>>/34592/
> Sometimes I wonder if I could eat borscht.

Just try it. It is actually pretty typical soup, nothing radical and unexpected. There also pretty different variations, for examle, I've seen borsch without beetroot but with only tomatoes. These variations bring different flavors, although typically it has some specific common theme.

And it can be made "light", although classic variant is thick.

I've did this:

First it is about meat bouillon. Maybe beef is preferred, but you can take anything, like pork or even chicken (too weak for borsch I think). Meat with bones is preferred for this.

Meat need to be placed in cold water and heated until boiling. Then you need to remove the foam and put some carrots and onions, roughly cut. Boil it for ~1 hour then take vegetables away, they are done. I've used some specific trick that I've seen from one cooking show - these vegetables were heated before on dry pan until slight burn - it gives more flavor. And no salt or anything like this.

Then boil it slowly until meat is done, on average it is 2 hours, depending on meat. Now you may take the meat out, remove the bones, cut meat into small parts (to make eating easier) and put it back into pot. 

Actually, every meat bouillon is made like this, it doesn't matter, be it borsch or anything.

Then the borsch: get the beetroot, slice it into small stripes, put it into another (!) pot with very small amount of water, add salt and sugar, add some acid like tomato paste and boil it slowly. Beetroot must be boiled separate from main soup, and added in the end.

Then it is simple: cut cabbage to stripes and add to the bouillon, then cut onion and carrot into stripes, fry them for few minutes on pan (with oil), then add to pot where cabbage is cooking. Now it is almost done, you need to just wait until every vegetable is ready. Now you may add salt, but remember, that you already have some salt in beetroot. When both pots are ready (beetroot and main soup), add beetroot into main pot.

But last main thing - specific flavoring additive, take salo (or bacon, or whatever fatty pork you know, already cooked), take garlic, take herbs and grind this all together. Blender is the best tool for this, although you can use mortar/pestle if you have it. That flavoring addition must be put into soup in the end.

Serve it with sour cream.