Svekolnik / holodnik / cold beet soup
Light, refreshing and so delicious – svekolnik is one of the most popular Slavic summer soups. A combination of crunchy vegetables, fresh herbs and cold beet broth provides a culinary cooling on a hot day. But holodnik also visually enchants everyone at the dining table with its raspberry color. According to this easy recipe you can make the cold beet soup yourself.
Servings 4
Ingredients
- 500 g beet (raw)
- 230 g cucumber (cold)
- 2 eggs (hard boiled and well cooled)
- 2 spring onions
- 1 bunch of dill
- 750 ml water
- 10 ml vinegar
- salt
to serve
- sour cream
- garlic finely chopped (alternative)
Instructions
- Peel beet and cut it into small cubes.
- Put water in a saucepan and heat it. Add vinegar, 1 tsp salt and diced beet to the hot water and boil until beet is cooked. This will take about 40 minutes. (Cooking time depends a lot on how small you cut the beet and how soft you like it). Let the broth cool at room temperature along with beet, then put it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
- Cut cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs into small cubes, chop onions and dill. Put everything in a mixing bowl and mix together.
- Put a couple of ladles of beet broth per soup plate together with beet, put some of the mixture of cucumbers, eggs and herbs in each plate, then put about 1 tbsp of sour cream per plate and possibly a small amount of garlic. Mix everything together before eating and salt the soup to taste if necessary. Alternatively, you can add the finely chopped vegetables, herbs and eggs directly to the broth with beet in the saucepan, also add sour cream to taste, mix and then divide the soup among plates. In this case, the whole soup from the saucepan must be eaten right away.
Notes
- For svekolnik with kefir, simply replace about half of the beet broth with kefir.
- You can coarsely grate cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs instead of cutting them into cubes.
- Other vegetables, for example radishes, and other fresh herbs can be added to the soup.
- When cooking the beet, you can add some sugar to the broth in addition to salt.
- The amount of vinegar can be adjusted to taste.
- Instead of vinegar goes lemon juice or cucumber water from pickles. It is added only when serving the soup.
- Instead of cutting beet into small cubes, you can grate it coarsely and cook it that way.
- The cooking time of beet and eggs is not included in the preparation time.
- Note the detailed tips and tricks for making cold beet soup at the top of the post.