Borscht from home-canned beets

Borscht is a healthy, hearty soup made with beets, and known for its combination of sweet, sour and savoury flavours. It is a classic dish in Russia and the Ukraine, as well as other countries such as Poland.

Thanks to your home canning, you have several shortcuts available to make this meal a quick win.

There are a million variations, so feel free to alter the ingredients in this recipe to suit the tastes of your crowd. There’s really just one essential: the beets!

[And, to be clear, this is not a canning recipe: this is a “cooking with canning” recipe. We know of no tested recipes for home-canning borscht.]

This recipe uses:

• Home pressure-canned plain beets;
• Home-canned tomatoes;
• Home-canned ground beef.

The recipe

Yield: 12 cups (12 x 250 ml servings)

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Borscht from home-canned beets

There are a million variations, so feel free to alter the ingredients in this recipe to suit the tastes of your crowd. There's really just one essential: the beets!

Course Soup

Cuisine Russian

Keyword Beets

Prep Time 25 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Yield 12 cups

Calories 298 kcal

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 1 potato (optional)
• 100 g cabbage (fresh thinly sliced cabbage. 1 cup. Optional)
• 1 litre home-canned beets (to be clear, plain pressure-canned beets, not pickled beets. 1 quart)
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 litre crushed tomatoes (1 quart)
• 1 half-litre home-canned ground beef (or ground pork. optional. We used pressure-canned extra-lean beef. 1 pint)
• 125 ml red wine vinegar (½ cup)
• 1 teaspoon garlic crushed
• ½ teaspoon celery seed
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 125 ml evaporated milk (optional. We used fat-free. ½ cup)
• 1 tbsp dill weed (dried. Or 2 ½ tbsp fresh)
• salt and pepper to taste

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

1. Wash onion. Peel, dice, set aside.
2. Wash potato, leave unpeeled, dice.
3. Drain jar of beets, reserving the jar liquid, set jar liquid aside.
4. Slice beets thinly, set aside
5. Wash cabbage, slice, set aside.
6. Heat oil in pot.
7. Add onion, potato, sauté a few minutes until they just start to get translucent but don't brown them.
8. Add cabbage, sauté a few more minutes.
9. Add beets, reserved beet water, tomato, beef (along with the beef broth in jar.)
10. Add seasonings from the vinegar down to the brown sugar (tip! you may wish to hold back on some of the vinegar and only add if you think the taste needs it at the end.)
11. Let simmer 15 minutes or until potato pieces are soft.
12. Stir in the milk.
13. Add the dill and then season with salt and pepper to taste.
14. If there is not enough liquid for your preference, add some water or broth.
15. Heat through.
16. Serve hot.

Recipe notes

Instead of the home-canned ground beef, you could use 500 g / 1 lb of fresh ground beef (pork or poultry, or fresh veggie-ground round). Brown this in pot at the start along with the onion and potato. Or just omit the beef. Without the water in the jar of home-canned ground beef, you will need to add a cup or so of water as extra liquid to the soup to make up for the jar liquid.

Instead of the evaporated milk, you could use sour cream, Greek yoghurt or another type of plain yoghurt. Be careful not too boil too hard if you use a lower-fat sour cream or yoghurt, as it could curdle if boiled too hard.

Instead of the red wine vinegar, you could use any type of vinegar, or lemon juice. Adding something acidic wakes up the taste of the soup.

You can add more chopped cabbage if you wish.

You could add some already cooked beans, such as chickpeas, etc.

Source

Modified for home canning from a recipe by Terri Gilson: Ukrainian shortcut borscht soup with beef: weight watchers friendly. (Accessed April 2020)

Nutrition

Per 1 cup / 250 ml serving: 208 calories

Nutrition calculated using My Fitness Pal