Recipe Time: Beet Soup
It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s a BEET! A big and serious beet.
I think there’s another post around here about beet soup but just forget about that one. This time I’ve got it going on.
Beet soup is also known as borscht but I’ve learned that true borscht is so different. Usually it has onions, sausage and more. (It can also be white and very far from pink.) I consider a simple pot of beet soup as just that: beet soup. I have made this probably six times so far. Behold, my final (for now) recipe for delicious beetness.
You’ll need:
6 large beets (the kind that fit in the palm of your hand) or about 9 small to medium beets
2 32 oz. containers of beef broth (hey we all can’t have stock in the freezer)
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp. salt
pepper to taste
dried dill to taste
This is a process of love. And it can be intimidating at first to even buy beets. Usually they come in groups of three or four, and the massive greens on top fill up the baggie you’re putting them in. It’s awkward buying such massive, fluffy vegetables. Don’t worry – you’ll get used to this.
1. Take your beets home and use kitchen scissors to cut off the tails of the beets. And cut off the greens close to the top. But it is okay to leave a little bit of the roots at the top. They cook down and become soft.
2. Put the beets in the sink and run water over them. Scrub them with a little brush to get all of the dirt off. That is very important.
I have a little brush that looks like a potato. Unfortunately it does not have eyes or shoes like this one:
3. Dunk the now very naked beets into a big pot of water and boil them until they’re soft when you poke them with a fork. You may also notice the skin peeling when you poke them.
4. When they are done, scoop them out of the water and put them in a colander. Leave the “beet water” in the pot. Take the beets to the sink and immediately run cold water over them. After water has washed over them for a few minutes they’ll be cool enough to touch. You can leave the water running as you easily rub the skin off of the beets. It should slide off very easily.
5. Get a big plastic bowl and put a sieve over it. Pour the “beet water” through the sieve and into the bowl. Then wash the pot that the beets cooked in. (There will be some foam and debris stuck to the edges of the pot. Return the pot to the stove.
6. Put about two cups of the strained, clean beet water into the pot. Discard the rest of the beet water. (Sometimes the beet water can be bitter so I never use all of it.)
7. Time to grate your beets. They should be even cooler now and you can grate them into pieces. When you get to the “nub” leave it on your cutting board and go to the next beet. When you’re done grating all the beets down, you can then take a knife to chop up the remaining beet tops.
8. Pour both containers of beef stock into the pot with the two cups of beet water. Add the juice of 1/2 lemon. (You may want to put the juice of the entire lemon if you’d like.) Add the red wine vinegar – it combats any bitterness in the liquid. (Beets can have a little attitude.) Then add the salt, pepper and dill. Let this liquid mingle for about 10 minutes before adding the beets.
9. Put all of the grated and chopped beets into the pot. Stir. You only need to cook it for about 30 minutes – it depends on how much softer you want the beets. The heat should be near boiling, but not boiling.
10. While the soup is simmering away, you can use the lemon halves to rub the pink off of your hands before you throw the lemon away.
11. Taste the soup and make sure it is good for you. You may want to add more salt, maybe even some sugar. More lemon? More dill? This is your world, make it count.
12. Serve the soup with a big dollop of sour cream. Mix the sour cream into the soup and delight in the bright pink amazingness.
My phone captured the steam oddly. There is not dirt in my soup. 
I know it looks like that! But in real life it was beautiful and had no gray in it. Haha.
