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Ukrainian borscht with beans

As the home country of beetroot borscht,^[21] Ukraine boasts great diversity of the soup's regional variants,^[22][23] with virtually every district having its own recipe. Differences between particular varieties may regard the type of stock used (meat, bone, or both), the kind of meat (beef, pork, poultry, etc.), the choice of vegetables and the method of cutting and cooking them. For example, although the typical recipe calls for beef and pork, the Kiev variant uses mutton or lamb as well as beef, while in the Poltava region, the stock for borscht is cooked on poultry meat, that is, chicken, duck or goose. The use of zucchini, beans and apples is characteristic of the Chernihiv borscht; in this variant, beetroots are sautéed in vegetable oil rather than lard, and the sour taste comes solely from tomatoes and tart apples. The Lviv borscht is based on bone stock and is served with chunks of Vienna sausages.^[24][25]
Many regional recipes for borscht have also developed in Russian cuisine. Examples include the Moscow borscht, served with pieces of beef, ham and Vienna sausages; Siberian borscht with meatballs; and Pskov borscht with dried smelt from the local lakes. Other unique Russian variants include a monastic Lenten borscht with marinated kelp instead of cabbage and the Russian Navy borscht (flotsky borshch),^[f] the defining characteristic of which is that the vegetables are cut into square or diamond-shaped chunks rather than julienned.^[13][20][26]

Polish clear Christmas Eve borscht served over uszka, or ear-shaped mushroom-filled dumplings

As well as the thick borschts described above, Polish cuisine offers a ruby-colored beetroot bouillon known as barszcz czysty czerwony, or clear red borscht. It is made by combining strained meat-and-vegetable stock with wild mushroom broth and beet sour. In some versions, smoked meat may be used for the stock and the tartness may be obtained or enhanced by adding lemon juice, dill pickle brine, or dry red wine. It may be served either in a soup bowl or – especially at dinner parties – as a hot beverage in a twin-handled cup, with a croquette or a filled pastry on the side. Unlike other types of borscht, it is not whitened with sour cream.^[27] Barszcz wigilijny, or Christmas Eve borscht, is a variant of the clear borscht that is traditionally served during the Polish Christmas Eve supper. In this version, meat stock is either omitted or replaced with fish broth, usually made by boiling the heads cut off from fish used in other Christmas Eve dishes. The mushrooms used for cooking the mushroom broth are reserved for uszka (small filled dumplings), which are then served with the borscht.^[28]

Lithuanian cold borscht blended with sour cream or yogurt, and sprinkled with chives

In the summertime, cold borscht is a popular, refreshing alternative to the aforementioned variants, which are normally served hot. It consists of beet sour or beet juice blended with sour cream, buttermilk, soured milk, kefir and/or yogurt, and is refrigerated. The mixture has a distinctive pink or magenta color.^[21] It is typically served over finely chopped beetroot, cucumbers, radishes and green onion, together with halves of a hard-boiled egg and sprinkled with fresh dill. Chopped veal, ham, or crawfish tails may be added as well.^{[13][29][30][31]} This soup probably originated in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which comprised the territories of modern-day Lithuania and Belarus, and it is still part of the culinary traditions of these and neighboring nations. The Lithuanian language is the only one in the region which actually refers to it as 'cold borscht' (šaltibarščiai). In Belarusian it is known simply as khaladnik,^[g] or 'cold soup'; in Polish as chłodnik litewski, or 'Lithuanian cold soup'; and in Russian as svekolnik,^[h] or 'beetroot soup'.^[14][31]
Ashkenazi Jews living in Eastern Europe adopted beetroot borscht from their Slavic neighbors and adapted it to their taste and religious requirements. As combining meat with milk is proscribed by kosher dietary laws, Jews have developed two variants of the soup: meat (fleischik) and dairy (milchik). The meat variant is typically made from beef brisket (pork is never used)^[32][33] and cabbage, while the dairy one is vegetarian, blended with sour cream or a mixture of milk and egg yolks. Both variants typically contain beetroots and onions, and are flavored with beet sour, vinegar or citric acid for tartness and beet sugar for sweetness. Galician Jews traditionally liked their borscht particularly sweet. Jewish borscht may be served either hot or cold, typically with a hot boiled potato on the side.^[11] In prewar Eastern Europe it was traditionally put up to ferment around Purim so that it would be ready four weeks later for the Passover holiday.^[34]

Without beets

Sorrel-based green borscht served with sour cream and a hard-boiled egg

Although in the English language borscht refers almost invariably to a beet-based soup, in some culinary cultures there exist soups with the same or similar names where beetroots are absent or merely optional. The principal common trait among them is a tart flavor obtained by adding various sour-tasting ingredients.^[14]
Green borscht (zeleny borshch),^[i] a light soup made from leaf vegetables, is an example common in Ukrainian and Russian cuisines. The naturally tart-tasting sorrel is most commonly used, but spinach, chard, nettle, garden orache and occasionally dandelion, goutweed or ramsons, may be added as well, especially after the spring season for sorrel has passed.^{[14][35][36][37][38]} Like beetroot borscht, it is based on meat or vegetable broth and is typically served with boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs, sprinkled with dill.^[13] There is also a variety of Ukrainian green borscht which includes both sorrel and beetroots.^[39]

Polish white borscht served over fresh sausage, bacon and eggs

In Polish cuisine, white borscht (barszcz biały, also known as żur or żurek, 'sour soup')^[j] is made from a fermented mixture of rye flour or oatmeal and water. It is typically flavored with garlic and marjoram, and served over eggs and boiled fresh sausage; the water in which the sausage was boiled is often used instead of meat stock.^[41] In the Carpathian Mountains of southern Poland, variants of borscht are also made in which the tart taste comes from fermented milk products, such as whey or buttermilk.^[42] Although the deep red color of beetroot borscht may remind those unfamiliar with Polish cuisine of blood, the kind of borscht that does contain animal (usually poultry) blood mixed with vinegar is dark brownish-gray in color and aptly called "gray borscht" (barszcz szary), which is a regional name of the Polish blood soup better known as czernina.^[43]
In Romanian and Moldovan cuisines, a mixture of wheat bran or cornmeal with water that has been left to ferment, similar to that used in Polish white borscht, is called borș.^[44][45] It is used to impart a sour taste to a variety of tangy Romanian soups, known as either also borș or ciorbă. Variants include ciorbă de perișoare (with meatballs), ciorbă de burtă (with tripe), borş de peşte (with fish) and borş de sfeclă roşie (with beetroots).^[46][47]

A bowl of luó sòng tāng, or Chinese borscht, made from cabbage and tomatoes

The Armenian version of borscht is a hot soup made with beef stock, green peppers and other vegetables, which may or may not include beetroots, and flavored with parsley and cilantro.^[48] In Chinese cuisine, a soup known as luó sòng tāng,^[k] or "Russian soup", is based on red cabbage and tomatoes, and lacks beetroots altogether. Also known as "Chinese borscht", it originated in Harbin, close to the Russian border in northeast China.^[49] In ethnic Mennonite cuisine, borscht refers to a whole range of seasonal vegetable soups based on beef or chicken stock – from spring borscht made with spinach, sorrel and chard to summer borscht with cabbage, tomatoes, corn and squash to fall and winter borscht with cabbage, beets and potatoes.^[50]

Garnishes and sides

The diversity of borscht styles is matched by the wide choice of garnishes and side dishes with which various kinds of borscht may be served.

Borscht sprinkled with parsley, served with a dollop of sour cream and a slice of rye bread

Most often, borscht is dished up with sour cream, the East European version of which, known as smetana, is runnier than its American counterpart.^[13][51] The sour cream may be served in a separate pitcher for the diners to add the desired amount themselves or the borscht may come already "whitened",^[l] that is, blended with sour cream. Sometimes the cream is thickened with flour before being added to the soup.^[52] Yogurt^[13] and a mixture of milk and yolks^[53][11] are possible substitutes.
Chopped herbs are often sprinkled on the surface of the soup; dill is most common, but parsley, chives or scallion are often added as well. Individual helpings may be spiced up with minced hot peppe

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