Recipe for Beet Shoop, courtesy of your friend Chord. I deicded to make borscht without instructions or any idea how to make borscht besides "Beets, Sour Cream, Soup."

 

Ingredients:

Beets: However many you prefer. probably do a medium batch unless you want to scrub charred stuff out of the bottom of the pot.

Tomatoes: 1 fist-sized tomato per fist-sized beet, or one large tomato for every two beets. Vary amount as you prefer.

Corn Starch: that's complicated.

Sour Cream: All of it.

Olive oil: 2 tablespoons

onion: one medium

1 wet dishrag: yes you're going to need it

Big old food processor that goes WHRRRRRRRRR

Potato masher

 

Instructions:

1. Boil beets in pot until fork-tender. Should take an hour.

2. Drain beets, add cold water to pot, dump out cold water and add some more. Remove skins from beets by rubbing with your hands. If you boiled them long enough they should come right off. Go on, give it a try.

3. Empty pot. Place beets in separate container for now, either a collander in the sink to drain, or a separate pot.

4. heat up two tablespoons of olive oil in main pot.

5. Chop up onion into small pieces, place in pot.  Sautee onions on low heat, stirring now and then. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.

4. Now this is the part where you want to have a wet dishrag on hand, because this is where beet juice starts to everywhere, yes even behind you, and that stuff stains. A wet dishrag will take care of it quickly enough.

5. Place beets on cutting board and chop into medium pieces.

6.Chop tomatoes into medium pieces. Precise size doesn't matter.

7. Once onions look nice and tender, place beets and tomatoes in pot. Cover with water.

8. Bring pot to boil, then simmer for ten minutes.

9. Add sour cream. No, that's not enough. More. More. MORE. Yes that's good.

10. Let sit for ten minutes.

11. Mash with potato masher. Get angry. Get mean.

12. Get out the big old food processor.

13. Ladle beet-tomato-cream mash into food processor. Blend in batches.

14. Place blended mixture back in pot. Set temperature to medium, stir occasionally.

15. While stirring occasionally -- this is the complicated bit with the corn starch. You have to ladle some of the beet mixture into a bowl and then mix it up with 2 tablespoons of corn starch for every cup of liquid? But how do you now many cups you have? Well, the point is you turn THAT into a slurry and then mix it into the pot, and that makes it thick. If you add the corn starch to the pot without mixing first it clumps up.

16. Keep in mind that I haven't perfected this recipe.

17. Now stir in the corn starch slurry. Keep stirring on medium heat. Stir constantly until thick. I said THICK! This is shoop! Not soup!

18. Once it is thick enough to make stirring a physical exercise, turn off heat and serve. Ideally over rice.

19. Let me know if I ought to apologize.


This is not meant to be an entry in the Halloween Horrorquest, but it might turn into one depending on how the recipe works for other people.