EntranceWhat tops are used to make botvinya. Botvinya - the queen of cold soups
Botvinya is the "queen" of Russian cuisine from the category of cold soups. In modern cooking, this dish is less popular than because of the complex and time-consuming cooking process. But experienced housewives Don't cross it out of your cookbook.
The editors will reveal all the secrets and subtleties of cooking botvinya and share with you the recipes for this soup, modernized in a modern way.
cooking botvinia
The main ingredients of the classic botvinia are young beets with leaves, sorrel, nettle, kvass, garden greens, green onion feathers, red fish and ice. For diet food modern housewives add to this soup, which gives ready meal special taste and complements it with vitamins.
The secret of the “correct” and successful botvinia lies in some of the nuances associated with the selection of components for the soup:
- Suitable for botvinia is kvass from dark bread, which does not have sharp acid and sweetness, which will make it possible to shade the taste of red fish and not kill it;
- Sorrel should definitely be included in real botvinia - without it, the dish will come out insipid;
- For flavor and pungency, it is recommended to add grated horseradish and lemon juice to botvinia;
- Greens for soup are best boiled in a separate bowl, which will preserve the taste of each ingredient that will “make friends” already in the soup;
- A full and rich botvinia will come out of only a few varieties of red fish, which can be replaced with shrimp, crayfish and crabs.
Botvinia: recipes with photos
According to tradition, botvinya was served on the dinner table in three plates, one of which was "green" kvass, the other - fish, and the third - ice. This is currently summer soup It is customary to combine in one tureen and pour portions into plates, as a single dish.
Classic botvinya "in a modern way"
Ingredients:
- Kvass - 1 l
- Young beets with tops - 3 pcs.
- Sorrel and nettle - 200 g each
- green onion
- Red fish (sturgeon, trout, salmon, whitefish) - 500 g
- Fresh cucumber - 1 pc.
- Horseradish and dill - 1 tbsp each
- Salt, sugar, mustard - to taste
Cooking: boil the beets and tops until soft (preferably in a separate bowl), scald the sorrel and nettles with boiling water, chop the greens very finely. Add dill and onion grated with salt, grated horseradish and lemon zest, finely chopped cucumber to kvass. Then chopped beets and its tops grated through a sieve should be introduced into the kvass base. Leave for 20 minutes to vegetable soup the taste of each ingredient was “revealed”.
In the meantime, boil the fish cut into portions - raw for 10 minutes, and simmer lightly salted or smoked fish on the fire for 2-3 minutes. When serving, add the fish to the chilled soup.
"Simple" botvinya with spinach
Ingredients:
- Kvass - 1.5 l
- Beets - 2 pcs.
- Cucumber - 2 pcs.
- Salmon - 500 g
- Spinach - 500 g
- Green onions and lemon juice
- Salt, sugar - to taste
Cooking: a simple botvinia recipe will be a "find" for those who do not have a garden. For its preparation, you will not need tops, nettles and sorrel, which will replace spinach in the soup. The main greens for the soup (spinach) and fish should be boiled for 15-20 minutes, at this time cut the cucumber and boiled beets, combine with kvass, lemon juice and grated horseradish (to taste).
Grind green onions and spinach with salt and sugar, add the green mixture to the kvass base, then cool the soup and serve with boiled fish.
"Quick" beetroot tops
Ingredients:
- Beet tops - 250 g
- Fresh cucumber - 2 pcs.
- Radishes - 3 pcs.
- Kvass - 1 l
- Salmon fillet - 500 g
- Sorrel - 250 g
- green onions, salt and sugar
Cooking: boil the fish, drain the broth from it into a separate saucepan and put finely chopped tops and sorrel into it, which should be boiled for 2 minutes. Strain the cooled greens, beat with a blender, combine with kvass, cucumbers and radishes, cut into strips. Season the soup with horseradish, salt and sugar. Add fish to the soup only when serving.
An important point: the longer the botvinya is fermented, the tastier it is. Therefore, many housewives prepare thick kvass thick with grated greens and tops from a third of the required volume of kvass for soup. "Sourdough" is perfectly stored in the cold for 3-4 days, and before use, it is diluted with kvass directly in the plate and combined with fish.
The recipe for botvinya with meat is simple to disgrace - I will not open anything complicated or new (most likely). I'll just tell you how I cook it - with some features.
The basis of the soup is of course good, rich broth- that's where we'll start.
To do this, the meat must be washed, put in a saucepan and pour cold water.
Boil. Remove any foam that appears on the surface with a slotted spoon. When all the foam "leaves" - add peeled carrots and onions, salt to taste. Cook over medium heat for about 1.5 hours - until the meat is ready.
Note: if use chicken bouillon- the cooking time of the botvinia will be significantly reduced. If you add other roots (parsley, celery ...) when cooking the broth, the taste will be more intense.
By the end of cooking the broth, prepare the vegetables needed for the botvini. Start by peeling the onions, carrots and potatoes.
Divide the beets into "tops and roots". Rinse the tops well from possible contamination. Peel the roots of the skin, cutting it as thin as possible. For this, a vegetable knife is useful - a handy thing in the kitchen.
Any soup with vegetable fried becomes more aromatic, so it is worth cooking.
Finely chop the onion. Carrots can be grated on a coarse grater or cut into thin strips.
Then, on hot vegetable oil, lowering the heat under the pan, fry (sauté) the chopped vegetables until softened and lightly golden.
To get a clean broth for further cooking, it must be filtered through a sieve. Take the meat out and divide it into portions.
Put the stock pot back on the heat and bring to a boil.
Cut potatoes into small cubes.
As soon as the broth boils, put the chopped potatoes and fried vegetables there.
Cut the beets into strips. By that time, about 7-10 minutes will pass, the potatoes will have time to almost reach readiness - at this moment add the chopped beets.
Add sugar - to balance the taste, as well as vinegar - in addition to a slight sourness, it will also help keep the bright color of the soup.
Leave everything to cook further until the beets soften - about 7 minutes.
Cut tops - tops with stems.
Add the chopped greens to the soup and cook for another 5 minutes.
Add bay leaf and check the soup for salt - adjust if necessary to your taste.
Friends, today we are cooking botvinia at home - lung recipe hot summer soup. Since ancient times, people in Russia loved soups, they could not do without them either in winter or in summer.
Especially often cooked botvinya - from young beets. As the name implies, not only the root crop itself goes into the soup, but also the young tops.
Therefore, the tops are not only tasty, but also healthy, because the tops contain many vitamins and minerals.
Botvinya is based on either beetroot broth or kvass. offers detailed recipe with a photo of homemade botvinia cooked on beetroot broth and acidified with lemon juice.
Let's see how to cook botvinia at home in a recipe with step by step photos.
Ingredients
For tasty, healthy, vitamin beetroot botvinia, you will need the following products:
- young beets with tops - 4-5 root crops
- 1 large beetroot or 2 small ones
- 1 lemon
- 4-5 pieces of radish
- 1 bunch dill
- 1 bunch green onions
- 1-2 eggs
- 1 medium cucumber or 2 small ones
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar
- sour cream for dressing
How to cook botvinia at home: a recipe with step by step photos
- Our young beets with tops have just begun to grow in the garden, but the cold St. Petersburg summer still affects. The tops have grown well, but the root crop itself is still small.
Therefore, for botvinia, I took and boiled large beets from the old crop.
To use beetroot broth for soup later, I washed it well in water and peeled it.
My beetroot was cooked until tender for an hour.Beets for botvinia can not be boiled, but baked in foil, as you like.
If you have young beets with tops in your garden that have already grown well and have larger tubers - the size of a radish or an egg, then you can use only young roots, and do not boil additional large beets.
- We put two hard-boiled eggs to boil separately.
- While the beets and eggs are cooking, let's cut the vegetables. Separate the young tubers from the tops and cut them into small cubes.
- The washed tops must be cut - to separate the thick stems from the leaves, as they will cook longer. Cut the stems into pieces about 1 cm.
- The beets are almost cooked, at the very end we salt the broth, add a teaspoon of granulated sugar.
If you think sugar is superfluous, you can not add it, but I always put a little sugar in the refrigerator, borscht or botvinia.
Squeeze half the juice of a lemon - the broth will immediately acquire a beautiful ruby hue.
By the way, if you still have in stock Apple vinegar, then you can add it to the soup instead of lemon juice.
If the beets are already cooked, take them out and let them cool. We send cubes of young beets to boil in beetroot broth along with chopped stems, which will give it an even brighter, more saturated color.
Cover the pot with a lid and let the soup simmer for 5-10 minutes. - We cut the tops larger than the stems themselves, about 2 cm thick.
You can also cut the leaves of nettle, young sorrel, spinach into botvinia - the soup will only benefit from this.
At the very end, we fill the chopped tops into the pan and cook it for no more than 3 minutes (we practically blanch).
This is done so that the tops of the leaves do not lose their taste, color and useful vitamins.
- We filter the beetroot broth and leave it to cool.
See how beautiful, rich, bright it is.
Then, when it cools down completely, it will become darker.
- And in the boiled tops, we grate the beets on a coarse grater, then the radish, after cutting off its tail and base.
The radish will add to our botvinia, as well as lemon juice, pleasant sourness.
- I cut the cucumber into strips, you can cut it into cubes, it doesn’t matter.
The main thing is that you need to cut it at the very end, the last of all vegetables, so that it does not lose its juice.
- But what should not be regretted in botvinia is greens. From the abundance of greens, this soup will be even tastier, so chop green onions and dill.
I took more onion, and less dill, and you cook according to your preferences.
- Mix all the ingredients well, salt. Those who like it spicier can pepper to taste, add a little grated horseradish or mustard.
- We generously put prepared vegetables at the bottom of the plate and pour all this splendor with chilled beetroot broth.
In a cold beetroot broth, I squeezed the juice from the second half of a lemon.
By the way, instead of beetroot broth, you can use bread kvass or take them in equal amounts.
Botvinya cooked on its own is especially delicious.
- We put half a boiled egg in the finished soup, whiten it with a spoonful of sour cream and eat a vitamin, summer, light soup with great pleasure.
My family did not wait for the beetroot broth to cool completely and began to eat warm botvinya - it was impossible to tear it off by the ears.
This is such a delicious soup made from young beets!
Enjoy your meal!
If you have men in your family who cannot completely do without meat even in the heat, then you can put a piece of any boiled meat, poultry or a piece of red fish in botvinia for greater satiety.
And use as a base meat broth along with beetroot broth.
In general, you can experiment to your taste and discretion.
And lastly, if you have nowhere to get beets with tops, do not worry, nothing prevents you from making summer beetroot soup, and instead of tops, take spinach, sorrel or nettle leaves.
It's just that you will get not botvinya, but beetroot, but that's another story.
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Botvinya - one of the oldest dishes of Russian cuisine. For many centuries it has been a gourmet delight, having received the title of the queen of Russian cold soups. Unfortunately, now botvinya has faded into the background due to the duration of cooking and a non-standard set of products, giving way to a democratic and uncomplicated okroshka. Many references to botvinya have been preserved in the literature.
AT "Culinary Dictionary"
V.V. Pokhlebkin gives the following description of botvinia:
“Cold soup dish on kvass from boiled beet tops, nettles and quinoa, green onions, cucumbers and lightly boiled red fish, both fresh and salted and smoked. In addition, borage and dill were added to the botvinia”
Please note that there is no beetroot among the ingredients of the classic botvinia. It began to be added much later, blurring the line between botvinia and beetroot. By the way, according to nutritionists, beet tops contain much more vitamins and minerals. useful substances than in the root itself.
The basis of botvinia is kvass. It appeared in the 9th century and for centuries it was not just an everyday drink, but also the basic basis for many dishes - cold stews, snacks, sweet and flour dishes. Together with kvass, vegetables and meat were stewed, and for the common people, kvass with black bread and green onion was the main meal in the summer heat. Kvass was even steamed and doused for health.
The mix of vegetables and kvass gives the botvinia its characteristic color. I.A. Goncharov's Frigate Pallada
you can find the following comparison - the sea " brown-greenish, like botvinia”.
. References to it can be found in the works S.T. Aksakova, I.A. Goncharova, A.F. Pisemsky, D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak, Gilyarovsky
, but probably the most “delicious” description belongs to I.S. Shmelev:
G old orca, come with us to eat botvinya! Well, well, you didn’t have much to dine, and botvinya with white salmon is not every day ... don’t stand on ceremony!<…>
And the table is fun. The father always makes the botvinya himself.
Around the faience, white, with blue rims, there are plates, and everything is cheerful on them: a green hill of finely chopped onions, a dark green hill of fragrant dill, a golden hill of crushed orange peel, a white hill of planed horseradish, brown green - with botvinia, a stack of thin circles, with grains - fresh cucumbers, a bowl of crystal ice, a lump of beluga, in grits, protruding like a hump in stains, patches of tender white salmon, juicy and pinkish-pale, a film of golden balyk with red tint. All this smells in its own way, viscous, fresh and spicy, fills the whole room and merges into that wonderful, which is called - botvinya. Father, having rolled up strong cuffs in large gold cufflinks, cheerfully stirs everything in a bowl, thumps kvass from a decanter, foam hisses in bubbles. Heat: botvinya now - just right.
Everyone eats cheerfully, crunches with cucumbers, cartilage - hruhru”.
I. Shmelev, Praying Man
Emperor Alexander I had a special honor with botvinya. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814, the tsar gave lunches and dinners for 350 or more people with " gastronomic rarities”, including botvinia. A historical anecdote is associated with it, published in the magazine "Russian archive"
:
G Emperor Alexander Pavlovich was very disposed towards the English ambassador. Once, speaking with him about Russian cuisine, he asked if he had any idea about botvinia, which the Emperor himself loved very much. Having learned that the ambassador had never tasted this dish, the Emperor promised to send it to him. The ambassador lived on the Palace Embankment, not far from the palace. The emperor, eating botvinya, remembered his promise, which he immediately fulfilled. The messenger mistook this dish for soup and ordered it to be warmed up.
When meeting, the Emperor did not forget to ask how he liked the botvinya. The diplomat hesitated a little and finally explained that, of course, warmed food can no longer be as good as freshly made”. (Journal "Russian Archive")
For foreigners, botvinya was something exotic and extreme, like a Russian bath. The unusual flavor combination, in addition to the ice component, puzzled them, and few dared to taste it.
In the Trinity tavern, the baron was placed by his friend in an almost life-threatening position: first of all, botvinya with ice was asked; the baron was terribly thirsty for this dish and was afraid; however, he began to eat it and felt bliss and fear with every bite; then the prince wanted to roll him two-day-old cabbage soup, but the baron tried those and decidedly could not eat. A.F. Pisemsky, "In the whirlpool»
But among the foreigners who tried botvinia, there were also connoisseurs. These include the French writer and gourmet Alexandr Duma. They say that it was the creator of the Three Musketeers and the Big Culinary Dictionary who named botvinya the queen of Russian cold soups.
On the Russian table, botvinya was an integral part of a solemn dinner party.
“Everything was prepared with such art and with such deep knowledge of the human stomach that there is hardly anything left to wish for. The action opened with an unusually sophisticated botvinia”
(Mamin-Sibiryak,” Privalovsky millions”)
Each housewife had her own recipe for this dish, and the secret ingredients of the festive botvinia were passed down from generation to generation. The ability to cook botvinya was an indicator of the culinary abilities of the hostess. It was considered a shame if the hostess cooked it poorly. There was even a saying: What is Aksinya, such is botvinya«.
A full botvinia consists of three parts and is served in three plates:
actually the botvinia itself;
boiled fish;
crushed ice.
The fish portion in the botvinia ideally consists of different types red fish (boiled and salted), supplemented with crayfish meat (crabs, shrimp). Best Option the bases for botvinia are ordinary drinking kvass mixed with white okroshka in a ratio of 1: 1 (proportions can be changed to taste).
Okroshochny kvass can be prepared by yourself. Its composition is very simple - Rye bread, water, sugar and yeast.
Okroshochny white kvass
Ingredients:
500 gr rye bread
3.5 liters of boiling water
0.5 cups of granulated sugar
15 g yeast (or 5 g dry)
First of all, prepare rye croutons- cut the bread into small pieces and dry in the oven. Put them in three-liter jar, pour 2 liters of boiling water and leave for 2 hours under the lid in a warm place. Strain the resulting bread infusion and pour into a separate bowl, and pour the remaining bread mass again with 1.5 liters of boiling water and leave in a warm place for 2 hours. Strain the second infusion and mix with the first. Add sugar, its amount can be varied, focusing on your own taste. Mix well until the sugar is completely dissolved and add the diluted yeast. Leave the infusion in a warm place to ferment for 12 hours. Ready kvass strain and bottle, you can add mint leaves, crushed cranberries, lemon peel, 2-3 raisins, seal tightly and refrigerate for a day.
Do not throw away the remaining thick - it will serve as a starter for new portions of kvass. You don't need to add yeast, just water and sugar.
There are many recipes for botvinya. For example, such from Elena Molokhovets(with champagne)
Botvinya
.
One and a half pounds of sorrel, peeled, washed, boiled in own juice, wipe through a sieve; put 6 pieces, i.e. 1 pound fresh cucumbers, peeled and cut into quadrangular pieces, a handful of finely chopped green onions, mashed with a full spoonful of salt, a full spoonful of sugar, ½ a spoonful of prepared mustard or a spoonful of grated horseradish. Pour dill; dilute all 2 bottles. Bavarian kvass, you can add an incomplete bottle. sour cabbage soup. Serve separately, in salt water with onions, a bunch of greens, laurel. leaf and pepper boiled salmon, salmon, white fish, whitefish or crayfish necks and separately finely chopped ice. You can add sherry or champagne". (Elena Molokhovets, "Gift to young housewives")
Botvinya simple full from V. V. Pokhlebkin
1 l of bread kvass, 0.25 l of white kvass, 1 cup of nettle, 1 cup of sorrel, 3 young beets with tops, 1 - 1.5 fresh cucumbers, 1 - 2 tbsp. spoons grated horseradish, 0.5 lemon, 1 teaspoon of mustard, 0.5 - 0.75 cups of green onions, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1.5 tbsp. spoons of dill, 0.4 kg of fish, 4 crayfish (or 1 jar of krill), 0.5 cups of beetroot broth.
Botanical mass preparation
. The tops of young beets, whole and separately, slightly simmer the roots until soft. In the same way, lightly boil (no more than 3 minutes) whole sorrel leaves. Wash nettles thoroughly cold water, then scald with boiling water and put in a colander. Finely chop all the greens with a sharp knife and measure according to the recipe. In no case do not wipe and do not pass through a meat grinder, otherwise the botvinya will turn into a puree soup and its taste will change. Then add finely chopped beet roots to the green mass, as well as finely chopped green onions, grated with salt and dill.
Preparation of kvass base and its combination with bottvic mass.
Combine both types of kvass. Cut the zest from a lemon, grind it with sugar in a cup, add lemon juice, mustard, horseradish, a little kvass, beetroot broth, mix and pour into the main mass of kvass. Combine the kvass base with the botvich mass, add the cucumber cut into small cubes and let it stand in the cold for 15-20 minutes - the mixture should infuse, and the sour base should be absorbed into the tops. Meanwhile, prepare the fish part of the botvinia.
Cooking fish for botvinya.
A set of pieces (50g each) of different types of red fish (sturgeon, stellate sturgeon, salmon) boil in a small amount of boiling salted water with onion, dill, black pepper and bay leaf: freshly salted and salted-smoked fish - for 2 - 3 minutes, raw - 10 min. The use of unboiled salted, and even more so salted-smoked fish is excluded, since it does not combine with an acidic base and spoils the taste of this expensive and difficult-to-cook dish.
Botvinya eating order
.
B otvinya is served either as a first course or after a hot first as a liquid snack before a roast. Two spoons and a fork are served with it: they take the fish with a fork, sip the botvinya with the first spoon, and periodically place pieces of ice from a cup with ice in the botvinya so that it remains cold all the time. Only fresh rye bread goes with botvinya. ( V. V. Pokhlebkin, “ National cuisines our peoples”)
A fairly simple recipe for botvinia is given by P. Weil and A. Genis in the famous "Russian cuisine in exile"
:
Lightly simmer the beet tops and sorrel until soft, finely chop along with cucumber, green onion and dill, pour kvass and add horseradish, mustard and lemon juice. In a small amount of boiling water for 2-3 minutes, boil the pieces of salted and smoked fish- sturgeon, salmon, halibut. Combine with the base and let it brew in the cold for at least an hour
Botvinya restaurant .
Sorrel and spinach are sorted, washed, stewed separately and rubbed or ground in a meat grinder. The resulting puree is diluted with kvass, chopped and scalded lemon zest is added. This liquid part of the botvinia is cooled and poured into plates or soup bowls. Separately, on a plate or dish, a side dish is served: chopped green onions, fresh cucumbers, cut into strips, chopped green salad, grated horseradish, slices of boiled and smoked fish. In the old days, botvinia was cooked with sturgeon.
For the liquid part: bread kvass 700, spinach, sorrel 100-120 each, lemon 1/10, sugar.
For garnish: green onion 50, fresh cucumbers 200, lettuce 50, horseradish 50.
For serving: boiled fish 100.
N.I. Kovalev “Russian cuisine”
Botvinya classic is a cold first course of Russian cuisine. It is undeservedly forgotten, and earlier it was often prepared in the summer heat. The stew perfectly refreshed and satiated, without unnecessarily overloading digestive system. One variation of this variety of cold soup is beetroot botvinya with fish. Usually, boiled salmon or salmon fillets are added, so the dish can be served as a kind of delicacy to guests. festive table. The cooking process is simple, but will require some labor. So get ready to write step by step recipe botvini with fish.
Ingredients for classic botvinia
Botvinya making process
Before considering old recipe beetroot stew with fish, we will explain what is the difference between beetroot and botvinia. The first soup is made from boiled or pickled beet roots, the second the National dish prepared from tops, i.e. young leaves of beets, radishes, turnips and other vegetables with a thick rhizome. From this it is easy to assume that the meaning of the word just comes from the name of the main ingredient. As in okroshka, a relative of botvinia, a lot of fresh herbs and vegetables are put in the dish. You can even add nettles, dandelion leaves, spinach and other edible spring greens.
Having roughly figured out what kind of dish it is, you can start preparing the base for cold soup. Let's talk right away about how to prepare the basis for cold borscht. I wash a piece of red fish well. In boiling water we put lavrushka, a whole peeled onion, a couple of peas allspice and salt. We lower the seafood into this fragrant broth, cook it over medium heat until soft.
While the broth is being cooked, the sorrel, herbs, tops for the botvinya are thoroughly washed. If the leaves are together with the young rhizomes, then the beets are also used for cooking. We dry the whole green mass, finely chop.
We take out the fish to cool on a plate, filter the broth. We return the pan with fragrant broth to the stove, after boiling we put the prepared tops there. After boiling the contents of the pan for several minutes, turn off the burner. In the resulting base, add salt, sugar, grated horseradish to taste, add kvass and cool completely.
We additionally cool the blank for soup from beet leaves in the refrigerator.
For beetroot soup, all vegetables, as well as the base, must be very cold. Wash the radishes and cucumbers well, cut off the excess. We cut the vegetables into strips or thin half rings, lay them out on deep plates. The contents of each plate with cucumbers and radishes are generously poured with cooled fish broth with kvass.
By classic recipe cold soup served with ice, which is poured into a separate container.
Immediately in a plate put a boiled piece of salmon, cut into portions. Each ingredient should have a separate spoon, which is applied right amount product in a bowl. The dish is good to eat with rye bread.