Borscht Soup Recipe - #CookForUkraine
Like all of us, we have been following the news and seeing the horror unfold with heavy hearts and thinking about what we can do to help during such an intense crisis. Aside from donating, we can use our platform to help raise awareness of their amazing culture.
We would love to draw your attention to #CookForUkraine - a brilliant initiative by Olia Hercules, Alissa Timoshkina and Clerkenwell Boy that encourages us to cook and share Ukrainian recipes and donate. Over the weekend some of our team here at JGC tackled our homemade Ukrainian Borscht.
The Borscht, taken from one of our fabulous vegan dishes 'Beets & Borscht', one of our most popular starter options when beetroot is in season, is itself a wonderfully vibrant, hearty beetroot soup full of sweet, sour and savoury flavours. We think they did a wonderful job at recreating it, don't you!
If you can donate, you can find the link to the @cookforukraine Just Giving page below. Even if you’re not able to donate, simply cooking and sharing Ukrainian recipes is great so we can all be learning more.
Ukrainian Borscht Soup
Ingredients
1 small brown onion - thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic - thinly sliced
1tsp fennel seeds
1kg red beetroot - peeled and roughly chopped into 1inch pieces
3ltrs vegetable stock (ideally fresh but stock cubes will work too)
1/2 inch piece of fresh horseradish - finely grated (or 1tsp horseradish sauce)
Juice of 1 lemon
Sherry vinegar to taste (or other good quality wine vinegar)
10 sprigs of dill (plus extra to finish)
Few tbsp of crème fraîche (optional) to finish
Method
Sauté the onion, garlic and fennel seeds in a splash of oil with a pinch of salt in a saucepan big enough to fit all the ingredients in, cook until the onions are translucent.
Add the beetroot and the stock to the pan and bring to a low boil, cook slowly until the beetroot is tender.
Remove from the heat and add the horseradish, lemon juice and dill.
Blend everything together until very very smooth then pass through a fine sieve.
Add the sherry vinegar and season with salt to taste.
The borscht is delicious warm or cold, finish with either fresh dill, crème fraîche or both.
Our team photos from giving the recipe a whirl at the weekend!
