Barszcz Czerwony (Polish Clear Beetroot Soup)

Name: Barszcz Czerwony (Polish Clear Beetroot Soup)
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Polish
Ingredients: 500 g Raw beetroot, for the sour starter (zakwas); 500 g Raw beetroot, for the broth; 20 g Dried porcini or forest mushrooms; 1 each Carrot, parsley root and celeriac; 1 Onion, halved and charred; 3 cloves Garlic; 2 leaves + 4 + 6 Bay leaves, allspice and peppercorns; 1 tsp Dried marjoram; Lemon juice or the beet sour; Sugar and salt

The Polish take on beetroot soup is a clear, ruby-red bouillon — deep, tart and clean, with none of the sour cream that thickens its neighbours' versions. Meatless and mushroom-scented, it is the soup of Christmas Eve, traditionally drunk from a cup or poured over tiny uszka dumplings.

Pinagmulan

Recipe ni Polish holiday tables · 🏺 Traditional · Cooking tied to the Polish festive calendar — Christmas Eve (Wigilia) and Easter, when these dishes appear on almost every table

Polish · clear beetroot soup (shared/contested heritage) — CONTESTED HERITAGE, handled honestly. Beetroot borscht is a shared Slavic / Eastern-European soup, and Poland is NOT claimed here as its inventor. The cited Borscht article (the target the title Barszcz redirects to) says the beet version 'probably took place in what is now Ukraine', and records that UNESCO inscribed the 'Culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking' in 2022 — while noting explicitly that 'several countries in the broader region have also practiced borscht cooking and their inscription does not imply exclusivity or ownership'. This recipe presents ONLY the Polish form the same article describes: the clear 'ruby-colored beetroot bouillon' that is 'not whitened with sour cream', served 'especially at Christmas Eve' with 'uszka'. The book already carries Ukrainian and Russian recipes and a later batch will cover the thick Ukrainian borscht; this entry deliberately leaves that to them. No cook is credited; quantities and method are this book's own.

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⏱ 70 min🍽 6 na serving🔥 90 kcal🇵🇱 Poland

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Mga hakbang

Build a vegetable stock: put the carrot, parsley root, celeriac, charred onion, garlic, soaked mushrooms with their liquid, bay, allspice and peppercorns in a pot with 2 litres of water. Simmer gently, uncovered, for 30 minutes.
Peel and coarsely grate the broth beetroot and add it to the pot. Simmer another 15 minutes — just enough to draw out the colour and sweetness, no longer, or the red dulls to brown.
💡 Beetroot's colour is fragile. Long, hard boiling turns a bright barszcz a muddy brown; gentle and brief keeps it ruby.
Strain the soup through a fine sieve into a clean pot and discard the solids — barszcz czerwony is served as a clear liquid, not a chunky soup. You should have a clear, glowing red broth.
Off the heat, season the clear broth: add the marjoram, a good pinch of sugar, salt to taste, and then the beet sour or lemon juice a little at a time until it is bright and tart. Warm it back through without boiling.
💡 Acid both wakes up the flavour and locks in the colour — a barszcz seasoned with lemon or beet sour stays visibly redder than one without.
Serve piping hot. At Christmas Eve it is poured over uszka — tiny mushroom dumplings — or simply drunk from a two-handled cup. On other days a boiled potato or a savoury pastry (krokiet) alongside makes it a light meal.

💡 Mga tip

No time to ferment? Make the broth as above and sharpen it at the end with lemon juice and a splash of red-wine vinegar. It will not have the fermented depth of true zakwas, but it is a bright, honest barszcz.
Uszka contain wheat, so if you serve the soup with them it is no longer gluten-free even though the clear broth itself is.
An everyday, non-fasting version uses a meat stock instead of the vegetable-and-mushroom one; that version is not vegan. This recipe is the meatless Christmas-Eve style.