A Cold Soup to Beet Summer

I was a picky eater in my childhood, and cooked vegetables were especially taboo for me, precluding any enjoyment of my mother’s scrumptious borshch, vegetable ragout, and the like. It must have been a small miracle for her, then, that I did eat her cold svekolnik (свекольник) soup. Perhaps I was seduced by its brilliant red color, or by the floating halves of a hard-boiled egg, or the fact that it was refreshingly cold on a hot summer day.

In the Russian language, svekolnik refers to two things: beet greens and the soup in question. The latter meaning arrived on the scene few centuries after the former. The famous Soviet food historian William Pokhlyobkin went so far as to claim that cold beet soup got the name svekolnik from Soviet workers’ canteens, but he seems to have been mistaken.

Researchers claim that a soup under of the same name was served in the household of Leo Tolstoy, who was a vegetarian, and also in charity canteens that the writer opened for peasants in the 1890s. There’s also a recipe, in Petr Simonenko’s 1892 book Exemplary Kitchen and the Practical School of Housekeeping, for a cold soup called svekolnik; it has a kvas base and vegetable toppings.

On the other hand, in Elena Molokhovets’ classic cookbook, A Gift to Young Housewives, published at the turn of twentieth century, the soup that most closely resembles свекольник is found under the name “Polish khlodnik,” while the word svekolnik refers to the young beet greens that are added to a different – hot – kind of a soup.

The principle difference between svekolnik and okroshka (окрошка), another staple of summertime Russian cooking – other than the lack of beets in the latter – is that the former contains no meat, although there have been variations that called for the use of fish or crawfish. And while okroshka enjoys greater popularity in Russia, svekolnik is a staple of cuisines in neighboring countries such as Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. In fact, in Lithuania, it is known under the name Šaltibarščiai (cold borshch) and is considered a local specialty. Visit the country in summer, and every tourist restaurant will serve its own version.

Because summer soup is not always an exacting affair (often crafted from what you have around), we offer up three varieties of svekolnik, presented in a looser, less precise fashion than is our norm. Feel free to riff on any of these recipes and make them your own.

My mother’s version of this soup is pared down to the minimum, and only requires some beets (the young ones are especially delicious), citric acid powder, hard-boiled eggs, and sour cream.

Wash and peel the beets, quarter them (to speed up the cooking process), cover with water, and boil. Salt to taste, and then add some citric acid powder towards the end of cooking, to amplify the color and add a slightly sour taste (other recipes call for the addition of vinegar). Let cool completely. Remove the beets and dice them into small cubes. Boil the eggs, then peel and halve them. Serve svekolnik at room temperature, with sour cream and two egg halves per serving.

If you want to try [what is supposedly] Tolstoy’s recipe, you will need to add some potatoes, cucumbers and scallions to the beets, eggs and sour cream.

Take 1 pound of beets, peeled and diced into small cubes. Cover with water, add 1 tsp of vinegar, and boil for 30 minutes. Once ready, strain the beet broth and cool it completely.

Separately, boil one potato and two eggs. Dice the potato, along with two cucumbers and two eggs into small cubes. Add them to the diced, boiled beet. Add diced scallions, grated horseradish, salt, sugar and mustard to taste (or skip any of the last four ingredients altogether). Pour the cooled beet broth over the vegetable and egg mixture, then add sour cream and enjoy.

Finally, if you have access to kefir and want to try the Lithuanian version, here’s what to do. Boil 3 or 4 medium beets, then peel and dice (or grate) them. Julienne one cucumber and dice the scallions and dill. Add most of these three to the beets, but leave some for garnish. Add 2 pints of kefir, then add salt and pepper to taste, and put in the refrigerator to cool down.

Boil the eggs and prepare the potatoes. The easy way is to boil them, but real Šaltibarščiai gourmands suggest the following.

Boil the unpeeled potatoes until almost done. Removed them from the water, smash them a bit with a fork, place on a baking sheet, sprinkle with oil and salt, and then bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes, or until they get lightly browned.

Once the potatoes are ready, remove the soup from the refrigerator, ladle into bowls, add egg halves, and top with the remaining scallions and dill. The potatoes are served as a side.