If you’ve never had borscht, you’re in for a treat! It’s like the beet version of chicken noodle soup, it makes you feel good and it’s plant-rich for everyone to enjoy! It’s made with vegetable stock, potatoes, and beets which give it that beautiful color. I put a little NS spin on this recipe and blended it, added more beets, and served it with a dairy-free dill yogurt to top.
One of my best friends is Russian and grew up eating borscht and she makes the best bowl I’ve ever had! I wanted to impress her with this recipe and do her traditional soup justice but I admit I took a lot of shortcuts using most of the traditional ingredients in a modern way – and she’ll normally eat it with sour cream on top so I made this insanely good dill coconut yogurt recipe which is very simple. Beets are one of the least likable vegetables for me, I challenge myself to eat them weekly for the health and nutrient benefits — which are incredible — so here’s another delicious attempt to get in those beet nutrients!
(nutrition) stripped and how this can help support your body in detoxing:
- Beets: Beets are great to incorporate into our diets for anti-inflammatory and detoxification benefits. Beets support detoxification mainly in Phase 2 detoxification (there are two phases), which involves the enzyme glutathione-s-transferase a.k.a. GST. GST’s basically work to “catch” and “hook up” unwanted toxic substances in our bodies with nutrients- this allows the toxins to become water soluble and neutralized from the nutrients, therefore safe for the body to excrete through your urine or other processes. A note about detoxification: detoxification is a daily practice and a lifelong habit, which I strongly practice and recommend to my clients as well. Detoxification can’t occur simply by doing a “cleanse” for one week- our bodies actually do a tremendous job at detoxifying our bodies through multiple channels if we give them space, nutrients, proper practices to enhance, and time to do so. Beets are great to provide the body with ample amounts of antioxidants needed.
- Optimizer Option: If you’re serving this as an entree, I recommend per usual, to have a balance of your macronutrients. Try a side salad to get more vegetables and fiber in the meal, a protein of your choice, and add a little more healthy fat like additional coconut yogurt or diced avocado, etc.
I enjoy this recipe most for a quick lunch or as a side to dinner, always with the Dill Coconut Yogurt, maybe a Turmeric Hardboiled Egg, and definitely fresh black pepper. The Dill Yogurt is so easy to make: take your favorite type of yogurt, I recommend and use unsweetened plain Kite Hill yogurt (use 1 container), mix in a couple tablespoons of fresh chopped dill, lemon juice, sea salt and black pepper to taste. That’s it!
If you try this recipe, I wanna hear about it, so let’s chat! Leave a comment it, rate it (this helps me improve future recipes), and don’t forget to tag a picture #nutritionstripped to show how you live and try these recipes on Instagram! I’d love to see what you come up with!
Chilled Borscht with Dill Coconut Yogurt
Recipe Type: soup
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 6 servings
Ingredients
- 5 cups vegetable stock
- 2 pounds medium beets, peeled and quartered
- 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
- 2 tablespoons coconut sugar
- 2-3 fresh lemons, juiced (about 1/4 cup lemon juice)
- 2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- Optional garnishes: diced cucumber, diced radishes or watermelon radishes, hard boiled eggs, chopped parsley
Instructions
- In a large soup pot, bring 5 cups of water and 5 cups of vegetable stock to a boil with the quartered beets. Cook on medium heat, a simmer, until beets are fork tender. This takes about 20-30 minutes.
- In the meantime, make the Dill Coconut Yogurt (in the blog post), this takes under 10 minutes.
- After the beets are cooked, add sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, pepper, and potatoes, cook for another 10 minutes until the potatoes are tender then take off the heat.
- Put the pot of soup into the refrigerator to chill for at least 2 hours. Carefully transfer the soup to a high-speed blender in small amounts to blend half the mixture at a time or you can use an immersion blender in the soup pot. Blend the soup until it’s creamy.
- To serve, add chilled borscht into bowls and garnish with optional toppings. Store in an airtight glass container for up to 1 week.
Things I used to make this with ease: blender! That’s really all you need to make this soup really creamy and you can blend the red color out easily with warm water and soap.
