Before I get into this blog post, I’d like to thank everybody for checking out my blog! It’s really crazy to see how much positive feedback I’ve been getting from everyone and seeing how many people continue to discover and read my blog, even when I haven’t posted for a while is really encouraging. I’m still trying to figure out how to respond to the messages that I’ve received (I didn’t even realize that I was getting messages), but will hopefully be responding to all of my messages soon.
One of my favorite things about this soup was that my mom would make it with big chunks of beef roast. And she would scoop the beef out of the pot, and set it aside, and we would dip our beef in red wine vinegar and it was one of best things that I had eaten in my life! Sometimes, she would even put extra beef in the soup just for me (well, maybe it wasn’t just for me, maybe it was because I would eat most of it before anyone else could). I remember one supper, while eating my beef dipped in red wine vinegar, I thought to my 9-year-old self, if I enjoy beef and red wine vinegar so much, and I enjoy cabbage borscht so much, and if all of these things taste so good together, that wouldn’t they be even better all mixed together?! So I took my time cutting up my beef into little chunks to add to my soup, and then I reached for the red wine vinegar to add it into my soup as well. Noticing that I had no more meat left on my plate, my foster mother exclaimed “vot vast du mit dat?!” (what do you want to do with that?). And I explained to her that I love the meat and vinegar so much and I love the soup so much so I’m going to add it all together in my bowl and it is going to be so delicious! And my sisters started making fun of me saying “Ew!! That’s disgusting! You’re disgusting!” and my foster mother was trying to tell me that it wasn’t a good idea and that I was going to regret it, all while trying not to laugh. But, I thought that I knew what was best, and just tuned them all out and started pouring the red wine vinegar into my soup. And quite a hefty amount I might add. My mouth started watering, and I just kept thinking about how this was going to be the best thing that I’ve EVER eaten and after this, my foster mother will be making this new recipe because it will be so good! So I picked up my spoon off of the table, dove into my soup, and carefully took a nice big bite of my soup. And it was the WORST thing that I had ever eaten in my life!! It was so bad, that even while typing this story, I’m trying not to dry heave. Now maybe it was just the Mennonite home that I grew up in, but the rule at the table was that, if you put it in your plate, you’re going to finish eating it. Oh, and my foster mother believed that if you were eating soup, there was no need for a glass of water at the table. But I did manage to finish it, and never did that again. To this day, I still really enjoy dipping my beef into red wine vinegar, but separately from my soup.
So we’ve been experiencing some really chilly temperatures lately, and it seems as though as soon as one virus has gone through our house, another one hits. So I decided that I wanted to make cabbage borscht to try to make us all feel a bit better. (And I made these buns to go along with it)But once I started looking for a recipe, I realized that there are a whole lot of different variations for cabbage borscht. I’m not 100% sure that this was the recipe that I grew up with, and I can’t seem to figure out what’s different, but my family really enjoyed it. If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t enjoy it. I just couldn’t get past the fact that it wasn’t what my mom made and I couldn’t figure out what it was. One of the things that I’ve been having trouble with, is that I can’t just call up my foster mother and ask her what her recipe was. Even though, most recipe conversations left me more confused with her “a handful of this, and a dash of that, and mix until it looks right”. Or “a spoonful” and I’d say “what size of spoon?” and she’d say “Any spoon”. At least I would get a list of ingredients that I could experiment with. Now I just have memories of what I think it’s supposed to taste like. We would normally have cabbage borscht in the autumn, after we harvested the cabbage, and I think that maybe what is throwing off the flavor of the soup is that my foster mother would use homemade canned tomatoes, and I used store bought canned tomatoes. I could be wrong, please let me know what you think.
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- 2 lbs Bone-in Beef
- Water
- 3-4 Carrots, cut up
- 1 Medium head of Cabbage, chopped
- 4-5 Potatoes, peeled and chopped
- 1 Onion, chopped
- 1 Tsp salt (more if needed)
- 2-3 Star Aniseed
- 4-5 Bay Leaves
- 2 Tbsp Parsley
- 1 tsp Peppercorns
- 1 Can Diced Tomatoes
- 1/2 Cup Heavy Cream (optional)
- Fill up a soup pot 3/4 of the way with water.
- Add the bone-in beef and salt, and boil for 1-2 hours (the longer that you boil the soup, the stronger the beef flavor will be). If you feel like too much water is evaporating, add more water while boiling.
- About 1 hour after boiling, put the peppercorns and star aniseed in a diffuser and toss it in the pot along with the bay leaves.
- After the spices have been boiling in the water for another hour, skim off the soup scum (if desired) and add all of your chopped vegetables, and cook until the vegetables are almost done.
- Add in the tomatoes and parsley and cook until vegetables are tender. Add more salt if needed. Add in cream if desired before serving.
- Serve and enjoy!
- If you do buy cabbage out of season, it is considered Winter Cabbage which is quite tough. You can cut out the thicker middle part of the leaf and boil the cabbage longer, but it will still be a bit tough and stringier than summer cabbage.
My Mom made a delicious Komst Borscht. She passed away almost 3 years ago. I made Komst borscht about 2 weeks ago, it wasn’t bad, but not as good as hers! She always combined beef and chicken broth…this makes a delicious base. I only had beef broth available. She also only added dill and parsley. I don’t see any dill listed in your ingredients. I have never heard of adding star aniseed either, but so many “Mennonite ” cooks have variations of their cooking. It just all depends what you’ve grown up with.
I’ve always had it with dill as well.
To me those would be the spices for noodle soup. My cabbage borscht recipe has lots of dill but no star aniseed.
My recipe comes from my mother- her cabbage borscht was the best- made either with beef or chicken or turkey bone broth and adding some of the meat later to make a complete meal. However, She did not use the star anise, which I consider the spice for the Mennonite style noodle soup, nor Allspice berries or ground up as I noted in one recipe.. Mom also used a good amount of dill and parsley in the borscht as well as at least one small tin of tomato soup. May also add beets for added taste and flavour. I would omit the vinegar.
I am very much enjoying your blog! I married into a Mennonite family & soon discovered that the food was simple but sublime. My MIL taught me many of her recipes that I use to this day & that we (me, my husband, & his brothers & wives) are taking every opportunity to pass along to the next generation. Just last night my son was making kielke & smoenfaat gravy with his uncle. And it looked GOOD.
I also like how fondly you speak of your foster mother; my mil & fil fostered many children. In particular they recalled to me a boy named David that they had for a number of years & were trying to adopt, but somehow they were not allowed.
Literally, until the day they died they missed David & always wondered where he was & how he was. Losing David was heartbreaking for them and they said they had no more taste for fostering because it was too hard to let the children go…
One day they were called to pick up a day old baby in the city an hour away. Mom could not resist and so they went to get the baby; at that point they had been married 22 years & had 2 sons, 12 & 7 years old. The baby was a girl; the adoption process was started immediately. They went on to have one more son after adopting Christine.
My in-laws were the kindest people I’d ever known, they raised a happy family, and Chris was never considered to be anything other than the angel God sent to them!
Mrs. Shoes,
Lovely story! Thanks for sharing.