Clear Beetroot Soup with Mushroom Dumplings (Barszcz Czerwony z Uszkami)
Declassified 22 August 2026
Threat assessment
- 1 No contact Nobody is in danger. Least of all the locals.
- 2 Light resistance A warmth. You mention it. Nobody responds.
- 3 Engaged You are sweating. No one else at the table is sweating.
- 4 Taking fire You have stopped talking. A child has taken your portion.
- 5 Operative down Extraction required. Locals describe this one as "not spicy".
A crystal-clear ruby broth built from fermented beetroot juice (zakwas buraczany) blended into a dried-mushroom and root-vegetable stock, ladled over tiny ear-shaped dumplings filled with the mushrooms from that same stock. It is the fixed first course of the Polish Christmas Eve supper, meatless by ritual, and in this form entirely vegetarian, a demonstration of how the cuisine builds depth without pork. A good one is transparent rather than opaque, sharply sour before it is sweet, and smells of the ferment rather than of boiled beetroot, which is why it is never allowed to boil once the zakwas goes in. The uszka should be small enough that eight sit comfortably in a bowl and thin enough that you can see the dark filling through the dough.
// SUPPLY LIST
SCALE:
| AMT | UNIT | ITEM |
|---|---|---|
| 800 | g | Raw beetroot, peeled and sliced 5 mm thick, for the zakwas |
| 1.2 | l | Water, boiled and cooled to room temperature, for the ferment brine |
| 24 | g | Non-iodised salt (sea or rock), for the ferment brine |
| 6 | clove | Garlic, peeled and lightly crushed: 4 cloves for the zakwas, 2 for finishing the soup |
| 1 | piece | Rye sourdough bread, a thumb-sized piece of crust, optional traditional starter for the ferment |
| 40 | g | Dried porcini/ceps (borowiki), brushed clean, soaked overnight in 600 ml cold water |
| 250 | g | Onion: 1 whole (about 150 g) unpeeled and halved through the root for charring, plus 100 g peeled and cut into 3 mm dice for the filling |
| 200 | g | Carrot, scrubbed and cut into 3 cm pieces, for the wloszczyzna |
| 150 | g | Parsley root or parsnip, scrubbed and cut into 3 cm pieces, for the wloszczyzna |
| 150 | g | Celeriac, scrubbed and cut into 3 cm pieces, for the wloszczyzna |
| 1 | Leek, about 100 g, white and pale green only, split lengthways and rinsed | |
| 6 | Allspice berries, whole, for the stock | |
| 8 | Black peppercorns, for the stock | |
| 2 | Bay leaves, for the stock | |
| 2 | tsp | Dried marjoram, crumbled between the fingers: half into the stock, half off the heat at the end |
| 500 | g | Beetroot, whole, scrubbed but not peeled, for baking into the soup |
| 30 | g | Butter, or cold-pressed rapeseed oil for a strictly dairy-free Wigilia |
| 20 | g | Fine dried breadcrumbs, to bind the filling |
| 120 | g | Plain white flour (Polish type 500), plus extra for dusting |
| 1 | Egg, large, at room temperature | |
| 25 | ml | Water at about 40 C (104 F), for the dough |
| 2 | tsp | Sunflower or rapeseed oil, for the dough and for tossing the boiled uszka |
| 2 | tsp | Caster sugar, to balance the ferment |
| 1 | tbsp | Lemon juice, freshly squeezed |
| 2 | tbsp | Dill, fresh, finely chopped, to finish |
| Fine sea salt | ||
| Black pepper, freshly ground |
// OPERATIONS
- 1 Eight days before you plan to serve, make the zakwas: pack the 800 g of peeled, 5 mm-sliced raw beetroot into a scalded 3 litre jar with 4 crushed garlic cloves and the rye crust if using. Do not try this in a 2 litre jar; the beets alone displace about 750 ml and the brine is another 1.2 litres, so you would have no room for the covering liquid or the weight. Dissolve the 24 g of non-iodised salt in 1.2 litres of boiled water cooled to room temperature (hot brine kills the lactobacilli living on the beet, and iodine inhibits them) and pour it over so the slices are covered by at least 3 cm with 4-5 cm of jar still empty above; weigh them down with a small saucer or a water-filled freezer bag so nothing floats. Cover with a cloth or a loosely seated lid and leave at 20-22 C (68-72 F) out of direct sun for 5-7 days, skimming off any flat white film. It is ready when the liquid is deep magenta, smells like sauerkraut brine with an earthy edge, and tastes bracingly sour with none of the raw-beet sweetness left; strain into a clean bottle and refrigerate, and note that it must be finished a full two days before the meal, because the soup itself is made the day ahead. Fuzzy blue, green or black mould means the beets were not fully submerged: discard the batch and start again, because it cannot be rescued.
- 2 The night before you cook, put the 40 g of dried porcini in a bowl with 600 ml of cold water, cover, and leave at room temperature for 8-12 hours. Use cold water, never boiling: a hot soak drives the fine grit and skin particles into suspension and over-extracts a bitter, muddy liquor that no amount of straining will clear, while a slow cold soak lets the sand fall to the bottom of the bowl. In the morning lift the mushrooms out with your fingers, squeezing them gently over the bowl, then pour the soaking liquid through a coffee filter or double muslin, stopping before the last tablespoon of gritty sediment at the bottom. Set 4 tablespoons of the strained liquor aside in a cup for the dumpling filling and keep the rest for the stock.
- 3 Heat the oven to 190 C (375 F), wrap the 500 g of scrubbed unpeeled beetroot loosely in foil with a splash of water, and bake on a tray for 60-75 minutes, until a thin skewer slides into the largest one with no resistance at the centre. Bake rather than boil them: boiling leaches the sugar and pigment into water you then throw away, and the finished soup comes out pale and flat. If the skewer still grips, give them another 15 minutes rather than accepting a chalky core, which will never give up its colour to the broth. Leave them wrapped until cool enough to handle, when the skins will slip off under your thumb.
- 4 Lay the halved unpeeled onion cut side down in a dry, heavy cast-iron or steel frying pan of about 24 cm over high heat and leave it completely undisturbed for 4-5 minutes, until the cut faces are properly blackened and smell of caramel and smoke rather than merely browned; this char is what gives a meatless Wigilia stock its backbone, and lifting it to peek breaks the contact and leaves you with grey onion instead. Transfer it to a 5 litre stockpot with the drained mushrooms, all the strained mushroom liquor except the 4 tablespoons you set aside, the 500 g of soup roots, the split leek, the whole spices, 1 teaspoon of the marjoram and 2 litres of cold water. Add no salt at this stage: the zakwas that goes in at the end is a 2 per cent brine and carries roughly 12 g of salt with it, which will season most of the pot for you.
- 5 Bring the pot slowly to the barest tremble over medium heat and hold it at 90 C (194 F), a bubble breaking the surface every few seconds and never a rolling boil, uncovered, for 50 minutes, skimming the grey foam during the first 10 minutes. A hard boil emulsifies vegetable solids into the liquid and the soup will never come clear again. Lift the mushrooms out after 25 minutes, when they are plump and a knife goes through them without dragging, and reserve them for the filling. Strain the finished stock through a double layer of damp muslin without pressing on the vegetables; you should have about 1.8 litres, and if you have much less the heat was too high, so top up with water rather than starting again.
- 6 Chop the reserved mushrooms to a 2-3 mm dice. Melt the 30 g of butter (or warm the rapeseed oil) in a 26 cm frying pan over medium-low heat, add the 100 g of diced onion with a pinch of salt and sweat for 8-10 minutes, stirring often, until completely translucent and only just colouring at the edges; a 20 cm pan is too crowded for this much mushroom and onion and the mixture will stew grey instead of drying. Add the mushrooms, cook 5 minutes more, then add the 4 tablespoons of reserved mushroom liquor and cook until the pan is dry and the mixture holds in a clump when pressed with the back of the spoon. Off the heat stir in the 20 g of breadcrumbs and season hard with salt and black pepper, so that it tastes slightly over-seasoned on its own, because it will be eaten inside bland dough and thin broth. You should have about 260 g; cool it completely before filling, since warm filling steams the dough from the inside and the seams will not weld.
- 7 Mix the 120 g of flour with 3 g of fine salt in a bowl, make a well, add the egg, 1 teaspoon of oil and the 25 ml of water at about 40 C (104 F), and bring it together with a fork before turning it out. This is deliberately a firm dough, only about half the flour weight in liquid, because anything wetter sticks and slumps the moment you take it down to 1 mm. Knead firmly for 8-10 minutes until it is smooth, springy and has the give of an earlobe, adding water only a teaspoon at a time and only if it is still crumbly after 3 minutes of work. Wrap it tightly and rest at room temperature for 30 minutes: unrested dough will spring back to 2 mm every time you try to roll it to 1 mm.
- 8 Working with one quarter of the dough at a time and keeping the rest wrapped, roll on a lightly floured board to 1 mm, thin enough to read newsprint through, and cut into 3.5 cm squares with a knife or pizza wheel. Place a scant 1/2 teaspoon (about 2.5 g) of filling in the centre of each, fold into a triangle, press the air out from the filling towards the edges and seal the two cut sides firmly, then bring the two corners of the long folded side together around the tip of your index finger and pinch them hard so they weld. Lay them apart on a floured cloth as you go and keep uncut dough covered: any square that has skinned over will not seal and will burst in the water. Re-roll the offcuts once and you are after about 90-100 uszka of roughly 4 g each raw, shaped like small ears rather than plump tortellini; you need 80 for the table and the spares cover the ones that split. Chill them on the floured tray, loosely covered, until tomorrow, or open-freeze them and bag them once solid.
- 9 Peel the baked beetroot, grate it coarsely, and stir it into the strained stock. Bring the pot only to 80 C (176 F), steam rising and no bubbles at all, then take it off the heat, cover, and leave to infuse for 20 minutes, by which point the broth should read as clear deep ruby against a white spoon rather than pink. Strain again through damp muslin and let it drip under its own weight; squeezing the cloth forces fine beet solids through and clouds everything you have just spent an hour keeping clear. You should have about 1.7 litres.
- 10 Warm the strained soup in a clean pan to 75-80 C (167-176 F), take it off the heat, and stir in 600 ml of the chilled zakwas, the 2 remaining garlic cloves crushed to a paste, the remaining 1 teaspoon of marjoram, 1 teaspoon of caster sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. The marjoram goes in here rather than into the stockpot because 50 minutes at a simmer strips its aroma completely. Taste, then add more zakwas 50 ml at a time up to about 700 ml until it is sharply sour with the earthy sweetness of the beet sitting just behind, reaching for the second teaspoon of sugar only if the ferment is fierce, and salt until the flavour snaps into focus, usually only 6-8 g because the zakwas has already brought its own. From here the soup must never boil: above about 85 C (185 F) the betanin degrades, and within a minute of bubbling you have a dull brown-orange broth that smells of cooked vegetable instead of ferment, and it cannot be reversed. You should finish with about 2.3-2.4 litres.
- 11 Cool the soup quickly, standing the pan in a sink of cold water and stirring, then refrigerate it overnight. The rest rounds the flavour and stops the sourness sitting on top of the broth, and it is how the soup is actually made in Polish homes, where the barszcz is finished a day or two before Wigilia. Before reheating, skim anything that has settled and pour the clear soup off the last few millimetres in the bottom of the pan rather than tipping the sediment back in.
- 12 On the day you serve, and not before, bring 4 litres of water to a rolling boil in a wide pot with 30 g of salt, drop in 20-25 uszka at a time and stir once so none stick to the base. They will float within 60-90 seconds; cook them a further 2 minutes after they rise, then bite one to check that the thick pinched knot is tender with no chalky raw-flour core. Lift them out with a spider, toss with a teaspoon of oil to stop them gluing together, and repeat with the rest, adding 1 minute to the timing for any that go in frozen. Never cook uszka in the barszcz itself, however tempting the shortcut: the starch they shed clouds a clear soup to a grey-pink murk within minutes, and this is the single most common way the dish is ruined.
- 13 Reheat the barszcz gently to 75 C (167 F), stirring and watching the pan, and pull it off the heat the moment steam rises and before a single bubble forms. Warm the bowls with hot water and dry them, put 8-10 uszka in each, and ladle over about 280 ml of barszcz so the soup arrives hot without ever having been near a boil. Serve at once with the barest scatter of chopped dill and nothing else; on Wigilia this is the soup course that opens the supper, with the oplatek wafer shared beforehand and the carp and herring following after. Any left over is drunk hot from a mug the next day (barszcz w kubku), with a krokiet or a pasztecik alongside.