Borscht

After making the 10 jars of pickled beets I still had a ton of beets left over. I decided to make some Borscht! Now I make Borscht a little differently. My recipe is basically Beets, Water, Vinegar, Salt, Garlic and sometimes Cloves. I'd like to tell you the proportions but I really don't know, I just go by taste.

To prepare the beets you need to peel them, which is so much harder and messier than peeling them after they are boiled, but you need them clean as you are going to keep the water for the soup base. After the beets have boiled for 30 or so minute (until they start to get tender), I pull them out and let them cool for a little bit. Once the beets can be handled now it's time to start Shredding them. Shredding takes a while but to me it makes all the difference in the taste and texture of the soup.

Ok, now the beets are shredded, transfer them back into the soup base add vinegar 1/2 a cup to start, 4 cloves of garlic and some salt. Simmer the soup on low-med for another 15-20 minutes to allow the flavors to mix in.

I ended up making three different batches of Borscht, canning them into 7 Jars. Then I found out that "Unlike fruits and tomatoes, soup is a low-acid food and cannot be safely preserved using the boiling water bath method". I either need to find a couple people who like Borscht or I'll be eating a lot of Beet soup in the coming weeks...