Borscht - Zurek / Bialy barszcz recipe

Never heard of it but it sounds good. Smacznego!

oh our family does too, i actually came on here looking to see if anyone else called it that since i only see the zurek :)


oh our family does too, i actually came on here looking to see if anyone else called it that since i only see the zurek :)

Well, yes, I think I do. But it all depends on what you are all talking about. You are all commenting but there is no recipe...So what is going on? I would love to share my Mother's Easter Soup Recipe with the entire world that is interested especially the Polish people.

so, if you are interested share your recipe with me and we will definitely share the best White Easter Soup in the world with you. My great nephew at the age of 13, refuses to have Easter without GG's Easter Soup. Can you beat that one.

My grandmother made the soup on both Christmas day and Easter Sunday. Probably because I liked it and was the only grandchild living there and she spoiled me. We made a vegetarian version with fermented oatmeal for the meatless meal preceding the holidays. Remember this is from farm people who migrated to the USA before the First World War. I'm sure that every family in every village had their own version.

We used the water from boiling kielbasa, thickened it with flour, added sour cream and vinegar to taste. We then put in chopped hard boiled eggs, sausage - and ham - if I could sneak some off before it was put in the oven for dinner.

The big advantage I have now is that we make our own kielbasa, using the Enterprise stuffing machine my grandfather bought probably 90 years ago! My son has a smoke house and I get lots of cherry scraps from my wood shop.

We also make kiszka, but that is a tale for another time...

my mom makes it ,too i think it's spelled borscht...she also adds a sour cream/flour mixture to the stock...

If i remember correctly there is a difference between barszcz biały and żurek, different flour used. My grandma made barszcz biały the traditional way, where she put a loaf of bread in a jar for a week dumped that into a pot with water, sausage, onions etc. Came out delicious. BTW Seanus, is shepherd's pie a Scottish dish, or British in general?

I think the main difference is żurek is made with fermented bread as your Grandma did, so the soup is naturally sour. With barszcz you need to use either vinegar or lemon to make it sour.

Zakwas na żur, made of fermented bread, some raisins...

My grandmother also fermented rye bread to make biały barszcz. Tradiional żurek is made with fermented rye flour. Using vinegar or lemon juice to achieve the desired tartness is a short-cut (non-traditional) method.

What is chemical difference between fermented rye bread and fermented rye flour? I do not deny your words, it's only a question.

P.S. Polonius3: Regardless how your grandma made the white barszcz, white barszcz is made sour with fermented red-beet juice. You can look up any Polish recipe book. I've just done it to make sure, one book being very old and another a new one. Żur is made with fermented rye bread or flour.

According to one school of thought, żur is made with fermented rye flour and biały barszcz with fermented wheat flour, but it's not a clear-cut distinction. Barszcz is also any soup made with other souring agent, like sauerkraut juice. My Kraków friend makes barszcz czerwony with fermented beets, she puts beets cut into pieces into a glass jar, adds water and a piece of rye bread and leaves it at a window sill for 3-5 days to ferment.


then it's not white anymore

Do you have the recipe for white borscht? I remember it having diced ham, diced polish sausage, diced eggs, diced rye bread
paulanowak777@rocketmail.com

Hi,
My recipe for borcht came from my fatherinlaw. Everyone I know uses lemon juice or vinager. but not my pops. He was a blind man who was unbeleivable.

2 c. old fashioned oatmeal
2 1/2 c lukewarm water
1 tbsp flour
1 garlic clove diced
1 crust sour rye bread
Mix oatmeal,flor and water with a fork in a bean pot earthenware crock. Place the rye bread on top. Let set for 3or4 days,until it sours.

Boil about 5 min. 2 quarts water with diced garlic, and strain the oatmeal into the water,it comes out different because the bacteria is always different but as long it is omn the thick side its good.

Serve it with chunk potatoes,hardboiled eggs kielbasa and rye bread.

i want to ask why my borsht isn't getting sour when i ferment it with the oats. I leave it on the counter for about 5 days and it doesn"t seem to sour. am I missing an ingredient? I use oats water and rye bread.

Vinegar and starch? It's barbarity! :) (no offense, please!)
This should be made from the same fermented stuff that is used for making bread (sourdough, just a little diluted). Other ingredients: sausage (either raw or smoked, sweet Italian sausage available in US grocery stores works fine), a potato cut into cubes, a bullion cube, some garlic, black pepper, marjoram, a bay leaf. Just before serving, add a spoon of sour cream.

Names for this soup: żurek, zalewajka.

I have never tried making this with vinegar, but quite conceivably using fermented rye flour produces a "milder" taste (this should be no surprise to any winemaker).

Merged: biały barszcz and żurek?

Is there any substantive difference between these two Easter soups in terms of ingredients, preparation, seasoning, additives?
Someone told me that barszcz is zabeielany (creamed) whilst żurek is not .and that marjoram is not added to barszcz.

There is uncertainty whether the żur soup is the same as the white barszcz. According to one tradition, the names of white barszcz soup and żur soup are used interchangeably. In other traditions, żur soup is a soup made ​​with rye flour, and white barszcz is based on wheat flour. Other customs want żurek to be a lenten sour soup, served with eggs or potatoes and white barszcz soup - prepared with soured broth with bacon and sausages.

This issue is still unresolved. In the past the traditional barszcz soup was also made with the plant called "ordinary barszcz" in Polish, Heracleum sphondylium L. Some recipes call for similar methods and ingredients as in preparation of typical white barszcz, with the exception that instead of leaven of flour the whey from curdled milk is used. In some regions, such as Kielce, liquid from cucumbers in brine is used in addition to leaven.

There are so many different recipes for "żur" (żurek) and white barszcz, including regional variations, that the question asked above is really immaterial.

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BBur

If this was not enough, there is also "zalewajka" soup,
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalewajka

My family calls this Bosch. It consists of ham broth, buttermilk, sour cream, ham, kielbasa, veil and hard boiled eggs.

Merged: Żurek or biały barszcz for Easter?

What is your family's tradition for Easter breakfast: zurek or bialy barszcz?
Both are now available as dry soup powders from Knorr and Winiary, but needless to say theyboth taste like...well, dry soup-powder soups.

Personally it's a bottle of Cava to kick off, a bottle of white with the sushi and the prawns, a bottle of red with the steak, a couple of glasses of white with the crepes, and then a few glasses of red with the cheese. The Mrs is a bit more restrained.

Oh I do love a festive brunch.

Zurek, for the past few years it's been zurek for me. I don't remember the last I had bialy barszcz. I agree about the Knorr and Winiary soups but there are the better ones and the worse ones. I usually buy the ones in the 2 litre box and they taste fine I don't even look for the brand or anything else. However, I miss the home cooked ones. I don't remember ever eating zurek home made but barszcz for sure, the best zurek I ate was at a small restaurant, not evemn a restaurant more like bacowka, it was a country zurek and was the best.

My family has this every Easter! It is rare that anyone knows what it is. It seems that there are many different ways that it is made. It all comes down to the "broth" it would seem. We use the water from the boiling of the polish sausage and add heavy cream, horseradish, and a small amount of mustard. pour it over cut up boiled eggs and polish sausage, and enjoy! I love this stuff!!!! I have been eating it since I was just a child, and it always brings back such great memories!

This is actually ZUREK.. But it is also called WHITE BORSCHT.. For those who want to try it, make sure you temper the sour cream with a little hot water.. If not the soup will curdle

Some say that żurek uses rye and barszcz biały uses barley.

Yum... so THAT's how its made. I never got the recipe for white borscht (slightly dif version) or Easter cheescake from grandparents. My one gram called it kulaja and it was the base with cream & vinegar instead of rye bread. The other made it more like the most described one here asn called it White Borscht

my family has this every easter. its a tradition. i think thru the years people add their own twist to the recipe. basically its sausage,egg,ham,rye bread in a vinegar based broth.

found out today that we have been calling it bosch for years now when its actually barzcz.
no one i ever spoke to had ever heard of it before.

Yes, that is a good way to make it have the sour taste if you want to have it quick. Traditionally the sour taste comes from fermented rye (or barley) and the difference is quite noticaeable. Luckily here in Poland you can go into any shop and you will find Barszcz Koncentrat which is basically the fermented grain stuff concentrated down to add to the soup. Makes żurek really easy to make quickly, instead of it taking days.

Poland is one of the best at soup. I grew up with soup always waiting on the stove: tastingpoland/food/polish_food_soups.html

My grandmother made the same soup! She pronounced it "boos" like "book" with an s at the end. We have it on Easter Saturday, after the priest came to bless the table. We also have it with our pierogies on Christmas Eve. I have taken over since my Baba's passing. I use the cooking water from the kielbasa and blend some of it with flour, egg, and a little milk in a blender. Then I add it all back to the cooking water along with sautéed onions and mushrooms, vinegar and salt. My family likes it more on the sour side. We then serve it with ham, kielbasa, boiled eggs, rye bread and loads of horseradish. Easter Saturday and Christmas Eve are my two favorite days of the year, mainly because of the uniqueness of this meal and the tradition for our family. When I first met my husband it was a running joke with him and my dad (both are not polish) that in time he'd grow to enjoy the soup as my dad does. After 19 years, he loves it!

My Polish grandmother made something very similar for Easter we all called Bosh. It had cut up ham, Special Polish sausage , and hard boiled eggs, covered by the sausage broth with vinegar (no corn starch) but a few cut up boiled egg yolks. We would add some ground up horseradish and served with danish or poppyseed bread. We lived near St. Louis.

My family makes it the exact same way!