Svekolnik (cold borscht)

180 min

Svekolnik (or cold borscht) is a soup Artem’s grandma makes every summer in her dacha (summer house). This is not the same recipe but works great on hot summer days. It even feels almost like lemonade with the cold sweetness of beets and the gentle tickling of radishes.

Ingredients

Yields 6 portions

For the beet broth

1 kg of beetroots
30 g of horseradish or ginger
1 lime
juice
coconut sugar
salt

For the borsch

4–6 young beetroots
with stems
2–3 cucumbers
1–2 radishes
1 tablespoon of vinegar
2–3 scallions
2–3 bunches of dill
6 eggs
hard-boiled
olive oil
smetana or crème fraîche
for serving

You will need

oven
baking tray

Directions

To cook the beet broth

Peel the beets and shred them in a food processor or grate on a grater.
Cook in 3 liters of water for about 45 minutes, once the water is boiling.
While the beets are cooking, thinly slice the horseradish or ginger.
Add the ginger to the cooking beets, and cook the beets for 15 minutes more.
Let the beet broth cool completely.
Filter the beet broth using a sieve.
Season with salt, sugar, and lime juice.

To cook the borsch

Preheat oven to 200 ˚C.
Distribute unpeeled young beats on the baking sheet, and drizzle them with olive oil and salt.
Roast beets until tender (so you could easily insert a knife or a fork).
While the beets are roasting, cut the beet stems into 1 cm slices.
Cool down the roasted beets, and peel them.
In a medium saucepan, add beet stems and about 100 ml of water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Cook the beet stems for about 10 minutes, until tender.
Discard the water of beet stems, and cool the stems down.
Cut the roasted beets, cucumbers, and radishes into 1 cm cubes.
Slice the spring onions, and thinly chop the dill.
Combine beet stems, roasted beets, cucumbers, radishes, spring onions, and dill.
Add the beet broth, and thoroughly mix everything.
Cook the eggs in water, for 9 minutes after the water starts to boil. Remove the eggs from the water and transfer them to a bowl with cold water to cool them down and make peeling easier.
Serve the soup with a tablespoon of smetana (or crème fraîche) and a halved hardboiled egg.

Notes & tips

Smetana (сметана) is a type of sour cream similar to crème fraîche.

This recipe is based on the cold borsch recipe from Vlad Piskunov’s book “Russian cuisine. Best in 500 years”.

Explore ingredients

Ingredients explorer

Name	Kind	Season	Contains
Beetroot	Vegan	July August September October November
Beetroot	Vegan	July August September October November
Coconut sugar	Vegan
Crème fraîche	Vegetarian		Dairy
Cucumber	Vegan	June July August September
Dill	Vegan
Egg	Vegetarian
Ginger	Vegan
Horseradish	Vegan
Lime	Vegan
Olive oil	Vegan
Radish	Vegan	October November
Salt	Vegan
Scallion	Vegan
Smetana	Vegetarian		Dairy
Vinegar	Vegan