Green Borscht -- Sorrel Soup

Ever since I saw this post, I've been thinking about sorrel soup. In the absence of any sorrel (wild or otherwise) I contented myself with trawling the web for recipes, taking in suggestions from dozens of sources. Last week, I finally got my soup. My grandmother was visiting my parents, and brought along a huge bag of the stuff, of which I got half.  I told her about all of the variations on the soup I had read, in particular that a number of sources had suggested that nettles are an appropriate addition to a sorrel borscht (an idea I had been toying with mostly because I knew of a nice nettle patch, and I have always wanted to try nettles).

My grandmother replied that when she was about my age, she heard the same thing. Nettles are healthy, add color and grow abundantly wherever you don't want them to grow. When she decided to try adding them to her borscht, she found she couldn't get past the smell. See, in those times (and probably in these times as well, since nettles grow well in abandoned dwellings, and Ukraine is full of these) nettles were pig food -- you'd throw a bushel in a steaming cauldron to take the sting out and serve it still hot to the piggies. Now, I have no such association of nettles and pigs, but I take from my grandmother's story this simple moral: keep it simple.

I've kept this recipe incredibly simple.

Sorrel Soup, or Green Borscht, is a very unusual tasting soup. It has a sort of sweet/sour flavor profile with the sourness coming from the high levels of oxalic acid, which gives the sorrel an almost citrusy taste.

You will need:

• The base of the soup can be either water, or some sort of broth or stock. The last time I made it, I tossed a pair of vegan bullion cubes into the pot. I think it's good with a beef stock, but plenty good with a vegetarian base as well.
• Approx 4 packed cups of coarsely chopped sorrel. 
• 1 diced onion
• 1 or 2 grated or finely chopped carrots
• 2 cubed russets, or 3-4 cubed red/gold potatoes
• Salt

Optional but traditional:

• Hard boiled eggs, for topping. 
• Fresh dill, for topping 

1. Fill a 6qt pot about halfway with your broth/water/bullion -- this comes to about 12 cups. Bring to a boil and add potato. You can saute your onions and carrots prior to adding to the pot, but in this particular soup they're perfectly good raw.
2.Once all of your veggies have cooked all the way through, add your sorrel and cook another 5 minutes or so, until the sorrel is soft. Salt to taste.
3. Serve topped with chopped hard boiled eggs and chopped dill(if you're into that sort of thing).