The Legacy of the Borscht Belt

(Borscht part of the culinary heritage of Russia and Poland made its way into the United States by Jewish immigrants, where the soup is one of the staple dishes of Jewish cuisine.)

The memories of my youth include the delicious smell of 'borscht' simmering on the range when I returned home from my studies at high school. The delectable dish of the gods. Hot 'borscht' soup, more like a vegetable stew filled with thick sliced beets, shredded cabbage, onion rings, and diced carrots and potatoes and spiced to perfection awaited me and my large family to be eaten as a meal at dinnertime. When my mother dished out the beet soup she added a good dollop of sour cream, as she served it to her family. We ate it with relish together with a thick piece of rye bread peppered with finely chopped garlic. Off course we had other dishes at our dinnertime meals, but the delicious taste of my mother's 'borscht' still lingers to this date.

Today I still enjoy the taste of 'borscht', which is readily available in jars at the super market. The 'borscht' in these glass containers is often a sweet tasting soup, consisting of sliced or diced beets cooked in their own broth mixed with a few slices of onion. My wife serves it chilled as an appetizer, usually with a scoop of sour cream or yogurt and sometimes with a boiled potato.

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It was widely believed that beets was mainly grown in the 'borscht belt' of Eastern Europe and Russia and served in a thick soup and pronounced 'borch'. (Other spellings for "borshch" are "borsch" or "borscht.") So it was quite intriguing to learn that beets, the main ingredient for 'borscht' have had its origin in countries around the Mediterannean Sea.