Recipe: Winter Beet and Buttermilk Soup

Cold beet and buttermilk soup made with winter ingredients. This soup is a traditional Eastern European soup.

The actual name of this soup is chlodnik litewski, which translates to “Polish Cold Beet Soup.” The recipe is adapted from a recipe out of Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages by Anne Mendelson. If you make this in the summer you can use cucumbers instead of pickles and add the beet greens from your beets (boiled briefly, drained and chopped up). You can garnish it with fresh dill leaves. As it is winter, I used pickles instead of cucumbers and I used dill seed and the end of the beets I bought at the farmers market last September and stored.

This makes about 2 & 1/2 quarts of thick, cold, bright pink soup. If you are a fan of pickled things, you are going to love this!

Winter Beet and Buttermilk Soup

4 or 5 medium beets

6 radishes

4 big pickle spears (I used McClure’s Spicy Dills which added a small amount of heat)

1/4 cup finely chopped onion

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

1 quart cultured buttermilk (full fat)

1 cup sour cream (full fat)

3/4 cup pickle juice

2 to 3 teaspoons salt (or to taste)

1 Tablespoon dill seed (or to taste)

(optional) chopped hard boil egg for garnish

Bring a pan of water to boil. Add all but one of the beets in and boil 20 min until tender. Drain. Peel beets and chop finely. Put in a big bowl. Peel raw beet and grate on the coarse side of the grater. Add to bowl. Grate radishes. Add to bowl. Grate or finely chop pickle spears and add to bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and stir. It is good immediately but even better if you let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours. Optional – garnish with chopped hard-boiled egg.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.