During the time when I was writing Soup Club, a friend and I were chatting about soup as our kids played together (good to know my life hasn’t changed at all in the past three years). As she rattled off her favorites, she asked me if I had future plans for a borscht. Before that moment, I hadn’t. I thought a beet stew would be a hard sell for most people, but in that moment I realized that’s why I had to make it. (You might have seen the Egyptian Chickpea and Okra Stew from earlier in the book… My goal is to make people love all vegetables and tear down food prejudices! They are all worthy of love!) I started to wonder what my borscht would be like, how I would make it different and mine, especially since my research on the stew exposed the fact that really anything goes when it comes to the recipe. As I fell asleep that night, the highlights of my research knitted together in ingredients that filled a soup bowl and I knew it was inevitable, my recipe for borscht was already born. All it took was for me to cook it once to know I had struck a kind of recipe gold: an instant favorite gobbled by my kids, one that rewrote the bad reputation of a noble food and brought healthful comfort to the table.
Serving Suggestions:
- Borscht serving suggestions are as varied as the recipes themselves, but one that struck me as particularly tasty for this one here is wide egg noodles!
- With a generous dollop of sour cream or Greek yogurt on top
- Alongside a piece of pumpernickel toast (or sandwich made with pumpernickel bread, yum!)
- With sautéed rounds of Polish sausage (kielbasa) stirred in as it reheats.
Show me how you cook and serve it by emailing me your photo! Submissions are automatically entered to win a drawing for a Soup Club cookbook.
Yes, all this fun and love went into the recipe. That’s why it tastes so good.
