Borscht is on the list of favorite dishes of many people. Alas, not all housewives manage to cook it according to all the rules, so that a rich red dish is in the pan. Novate.ru tells how to cook borsch so that it does not turn orange and retains its brightness.
Beets around the head
To understand how to cook red borscht, you must first make a list of the ingredients that affect the color of the dish. In the first place, of course, beets. For borsch, you should take a vegetable of a rich burgundy color with dark veins. Please note that beets cannot be put raw in the broth, otherwise it will lose its beautiful shade and will not be able to give it to the future dish. That is why get into the habit of stewing vegetables separately. Cut it into strips, fry a little in a pan greased with vegetable oil, with the addition of sugar and tomato paste. Then add a small amount of water and simmer under a tightly closed lid. The acid in the tomatoes will help preserve the color of the beets, and the sugar will soften the sourness of the pasta a little, enhancing the natural sweetness of the vegetable.
You can use another method of cooking beets - boil or bake them. You might not know, but the root crop is always cooked as a whole - you do not need to cut off the top and the root, otherwise all the juices will come out of the vegetable. Young fruits of small size are boiled for about 30 minutes, but old and large ones - more than an hour and a half. If you bake beets, wrap them in foil first, set the temperature to 180 degrees and put in the oven for about an hour. Before putting the vegetable in the pan with other ingredients, it must be peeled and grated (can be cut with a knife). Beets should be put into borscht in the last minutes. Five minutes is enough for the tastes of the components to combine, and then you can turn off the borscht.
A few more tricks
• Add acid. In the previous paragraph, we mentioned tomato paste, which contains acid and is added to beets when the vegetable is sautéed in a pan. However, this is not the only product that can help. To preserve the color of borscht, wine or apple cider vinegar is also suitable, with which you need to sprinkle the beets before frying it, and lemon juice - it is added at the beginning of the cooking process root crop.
• Bake vegetables. The color of the finished borscht will be much brighter and richer if it is cooked not with raw, but with roasted vegetables. To do this, onions, carrots and other root vegetables that you need according to the recipe should be cut in half, put in an even cut on a preheated pan, and bake until distinct burn marks. The bottom of the pan does not need to be lubricated with anything, it should be dry.
• Add cranberries - add a little acid to the broth and cranberries can brighten the color. Take 200 grams of cranberries, crush them in a mortar or with a potato masher, squeeze the juice and pour it into the borscht five minutes before the end of the cooking process.
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Bonus: borscht recipe
To prepare borscht with baked beets, you will need:
• 500 g of beef with bones;
• 200 g of white cabbage;
• one head of white onion;
• two beets;
• five potatoes;
• one carrot;
• three cloves of garlic;
• greens to taste (dill, parsley);
• canned tomatoes to taste;
• two bay leaves
• 12 pieces of black peppercorns;
• salt to taste.
First you need to prepare beef broth. Pour three liters of cold water into the pan, put the onion and meat. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce heat and add spices: salt, black peppercorns, bay leaf. Do not cover the pan with a lid, so as not to miss the beginning of the appearance of foam. It must be removed constantly, otherwise the broth will turn cloudy. The meat should be boiled for about one and a half to two hours - when it begins to lag behind the bone, the broth can be turned off and filtered. Remove the meat, cut into small pieces - it will need to be added to the borscht at the end.
While the meat is cooking, you can bake the beets. Wash it well, brush with olive oil, wrap in foil (preferably in two layers) and put in the oven. Roast until tender at 200 degrees - depending on the power of the oven and the size of the beets, it may take 60-90 minutes. Before you take out the vegetable, pierce it with a match or a toothpick.
Chop the vegetables: chop the cabbage, cut the potatoes into cubes, cut the onion into half rings, grate the carrots. Heat the pan on the stove, grease the bottom with vegetable oil and fry the vegetables. First, put the onion, wait until it turns golden, and add the carrots. Put the tomatoes in their own juice in the pan (usually they are already chopped in the package) and stew the ingredients.
Add potatoes to the prepared broth, bring it to a boil, and then put the meat. Boil the contents of the pan for three to four minutes, then add the chopped cabbage. Bring to a boil again, turn down the heat and simmer for a quarter of an hour. After the time has elapsed, transfer the vegetables from the pan and the garlic squeezed through the press into the pan. Cut the baked beets into strips or grate and also put in borscht, about five minutes before the end of the cooking process. At the end, add finely chopped greens, salt and pepper to taste. Turn off the stove and let the borscht brew for a few hours. Serve the first course with sour cream and donuts with garlic.
More recipes can be found in the article. Borscht, after which you want supplements
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/130322/62345/