Traditional Polish Shredded Beets Salad

Zesty and flavorful, the Polish beetroot salad can be made with just a few ingredients. Serve it cold as buraczki, or serve the polish beets warm as buraczki zasmażane. Either way, you’ll love it!

Did you know that the world’s first beet sugar plant was built by the King of Prussia in the Silesian region of Western Poland? But that’s not all that beets have to do with Poland.

Polish shredded beets salad is one of the most popular add-ons to any dinner. In fact, it’s so popular that you’ll find many stores selling it too, with or without apples. It’s as popular as dill pickles and fried cabbage salad!

You can serve Polish mashed beets with kotlet schabowy or any other meat. Buraczki recipe is surprisingly easy. You don’t need any cooking skills to make this delicious Polish beet salad.

In Poland, you can either have your beets hot or cold. The recipes for both versions are very similar, so you will find two of them in this post.

Types Of Polish Beet Salad Recipe

Buraczki Recipe [Cold Beets Salad]

This is the basic recipe for buraczki. When you pasteurize the salad in the jar, you can keep it like that all winter and use anytime you want.

If you add some horseradish, you will get a spicier version of buraczki called ćwikła (chweek-wah).

Buraczki Zasmażane Recipe [Warm Beets Salad]

When you warm up the basic Polish beet salad and add a bit of flour and butter, you will get buraczki zasmażane.

Easy to guess, Polish housewives wanted to spice up the cold salad, so they added the famous zasmażka to it.

Buraczki zasmażane should be served fresh, it’s not recommended to pasteurize them. The flour and fat won’t make the salad last long.

Tips For Making Polish Beet Salad

Peel the beetroots before or after cooking.

It’s totally up to you, however, peeling is slightly easier when the beets are cooked.

Traditional Polish Shredded Beets Salad - Buraczki Recipe (2)

You can shred or mash the beets.

It’s ok to either shred, mash, or even blend the beets. The taste will be exactly the same.

Every Polish housewives have their own way of making buraczki.

Traditional Polish Shredded Beets Salad - Buraczki Recipe (3)

Usually, ćwikła [cold beet salad with horseradish] and buraczki zasmażane [warm beet salad] are served mashed, whereas the basic cold beet salad is usually made of the shredded beets.

More Tips For Making Polish Beetroot Salad – Cold Or Hot

You can either chop the beetroot fine or grate them!
Some families add one chopped onion or dill pickle to this recipe.
Use gloves so that your fingers and nails don’t get colored.
Don’t add horseradish to the hot buraczki salad.
You can add more flavor to the buraczki zasmazane recipe by baking the beets for an hour before frying.
Fry the warm buraczki with lard instead of butter. It’s delicious!
You can also add honey to the warm buraczki to make it sweeter!
Add the beetroot salad on top of fried or stewed apples and serve!
Or simply serve with sour cream (see my recipe for Polish beet salad with sour cream!

FAQs About Buraczki – Polish Mashed Beets Salad

Why Is This Beetroot Salad So Popular?

Beetroot contains many vitamins and minerals that are good for the body. Beetroot is one of the staple foods in Poland and many popular Polish dishes are made with beetroot. So this recipe is popular too!

What Other Polish Recipes Use Beetroot?

Other Polish recipes that are made with beetroot are:

Zakwas Buraczany – a beetroot drink
Chlodnik – cold beet soup
Barszcz n Botwinka – young beetroot soup
Barszcz Ukrainski – Ukrainian style beetroot soup

Can I Make Polish Beetroot Salad A Day Earlier?

Yes, you can make this beetroot salad a day earlier. It tastes better the next day.Store it in an airtight container and consume in 3 to 4 days.

Do not freeze beetroot salad.

If you want, you can pasteurize the beetroot salad in a jar and store it for many months up to as long as a year.

Traditional Polish Shredded Beets Salad – Buraczki Recipe

Yield: 4 servings

Traditional Polish Shredded Beets Salad - Buraczki Recipe

Zesty and flavorful, the Polish beetroot salad can be made with just a few ingredients. Serve it cold as buraczki, or serve the polish beets warm as buraczki zasmażane. Either way you'll love it!

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 40 minutes

Total Time 50 minutes

Ingredients

Basic Buraczki Recipe Ingredients

5 average red beets
1-2 tbsps of vinegar or fresh lemon juice
½finely grated horseradish root [optional, only if you want to have ćwikła]
salt, pepper

Warm Buraczki Recipe [Basic recipe+ the following ingredients]

2 tbsps of butter
1 tbsp of flour

Instructions

How To Make The Basic Polish Beet Salad?

Place the beets in the pot, cover with water, and cook until soft.
Drain the beets and leave to cool off.
When the beets are cold, peel and shred them. [Use disposable gloves if you don't want to end up with red hands]
Add vinegar/ lemon juice, pepper, and salt.
[Optionally] Pasteurize the beet salad in jars. Click here to learn how to do it.

How To Make Buraczki Zasmażane [Warm Beet Salad]?

Melt the butter in the pan. Add the flour and cook for a while, on the low heat.
Add shredded beets.
Serve warm!

Notes

If you want to keep your hands clean, use disposable gloves when peeling and shredding beets. Otherwise, you will end up with red hands that will be hard to wash.
Traditionally, horseradish is only added to cold beet salad. If you want to have your buraczki warm, skip adding the horseradish.
If you don't have time to shred the beets, you can also mash or even blend them. The taste will be the same.