Lithuanian Borscht (Cold Borscht)

Are you suffering from hot weather like me? When outside feels like in the oven there is no better food to eat than cold soup. Lithuanian borscht is a nice refreshing buttermilk based cold soup you can put together without any extra hassle and then enjoy it sitting on the patio.

The real trick to Lithuanian borscht is to find good butter milk – it should be original buttermilk which hasn't been flavored with any tastes, not salted and not sweetened. I used plain unsweetened kefir (buttermilk) from Lifeway and it worked out perfectly.

The rest of ingredients: vegetables (beets, cucumber and greens) and hard boiled eggs, are easy to get and not pricey at all. And btw, even though this soup is called a “borscht”, the only thing it has in common to other borschts, I guess, is the color.

Okroshka

Okroshka is traditional russian cold soup. It is perfect meal for hot summer weather as it is prepared on the base of kvass - russian bread drink – and it is light and very refreshing.

Finding good fresh kvass for okroshka can be challenging outside of former-USSR. You may try russian or ukrainian shop, or, of course, you can prepare kvass yourself. But If you are not lucky with any of these, you can also replace kvass with mineral water, kefir diluted with boiled cold water or even light beer.