape), observe a moment of silence for Porky the Pig and Belinda the Beet, and continue on, thinking about how much I’d enjoy a bowl of borshch at this very moment. Let me tell you a few things I’ve learned about it.
I’ve heard it said that traditional dishes became traditional because of how accessible and affordable the ingredients are. Borshch is no exception — Ukrainians even use it as an indicator of their economy.
Every year, something called the borshch index (індекс борщу) is released — a study of how much the cost to make four servings of borshch has increased in the last year. In case you’re wondering, four portions of traditional borshch cost about 65.16 Ukrainian hryvnia this year — a little more than $2 USD.
This isn’t as cheap as you might think — given the lower average salary in Ukraine — but it still makes borshch one of the more affordable Ukrainian dishes.
On closer inspection, you might notice that I have yet to use the word “soup” as a generic, pronominal placeholder for borshch. I do this to maintain my cultural standing, because if I play fast-and-loose with the terminology, it usually goes something like this:
“Let’s make borshch tomorrow,” my Ukrainian husband suggests. “My grandma gave us some good beets and we have everything else we need.”
“Good idea,” I agree. Then…
“We haven’t had soup in a while.”
As the word “soup” leaves my mouth, my mindless words blur into slow motion and then taper off into silence.
I realize my error and grin, about to open my mouth and try to fix it. My husband beats me to the punch.
“Darling.
“Borshch is not soup!
“Borshch is borshch!”
Even as he reproaches my cultural faux pas, he is smiling.
In English, “soup” is a catch-all term for liquid dishes we eat with a spoon. I can call many dishes “soup,” from takeout Chinese hot-and-sour to loaded potato to Italian minestrone.
The Ukrainian language, though, prefers to recognize just how different borshch is from what Ukrainians consider soup (суп) — meat boiled to form a bouillon, plus sautéed grated carrot and diced onions, cubed potatoes, and buckwheat or pasta.
Borshch calls for additional unique ingredients: grated beets, butter, sugar, and tomato sauce (all sautéed with the onion and carrot). You also need to throw some shredded cabbage into the final product, too, and mushrooms and beans can also make an appearance.
Let’s be honest — every Ukrainian makes their borshch slightly differently.
Since borshch is in a class of its own, it’s not lumped together with soup (it feels reckless to even use the two words in the same sentence). I keep this straight in Ukrainian, but sometimes I forget in English.
Borshch is not soup, I write on the metaphorical chalkboard.
Borshch is not soup.
Borshch is not soup.
—
I can’t talk about borshch in May 2022 without clarifying a common Western misconception:
Borshch is not Russian.
Russians might eat it, too, but it’s not from Russia.
Borshch is originally from Ukraine.
My intention here is to recount my experiences with borshch on the ground in Ukraine, and I hear about Russia enough as it is on a daily basis, so I’ll skip the full history lesson (here’s a stellar BBC article if you want to learn more about the origins of borshch).
Tell your friends, though: Borshch is Ukrainian.
À la Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.
—
I do have a lot to say about sour cream, though. Remember on Friends, when Monica admitted that one of the reasons she hung out with her Ukrainian classmate in high school was because “his mom put sour cream on everything”?
This isn’t too much of a stretch. Ukrainains indeed love their smetana (this was one of the first words I ever learned in Ukrainian, out of necessity). It’s particularly delicious mixed into cold cabbage salads, as a topping for potato or cabbage varenyky (dumplings), and of course, in borshch.
Sour cream best complements borshch when you go about it using the “island” method, as I like to call it. Add a tablespoon or two to your borshch and pull little dallops away from your “island” as you eat. Towards the end of the bowl, your borshch will be a pretty, pale pink. You get the best of both worlds this way — that hot and cold, savory and tangy contrast at the beginning and a warm and mellow ending.
—
I’ve always found borshch to be extremely inviting and comforting. On the first day of the invasion, borshch really had my back.
From the moment we heard some explosions in the early morning hours, we were glued to the TV, trying to make sense of what was going on. I occasionally pulled myself away to take care of my son (he was still at that “happy-staring-at-the-ceiling-all-day” age) and throw together some emergency bags, but I barely ate anything. We were trying to figure out if we needed to leave.
Thankfully, my grandmother-in-law made a pot of borshch at some point.
Borshch might appear unassuming and brothy, but the fiber from all the shredded vegetables and the protein from the meat makes it a whopper of a meal. A steaming bowl of it with some bread revived me after an exhausting morning and sustained me until the evening, when I recovered from some of the initial shock and could start thinking clearly again.
Borshch sticks to your ribs, as my sister said when she tried it during a visit here. You often don’t get seconds with borshch because you often don’t need to.
I’m grateful my Ukrainian grandmother made borshch that day. It felt…right to have it on such a day. A sweet, earthy bowl bowl of Ukraine’s national dish somehow filled me with a sense of reassurance, that everything was going to be okay. That Ukraine would not fall.
By God, it hasn’t.
The other night, I made my first solo borshch. It was nerve-wrecking because it felt as if a torch was being passed to me, but after having watched my husband and my in-laws make it so many times, I also felt a quiet confidence within.
One thing I knew for sure was that the color and quality of the beetroots I’d work with was going to determine how my borshch tasted and looked. Generally, mediocre beets make maroon or orange borshch. When your beets are of the deep magenta sort, you can expect next-level color.
(By the way, there’s also a type of borshch called zelenyi borshch — green borshch — that’s made without beets and with a leafy green called sorrel, but that’s a story for another day.)
I knew I had hit the jackpot when I saw how stained my hands were after grating the beets. Sure enough, when everything came together in the pot…
“Look at that color. Look at it,” I chanted to my husband, gesturing with my ladle towards the bubbling pot and dancing around the kitchen. “That’s freakin’ beautiful!”
The leftovers were even more delicious the next day; time is also a crucial ingredient for tasty borshch. Second-day borsch is even better because additional flavor in the meat and vegetables unlocks and seeps into the broth.
They even have a saying in Ukrainian to describe this phenomenon: “Want yesterday’s borshch? Come back tomorrow.”
Borshch has come to mean a lot to me in the two years I’ve lived in Ukraine, and I’m thrilled that I know how to make it now.
I can’t wait to serve my son plenty of borshch as he grows up so he can know the magic and comfort it brings on both the hard and the good days.
(With plenty of sour cream, of course. If I want to be a good wannabe Ukrainian mom, I better make sure I’m putting sour cream on everything).
