Lithuanian Cold Beet Soup (Traditional Šaltibaršciai)

Preparation time: Up to 30 mins

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the soup

500 grams boiled and marinated beetroots, grated

1 litre kefir

Half a lemon Cucumbers, grated Scallions, chopped finely Dill, chopped finely Salt and pepper

For the garnish

4 eggs (or any number of eggs you’d like)

8 potatoes (or any number of potatoes you’d like) Sour cream (optional)

Preparation

Peel the potatoes, wash the eggs.

Boil two pots of water, one for the eggs (until hardboiled) and the other one for the potatoes (until soft).

When the water reaches boiling temperature, add a pinch of salt to both pots and add the eggs and potatoes into the pots separately.

Pour the grated beetroot and kefir into a large pot, and mix.

Squeeze half of a lemon into the mix for a more sour taste.

Add the cucumbers, scallions and dill to the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour the soup into bowls for serving.

Once the egg and potato have finished cooking, chop them into any desired shape and add them to the bowls of soup still hot.

Garnish the soup with sour cream. (Optional)

Bon Appétit!

2013 – Soup Can Be Pink?

The heat has been hitting record highs this summer and no one I know has an AC system. Here, the temperature rarely passes twenty-five degrees Celsius, and seldom thirty, and air conditioners are just such a waste of resources both in the cold cold winters and the marginally less cold summers anyway; so on that one day they would actually come in handy, all work slows down and pets go lay on the dry grass and even the flies stop bugging you. On that day, the world stops spinning, giving way to only the endless heat.

The day is spent at my grandma’s farmstead in the middle of Lithuania – a relic of times past, complete with an outhouse, a well (that my grandpa hand-dug) but no running water, and absolutely no connection whatsoever. I am not too preoccupied with the lack of amenities, however. In my hands, I hold a Barbie doll. She’s a princess, she’s so beautiful. I love dolls, I love looking at them and petting their long silky hair, and I like playing out life stories and dramas rivalling any telenovela. The heat makes it hard to play outside. I walk back home. My mother stands over a big pot at the kitchen table, ingredients scattered around. She is mixing the pot with a big wooden spoon, and I can see the colour pink. My surprise was undeniable: I had never seen something edible so starkly pink before, or even known about the existence of this soup before this day. I spent the first years of my conscious life abroad, disconnected from my culture’s traditional dishes. It was only around the beginning of the 2010s that I encountered my culture for the first time, the pink soup being one of those moments of realisation.

‘Šiandien valgom šaltibaršcius,’ today we eat cold beet soup, my mom tells me. I scrunch up my nose. Beets? Yuck! ‘Jie Barbiniai,’ they’re like Barbie. I look down at my doll. What does weird-looking soup have to do with Barbie?

I approach the table and look into the big pot. The soup is stark pink with eggs and potatoes bobbing up and down in it; equal parts intriguing and repulsive, awakening curiosity. I would spend the next ten years trying to explain the concept to my foreign friends. ‘There’s beets and there’s kefir –’ ‘Wait, kefir?’ ‘Sure, they go great together.’ ‘What kind of soup is it even?’ ‘Cold.’ Looks of shock and disgust ensue. They usually end up liking it after a try.

‘Paragauk,’ try it, my mom urges me as I take the spoon and reluctantly try the mystery soup. It is good. Kefir and beets go together. I ask for the recipe. It’s easy enough for even a child to make.

2023 – The Soup is Not Enough, Take Out The Ice Cream Machine

The heatwave is unbearable. It is the second week the temperature has stayed over thirty degrees and I feel like my skin is melting off my skull. In the years of rising temperatures, I discovered a good hack for non-AC owners is to go to the cinema and watch whatever is on. While a home cooling system is still unnecessary, the number of unbearably hot days is rising every year. I’ve seen all the highs and lows of this year’s summer line-up to hide from the oppressive weather.

Inevitably, I saw Barbie, which reminded me of my childhood summer days spent playing with the doll. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film, its colour scheme lingers in my mind. I have always liked the colour pink, and with its resurgence in the past few years – Kalush Orchestra’s pink bucket hat (now a symbol for Ukraine’s liberation) at Eurovision 2022, Chanel’s back-to-pink catwalks, and now Barbie’s all-pink life on the silver screen. – there has hardly been a better time for pink.

Temperature changes pose an issue (among many, arguably bigger ones): the refreshment beet soup once provided is not enough for today’s climate, and a fatty, dairy-based soup is more likely to make one feel worse than better. My mantra these days has become ‘it’s probably better frozen’; freezer full to the brim with whatever foodstuffs I crammed in there in a desperate attempt to make them more digestible. The beet soup will be better frozen.

I credit my mom for this idea. We have an ice cream machine, but after a time the ideas of what to icecreamify run out. Turns out you can turn the soup into sherbet. My inner child rejoices I can now eat ice cream and call it a healthy meal! I’d like to imagine a Lithuanian Barbie eating it – I’d like to imagine young me playing her life out.

Making cold beet soup ice cream is simple: just take the traditional recipe, blend it, and put it into an ice cream machine. You can also sherbet-ify it by freezing the blended soup overnight and then blending it again until it becomes sherbet-like in texture!

Every time I eat the sherbet dish, I reminisce about my grandma’s farmstead, about that one hot day in 2013 I spent playing with dolls and unexpectedly facing my heritage through food. The soup – first magic, then mystery, and finally, a beloved summer treat, has always been an easy-tomake yet effective meal both for me and any guests. I love sharing it with my Lithuanian friends, as well as challenging any unsuspecting foreigners who may not have had the chance to try it. Šaltibarščiai, cold beet soup, Barbie soup, or whatever you call it, is a dish to definitely try: created by hard-working, simple farmers and brought to the rest of the country and the world, it is undeniably one of the most recognizable (rightfully so) Lithuanian foods.