Becoming Vegan: So Many Reasons to Eat Beets — Borscht Recipe

Along with eating a heavily plant-based diet, my naturopath wanted me to eat beets daily while undergoing cancer treatment. Between beet juice, boiled beets and borscht, I managed to fulfill this requirement most days.

This borscht recipe was inherited from my Polish grandmother. I will include both the original recipe, the substitutions to make it vegan, and the amounts for batch cooking. Batch cooking will provide you with plenty of soup that can be stored in mason jars in the freezer.

Grandma Rudolph’s Borscht Soup

4 Servings	Batch Cooking 8+Litres	Ingredients
6 slices	24 slices	slices of bacon, diced (for vegan/vegetarian use 2 Tbsp olive oil, or 8 Tbsp for batch cooking)
1 medium	4 medium	white onion, diced
1 small	4 small	red onion, diced
5 medium to large	680 g (3x227g packages)	mushrooms, sliced
3 large	10 lbs	beets, peeled and diced
1 cube/package	4 cubes/packages	chicken bouillon or vegetable bouillon
2 tsp	3 Tbsp	vinegar
1 cup	4 cups	red wine
3 cups	12+ cups	water (use enough to cover the beets). Add more if too much water evaporates.
1/4 tsp	2 tsp	ground pepper
2 large		potatoes
dollop		sour cream

Directions:

1. In a large pot, brown the bacon lightly on medium high heat, add onions and mushrooms, cooking till onions are translucent.

2. Add beets, bouillon cube, vinegar, wine, water, and ground pepper. Cook on medium for one hour.

3. Serve hot and garnish with boiled or microwaved potato. Before microwaving a potato, pierce it with a fork and microwave on high for 3 minutes, or until fork tender). Chop the potato and add to soup along with a large dollop of sour cream (for vegan, use a vegan substitute for soup cream or omit).

N.B. When batch cooking, I use measurements that correspond to the packages in the grocery store, i.e. 10 lbs bag of beets, or 3 x 227 g packages of mushrooms. This recipe is very forgiving and you can add more or less of an ingredient to suit your taste.

*Freeze soup for another day. If you're freezing in jars, be sure to leave a 2" gap at the top of the jar so that when the soup expands due to freezing, it will not crack the glass.

*Not all children love beet soup. Whenever we have borscht, I pull out a different kind of soup from the freezer for my son who is less than enthusiastic about eating beets.

This website https://www.health.com/nutrition/beets-health-benefits explains many of the benefits for eating beets. Some of the rationale is pertinent to cancer patients, like giving your liver a helping hand as it detoxes your body of all the chemotherapy drugs, boosting your brainpower to fight chemo brain, and ensuring you eat enough fibre to keep things moving throughout your body. Don’t be alarmed if your urine is tinged pink or bowel movements are tinged pink, it’s just the beets.