Polish Christmas Borscht
What’s for dinner?
An unmissable dish for our Christmas Eve dinner — a borscht or, as we call it in Poland, barszcz. Fantastic for other times of the year as well. And vegan! Bon Appétit!
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of red beetroots, peeled and grated
- celeriac, parsnip, cabbage (red or white), onion — peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic — peeled
- 2 tablespoons of vinegar
- 2 apples, not peeled but chopped
- 5 grains of allspice
- 5 peppercorns
- 1 bayleaf
- 2 cloves
- 5 dried wild mushrooms
- 1/2 a teaspoon of dried marjoram
- 150–200 ml of blackcurrant juice
- water
Directions:
Put beetroots, celeriac, parsnip, cabbage, onion and apples in a large pot. Cover with cold water, reaching approx. 3–4 cm above the vegetables. Add allspice, peppercorns, mushrooms, cloves, garlic and vinegar. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer until juice comes out of the beetroots and all the vegetables become soft. Turn the heat off. Add marjoram and leave the soup to cool down overnight. The next day pour the soup through the sieve — the vegetables will have no taste left in them so they need to be discarded and the soup will be clear. Add the blackcurrant juice and heat up the soup to the desired temperature. Optionally add more marjoram to taste.
(On the photo you can see I added rosemary and thyme twigs. They were not in the original recipe but as I’ve been growing them, I added them as well. Feel free to include or omit.)
