Souptacular Soups

Made my grandma’s borshct recipe earlier this month for Soup Day (Nov 5th is Soup Day at my office). It takes 3 hours and you get every pot and cutting board in the house dirty. Amazing borscht. I called to tell her I made it and she was pretty thrilled – we swapped soup stories.

Its a Doukobour style borsch. I’ll write a whole other entry about Doukobour borscht another day.

Anyways here’s the recipe. A warning though: it’s a classic grandma recipe – some ingredients may appear to be missing or unaccounted for or appear later and surprize you.  You may have to wing it but that’s what soup’s all about.

3 quarts water
1 1/2 tsp salt
8 medium potatos
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 medium beet
1 cup chopped onion
6 cups shredded cabbage (firmly packed)
1 cup sweet cream
3/4 pound butter
4 cups canned tomatos
1/2 cup green pepper
2 tbsp fresh dill

1. Put 4 cups tomatoes in a pan, mash, add 2 tbsp butter and boil until thick.

mashing tomatoes for borscht

2. Put 1/2 pound butter, 3/4 onions and 1/2 cup shredded carrots into a frying pan. Fry but don’t brown.

3. In a separate frying pan, fry 3 cups of cabbage in 1/4 pound of butter.

three pots already dirty

4. Boil 3 quarts of water in a large pot, add 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 cup cream, 1/2 chopped carrots, 6 potatoes (quartered about 2 cups) and the beet (cut in half). Boil until potatoes are tender. Remove and mash with 2 tbsp butter and 1/2 cup cream.

soup pot

5. Add 1 1/2 cups potatoes and 3 cups shredded cabbage into the potato stock and boil until tender. Pout the mashed potatoes back into the stock. Add fried onion, carrot cabbage, and tomato sauce. Add green peppers and dill, bring just to a boil then turn off heat. Remove beet and discard.

Serves 12.