Green Borscht
Green borscht (zelenyi borshch, also called sorrel borscht or sorrel soup) is a Ukrainian spring soup of potatoes and shredded chicken in a light chicken broth, soured not by beets but by fresh sorrel. The sorrel goes in at the very end for only a few minutes, so the soup stays bright and lemony; each bowl gets chopped hard-boiled egg, dill and a spoonful of sour cream.
Ingredients
- 600 gbone-in chicken thighs or drumsticks
- 2500 mlwater
- 400 gpotatoes
- 100 gonion
- 100 gcarrot
- 2 tbspsunflower or vegetable oil
- 300 gsorrel
- 4 wholehard-boiled eggs
- 3 tbspfresh dill
- 1 wholebay leaf
- 6 tbspsour cream
- 2 tspsalt
- 0.5 tspblack pepper
Method
- Bring the water to a boil, add the chicken, the bay leaf and 1 teaspoon of the salt, and skim off the froth. Simmer gently for 30 to 35 minutes, until the meat pulls easily away from the bone and reads 74°C in the thickest part, next to the bone. Meanwhile, hard-boil the eggs: cover them with cold water, bring to a boil, simmer for 10 minutes, then cool them in ice water so the yolks stay yellow. Lift the chicken out, shred the meat off the bones, discard the skin and bones, and return the meat to the pot.
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into small cubes. Add them to the broth and simmer 10 to 12 minutes, until a knife slides in without resistance but the cubes still hold their shape.
- Meanwhile, finely chop the onion and grate the carrot. Soften them in the oil in a pan over medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring, until the onion turns translucent and the carrot a pale orange; do not let them brown. Add to the pot.
- Wash the sorrel, cut off the tough stems, and chop the leaves. Stir them into the simmering soup and cook just 3 to 5 minutes, until the leaves turn from bright green to olive and collapse. Added at the end and cooked briefly, sorrel keeps its color and its sharp, lemony aroma; longer cooking turns it a dull grey-brown.
- Stir in the dill, the remaining salt, and the black pepper. Remove the bay leaf. Taste: the soup should be clearly sour, so adjust the salt only now.
- Take the pot off the heat and let it rest 10 minutes so the flavors settle.
- Serve hot. Peel the cooled eggs, chop or grate them, and put them in each bowl with a spoonful of sour cream.
FAQ
Use 300 g of fresh spinach and stir in 2 to 3 tablespoons of lemon juice at the end, tasting as you go. Spinach gives the green color and the bulk, and the lemon supplies the sourness that sorrel brings on its own. In winter, frozen sorrel works in the same weight and goes into the pot without thawing. Add acid only when you replace the sorrel; with real sorrel the soup is already sour enough.
Sorrel changes color the moment it hits hot liquid: the bright green leaves turn olive within a minute, and that is normal. The soup goes dull grey-brown when the sorrel cooks too long or sits on the heat after the pot is done. Add the chopped leaves in the last 3 to 5 minutes, take the pot off the heat right after, and when you reheat it, bring it to steaming hot all the way through (74°C) but not to a rolling boil. A handful of extra chopped dill stirred in at the end brings some fresh green back.
Both are traditional. This recipe uses hard-boiled eggs: simmer them 10 minutes, cool them in ice water, then chop or grate them into the bowl just before serving. For the other version, beat 2 eggs and pour them into the simmering soup in a thin stream, stirring with a fork, right after the sorrel; you get silky ribbons in the broth. Boiled eggs stay whole and clean in the bowl, while beaten egg makes the broth cloudier and more filling.
Red borscht gets its color and sweetness from beets and is often cooked on a meat broth with cabbage. Green borscht has no beets at all: the sourness comes from sorrel, it cooks in about an hour on chicken broth, and it is eaten in spring when sorrel is young. Shchi is a cabbage soup, so the base is different again. What green and red borscht share is the spoonful of sour cream on top.
Hot is the traditional way, but on a warm day cold green borscht from the fridge is refreshing, with extra sour cream and egg. It keeps for 2 days in a covered container; the sorrel darkens a little each day, but the taste holds. Reheat it until it is steaming hot all the way through (74°C), but take it off the heat before it comes to a rolling boil, and add fresh dill at the end. If you want a soup that is properly cold by design, okroshka is the dish made for it.
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