barszcz (borscht)

A member of my family said, "Oh, this is barszcz". She is from Central East Europe.

I almsot gave up the idea to cook barszcz when I heard that it requires an hour for the beetroot to be cooked separately. However, I found a website saying that indeed microwave requires only 4-8 minutes.

For barszcz, ingredients are as follows. But one can use indeed whatever vegetable for the soup.

- couple of beetroots (in our case, we used one rather large size beetroot)
- 2 onions
- several young carrots
- salt

Basically, cook a soup out of onions, carrots, salt and whatever else you want.

Beetroots should be microwaved for 4-8 minutes depending on the size of beetroots you've got and the capacity of the microwave. Do not peel before microwaving. Cool the beetroots a while so that you can handle and peel. Grate the beetroots and add it into the soup.

DO NOT boil after you add the beetroot to the soup. I boiled the red beetroot juice once and the color was transformed from red to brown, which is critical for this soup whose one of fundamental characteristic is the vivid red colour.