I told my friend my cooking method, he in turn told me his and allowed me to share it:

I like thick sweet and sour borscht, rich, but without the taste of bones, so I cook it simply on tenderloin or other fillet. First, I cut the meat into squares and fry it until done. I drain the meat juice and rinse the meat with water (for the same reason that you change the water), then I cut the fried and lost in volume meat so that all the squares are slightly smaller than 1x1 cm, fill it with water, add an onion, carrot, bay leaf and a stick of celery. Put it on the fire and work on the vegetables. I cut the carrots into cubes and fry in oil with the addition of water until soft. Be sure to cover it with a lid, otherwise the water will boil away and everything will burn. I wash off the oil (I do not like a lot of fat) and add it to the soup with the meat. I put quite a lot of carrots, they are tasty and give the dish sweetness. I cook the beets separately until soft, just like you, but I do not grate them, I cut them into the same cubes as the meat and everything else. I add the most beets, they are the main ingredient. While the beets are cooking, I shred the cabbage (also into squares, but they eventually fall apart into slices), but I take a little cabbage, even less carrots. I stew the cabbage with water and oil without spices in a frying pan until soft, just like the carrots. Once they are ready, I wash off the oil and throw them into the soup. Somewhere around here you can take out the onion, carrots and celery, which have already boiled down and given the soup their flavors. I throw them away. About half an hour before the soup is ready, I throw the potatoes into the soup (yes, also in cubes), they have time to cook. And at the very end I throw in the cooked and chopped beets. If you want a very red soup, throw in some raw peeled beets, cut into 2-4 pieces, at this stage - they are not for food, but for color, and while they are cooking, they will give all their juice to the soup, then you can take it out and throw it away. I add spices (turmeric, hops-suneli, paprika and dry garlic), salt and tomato paste for color and flavor. And while you are bringing all this to a boil and final readiness, I fry very finely chopped onions in a frying pan together with finely chopped bacon in a small amount of oil. You can use butter or vegetable oil - whichever you like. And put all this in the soup and turn the heat down to the lowest setting, and let it simmer for another hour. I always eat it with sour cream, garlic and a lot of cilantro - to my taste, cilantro is the best in borscht. The soup should be very thick, it is more like a main course. All the ingredients are soft, but not overcooked, I do not like that. Frying cabbage and carrots is extra work, but it makes the soup richer and tastier, which compensates for the lightness of the broth cooked without bones. I cut everything into cubes for the sake of taste - I like it when you can scoop up all the ingredients of the dish with a spoon, but at the same time you can distinguish and catch the taste of each of them (except for the onion, perhaps, that is why I cut it very finely). By the way, you can add the onion earlier, you can even throw it in with the carrots when the water boils out, but I control the overall fat content of the soup with onions and bacon in oil at the very end, it is more convenient for me. If someone likes onions that boil and dissolve in the soup - then you need to add them earlier, of course. Well, depending on your mood, you can add mushrooms, olives or prunes to the soup - it is very tasty with them, by the way. By the way, when cooking meat, salt is added like this- if you want the meat to release juices into the broth, the dish is salted at the beginning of cooking, and if you want to get juicy meat at the expense of broth, at the very end. This practice, apparently, salt somehow draws juices from the meat into the water )))