Borsch is one of the most popular first courses. It is cooked in the North and the South, loved in the East and the West, cooked in a variety of ways, but not always the result pleases. Sometimes only the name of borscht remains. Instead of rich and bright soup, you get something else that does not coincide with the expectation. What are the most common mistakes made?
Beets need to cook properly!
Beets are an integral ingredient of borscht, all the hostesses know this. But few people know how to cook it correctly. As a result, instead of a bright ruby dish, you get something incomprehensible orange or brown. Impressions of such a soup, like taste, are clearly far from ideal.
Cooking beet errors:
- Cooking in broth. Very often, a root vegetable is poured directly into the pot. Sometimes whole, just peeling. And the beets are cooked with meat, gives the taste, gives brown color. So you can not do.
- Lack of acid. In addition to separate stewing or boiling beets, it is important to add acid to it. This may be lemon juice, vinegar, diluted with lemon. These ingredients, even in small quantities, will retain a ruby color, will not allow it to go into a brown tint.
- Laying beets before vegetable roasting. Another common mistake. It is necessary to lay cooked beets in an acidic environment, that is, after vegetables fried with tomato. It will keep beautiful color.
- Number of beets. If you add a piece or one small root vegetable, it will be cabbage soup with beets. In the borscht beet a lot, usually it is added 1: 1 to the potato.
Beets for borscht can be cooked whole and in the peel, but this is done separately, in no case in the general broth. After that, the root crop is cleaned, the vegetable is cut and slightly fried, or simply poured into the pan.
Unpleasant Broth
The second most popular mistake is a bad broth. It will depend on the basis of the taste of borscht with beets. Therefore, it is important to carefully approach the preparation of broth. You can use beef or pork, in extreme cases, take the chicken.
Broth cooking errors:
- Little meat. For borscht, you need a rich broth. It is prepared not just from pits, but pieces with pulp and even lard, fat.
- Spices. For boiling broth you need to use spices: laurel, peppercorns, roots. In the finished soup they are not added.
- Broth to filter. Even if the foam was thoroughly removed, the broth should be passed through a sieve or cheesecloth, and the pan washed. Since there is a lot of meat, the resulting foam and fibers settle to the bottom, stick to the walls.
- Meat must be returned. You can cut the flesh and bring to the table separately, but the pieces will dry out, they will have a different taste. It is more reasonable to return them to the pan, let them soak in borscht.
Of course, there are recipes and lean borscht. For it use just water, mushroom decoction, for the satiety often add beans. But all these improvisations do not belong to the original recipe; they are all just a culinary parody.
Potatoes and other vegetables in borscht
Borsch is cooked with potatoes, but it goes no more than beets. Usually, one or two tubers are boiled whole, then kneaded and added to the broth. The rest of the tubers are cut and poured a little later, as in the usual soup.
Vegetable bookmarking errors:
- Cabbage to potatoes. She usually prepares faster, so you need to lay it a little later. Otherwise, the cabbage will fall apart. If the vegetable is fresh and summer, then it is added at the very end, when the potatoes are almost ready.
- Sour cabbage from a can. If the soup is cooked with sauerkraut, then it must first be brought to the softness in a pan or in a saucepan. Usually cabbage is fried and then stewed, it is not a quick process.
- Bookmark everything at once. Usually it is cooked in a slow cooker, this option is not suitable for a pan. Vegetables are poured in a certain sequence with an interval, each time borscht needs to boil.
Frying vegetables is not the most useful procedure, but during cooking borscht without it in any way. Not only is it important to sauté properly. You can not fry onions with carrots and especially bring to brown, otherwise the dish will have an unpleasant taste. Just let them lightly browned or reach transparency, then the rest of the ingredients are introduced and the vegetables are stewed together.
What are they forgetting?
- Salo. It is used not only for serving, but also added to the pan at the end of cooking. Usually it uses grinded smoked or salted bacon with garlic, sometimes with pepper and greens. The same mixture is put on the table, spread on bread.
- Dumplings. Without them, Ukrainian borscht is not served. If you do not want to make dough and pastries, then you can submit homemade garlic croutons, they prepare very quickly.
- Sour cream. In no case mayonnaise. Fat and high-calorie ingredients in borscht enough, but a spoon of sour cream does not hurt.
- Spices. Borsch - a multi-ingredient dish with a pronounced taste. But sometimes it is missing. In addition to salt, it is customary to add sugar, citric acid or juice.
Error Correction
If the soup is over salted.
You can pour in some raw water, but it's better not to do so. Excess liquid will spoil the consistency, take the taste. It is better to put a couple of potatoes and boil a little. Sometimes a bag of washed rice, which also perfectly takes the salt, is dipped into borscht. But the best and easiest option is to add unsalted tomato juice, mashed potatoes or a couple of grated tomatoes.
Cabbage crunches.
It happens that browning has been added too early, cabbage has not reached readiness, crunches. In this case, you need to turn down the heat and then borscht at minimum heat, not allowing it to boil. Cabbage will surely reach readiness, and the remaining vegetables will not become limp, the slices will retain their shape.
Borsch was liquid.
You can just pour a little broth, but it’s better to add something. For example, fry another onion and carrot or add separately cooked potatoes. The perfect and quick solution is canned beans from a jar or pickled mushrooms. But in any case, the dish with a new additive should be brought to a boil.
If the soup is sour.
It happens that the acid is too much. In this case, sugar is added to the borsch or boiled fresh vegetables are introduced, they are prepared separately.
