When cooking borsch, vinegar is often used - it helps the beets to maintain a rich color, which makes the soup very appetizing in appearance. Some housewives replace vinegar with lemon juice and even add lemon slices to the dish. This already affects not only the color, but also the taste of the dish. Borsch with lemon will appeal to those who are not too fond of the sweetish taste that a dish acquires because of beets. Citrus fruit will allow you to balance it, giving the soup some resemblance to the hodgepodge.
Cooking Features
Borsch with lemon can be cooked in meat or chicken broth, make it lean. Most often it contains beets, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and onions, but some recipes suggest a change in the vegetable composition of the dish. The technology of cooking borsch with lemon may vary slightly depending on the selected recipe, but the general principles of cooking this dish remain unchanged.
- When cooking borscht, it is important not to let it acquire a dull burgundy color. To do this, use a clear broth. To cook such a boil when boiling water in which the meat is cooked, is removed. The broth itself is cooked over low heat, not allowing it to boil violently. Before using meat broth filter.
- The brightness of the borscht depends on how much tomato pulp (or paste) and beets you put into it - they give the soup a rich tint. At the same time, it is impossible to allow beets to boil for a long time - it becomes discolored due to this. This can be prevented by a small trick: the beets are brought to readiness, boiled or baked separately, or extinguished it in a chopped form, and only after that they are put into the cooking soup no more than 10 minutes before it is ready.
- When cooking borscht, it is important to observe the sequence of laying the products. Most often, the first put potatoes and cabbage, the other vegetables are introduced later. If the composition of the soup is beans, it lay the first or boil until cooked separately, adding to the soup 10-15 minutes before it is ready.
- The more carefully you chop cabbage and chop the rest of the vegetables, the more appetizing the finished dish will look like.
Borsch with lemon is quite sour, refilling it with sour cream before serving is optional, but it will not spoil its taste. Not superfluous will be finely chopped garlic, fresh greens.
Borsch with lemon in meat broth
Composition:
- potatoes - 0.5 kg;
- cabbage - 0, 5 kg;
- lemon - 0, 5 pcs .;
- carrots - 100 g;
- onions - 100 g;
- beets - 0, 2 kg;
- tomato paste - 40 ml;
- vegetable oil - 40 ml;
- beef on bone - 0, 5 kg;
- water - 3-3, 5 l;
- salt, spices - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Pour the washed meat with clean water, bring to a boil. Boil, removing the foam, until it ceases to protrude on the surface. Add spices, reduce heat and cover the pan with a lid, leaving a wide gap. Boil until the meat begins to easily fall behind the bone. Remove it from the pan, strain the broth.
- Peel the potatoes, cut into cubes slightly larger than a centimeter.
- Chop the cabbage finely.
- Peel beets and carrots, cut into thin strips.
- Free from onions peel, cut into thin quarters of rings.
- Heat oil in a saucepan, put onions and carrots in it. Cook them for 5 minutes.
- Add the beets, pour it in juice squeezed from half a lemon. Do not throw away the lemon itself.
- Fry the beets with other vegetables for 5 minutes. Add the tomato paste and simmer the vegetables until soft.
- Boil the broth, put cabbage and potatoes in it, cook for 15 minutes.
- Separate the meat from the bones, cut into slices and return to the pan. Add lemon.
- Boil for 5-10 minutes, then add the prepared dressing and salt. Cook for 5 minutes after the soup boils.
- Remove the lemon from the soup, let it brew for 20 minutes under the lid.
According to this recipe you can cook borscht without meat. In this case, it does not hurt to add a glass of boiled beans until cooked. It is introduced into the soup simultaneously with lemon, 10-15 minutes before it is ready.
Borsch with lemon, prunes and chicken
Composition:
- chicken - 0, 7 kg;
- potatoes - 0.5 kg;
- cabbage - 0, 3 kg;
- beets - 150 g;
- carrots - 100 g;
- onions - 100 g;
- pitted prunes - 100 g;
- lemon - 1 pc .;
- tomato paste - 40 ml;
- vegetable oil - 40 ml;
- sugar - 5 g;
- salt, pepper, water - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Wash the chicken, cut it into pieces, put it in the pan.
- Fill with water and boil broth. When boiling water in the pan, do not forget to remove the foam from the surface and reduce the intensity of the flame.
- Strain broth. Separate the chicken meat from the bones, cut and return to the broth. If necessary, dilute it with boiled water and boil for 5 minutes.
- Peel the carrots and beets, chop them on a chick with large holes.
- Cut the prunes into strips.
- Chop the cabbage.
- Peel the potatoes, cut into cubes and a half centimeters or a little less.
- Remove the husks from the onion, finely chop it.
- Wash lemon, cut it in half. Squeeze the juice from one half, cut the other into thin slices.
- In hot oil, fry onions and carrots. Add the beets, watering it with lemon juice and sprinkle with sugar. Continue to sauté the vegetables for 5 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste, after 5 minutes, add the soup ladle and add the prunes. Stew until all ingredients are soft.
- Put potatoes and cabbage into boiling broth, after 15 minutes add steamed vegetables and lemon slices. Continue cooking for 10 minutes.
The soup prepared according to this recipe has a completely unique taste. It will appeal to lovers of unusual and delicious dishes.
Borsch with lemon without cabbage
Composition:
- beets - 0, 3 kg;
- carrots - 150 g;
- onions - 150 g;
- potatoes - 0, 2 kg;
- lemon - 0, 5 pcs .;
- garlic - 1 clove;
- boiled meat or ham - 0, 3 kg;
- water or broth - 1, 5-2 l;
- sugar - 5 g;
- tomato paste - 20 ml;
- vegetable oil - 40 ml;
- salt, spices, fresh herbs - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Peel the potatoes, cut them into cubes.
- Cut the meat or ham into small strips.
- Onion, freeing from the husk, cut into thin half-rings or quarters of rings, if the onion you caught large.
- Chopped beets and carrots chopped on a grater, designed for cooking Korean salads, or cut into strips.
- Fry onion and carrot in vegetable oil. Add to them beets, sugar and juice squeezed from half a lemon. Put out a few minutes.
- Cut the remaining lemon into small pieces, add to the vegetables, add a spoonful of tomato paste and some broth. Extinguish 10 minutes.
- Put potatoes in boiling broth. After 5 minutes, add the meat. After the same time, enter the remaining ingredients. Do not forget to salt and season the soup.
- Cook for 7-8 minutes, add the mixture of finely chopped garlic and greens with a knife. Boil another 2 minutes.
Despite the absence of cabbage in the composition of this borscht, it possesses the taste and color characteristic of this soup, which turns out thick and satisfying.
Borsch with lemon is somewhat different in taste from the traditional one, somewhat resembling a hodgepodge, but for lovers of borscht it will surely be to its liking. You can add a dish with olives or olives, it will give it even more unusual notes.
