As the home country of beetroot borscht, Ukraine boasts great diversity of the soup's regional variants, with virtually every district having its own recipe. The difference between different types of borsch consists in main ingredient. The main ingredient for the authentic borsch is beetroot. But this course can be also cooked with tomato or cabbage as main ingredients.
Ukrainian borsch can also be hot or cold. Hot borsch is cooked with a pork or beef or chicken broth. It usually contains beet/tomatoes/cabbage/carrots/potatoes in different combinations. Cold borsch is often vegetarian borsch (it is cooked without meat broth) and apart from vegetables may contain chopped hard-boiled eggs and different kinds of culinary plants (parsley or dill).
Differences between particular varieties may regard the type of stock used (meat, bone, or both), the kind of meat (beef, pork, poultry, etc.), the choice of vegetables and the method of cutting and cooking them.
For example, although the typical recipe calls for beef and pork, the Kiev variant uses mutton or lamb as well as beef, while in the Poltava region, the stock for borsch is cooked on poultry meat, that is, chicken, duck or goose. The use of zucchini, beans and apples is characteristic of the Chernihiv borsch; in this variant, beetroots are sautéed in vegetable oil rather than lard, and the sour taste comes solely from tomatoes and tart apples. The Lviv borsch is based on bone stock and is served with chunks of Vienna sausages.