OK let me just preface this by saying that I’m writing this on an empty stomach, and it physically pains me.
During my first few months here in Ukraine, I gained somewhere between 25 and 30 pounds. No joke. Ukrainians take their food seriously. I’ve mentioned it before, but if you’re not familiar with Ukrainian history, there’s a backstory. In the first half of the 1900’s, Joseph Stalin forced Ukraine into a manmade famine called the Holodomor. Millions of people died, and it changed Ukraine’s outlook on food as a whole. Because of the Holodomor, Ukraine prioritizes food like nobody’s business. This country has a super interesting cultural relationship to food that I find absolutely fascinating.
So first, the amount of food. If you’re in Ukraine, you will NOT starve. You’ll get seconds, and even thirds of food. There are two words for dinner in the Ukrainian language because there are TWO dinners. (Some families even eat three dinners.) People will heap food onto your plate without asking. You are expected to finish everything that is put in front of you, and you will have to repeatedly say “no” multiple times when you are finished eating. And even then, Ukrainians will still say “трошки більше? Чуть-чуть?” (A little more? A little?). At the end of a meal, absolutely NOTHING is thrown away. Leftovers are saved for later, or given to friends or neighbors. Scraps are fed to animals, pets or stray dogs. Food does not get thrown away here, period.
Second, the type of food. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. If you didn’t know, Ukraine’s flag? 🇺🇦 It represents the country’s skies and wheat fields. The name for the city I had my pre-service training in, Житомир (Zhytomyr), comes from two Ukrainian words — “жито” meaning “rye,” and “мир” meaning peace. Bread is served with every meal. It’s cheap and can be found everywhere. Bread is an integral part of Ukraine’s culture.
Pastries are also really common in Ukraine. You can get rolls and pastries very cheap and very easily. Product stalls — called “productys” — are stationed every which way in Ukraine. I seriously stop at one about four times a week to pick up a pastry as a snack. My personal favorite is “sochniki,” which is a cottage-cheese-stuffed scone-like pastry. It’s covered in sugar crystals and crumbles when you eat it.
In addition to bread, Ukrainian cuisine also has a lot of integral ingredients. Ukrainians tend to eat very seasonal, so during the summer months, cucumbers and tomatoes are served with every meal. My Zhytomyr host family constantly kept a bowl full of peaches and plums on the kitchen table. Come fall, those peaches and plums turned to pears and apples. Ukrainian cuisine is heavy on root vegetables, too. Cabbage, beets, potatoes and carrots are very common in most Ukrainian dishes, especially during the cold winter months. Honey, dairy, cheeses and meats are also very prevalent. Ukrainians don’t tend to use a lot of spices in their foods. Things like hot sauce and chili powder don’t exist here! A while back, my incredible friend Heather mailed me a package full of Trader Joe’s spices, and I am ETERNALLY grateful.
Note to any and all future PCVs reading this: Pack lots of taco seasoning and Cholula/ your hot sauce of choice. Like, more than you think you’ll need. You’ll thank me later!
Ukrainians also eat a lot of calorie-dense foods… like mayonnaise. The high calorie content of mayonnaise — and the ease with which it can be preserved — has historically gotten Ukrainians through their harsh winters, and it’s been a staple of Ukrainian cuisine ever since. Mama Natasha went through multiple pouches of mayo every week, and she mixed it into/ put it on top of EVERYTHING.
However, there are parts of Ukraine that are very modern in terms of food offerings! Italian-style pizza (thin crust) is very popular here, as is sushi. Ukrainians are crazy about their sushi! It can be found almost everywhere. It’s very cream cheese-heavy and isn’t the best quality, but a Ukrainian-style sushi is very popular.
Georgian and Turkish foods are also popular here, too, given the country’s close proximity to both nations.
Ukrainians also love their sweets. Chocolate can be found pretty much everywhere — and it’s good chocolate, too. (American chocolate brands are easy to find as well, but they taste totally different.) Fun fact? Ukraine’s former president, Petro Poroshenko, actually owns the country’s largest candy conglomerate — ROSHEN. (Get it, Petro, Poroshenko?)
Ukrainians also drink a lot of coffee and tea. I was told to prepare myself for instant coffee before I arrived in Ukraine, but Хмельницький (Khmelnytskyi) is absolutely littered in coffee shops. You can’t throw a stone in this city without hitting one.
OK, so Ukrainian dishes! You’re probably familiar with a few of them — like borscht — but I want to share a few of my favorites. (Keep in mind that I don’t eat meat, so this definitely is not a comprehensive list of all traditional Ukrainian dishes.)
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Borscht. Like I said, this is probably Ukraine’s most famous dish! It’s a beet soup, and can be made green or red. It contains beef, beets, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, dill, etc. — every family has their own recipe that they follow. It’s usually served with smetana, aka sour cream. While red borscht is the most popular, there’s also a green borscht that’s fairly common throughout Ukraine.
Varenecky. AKA: Ukrainian dumplings! Yes, these are essentially what we know as Polish pierogies. Same thing, just with a different name in a different language. You can make these sweet — aka, filled with some combination of fruit, honey and cottage cheese — or savory — filled with meat and/or potatoes, and topped with caramelized onions and/or smetana.
Syrnicky. I’d never had syrnicky before coming to Ukraine, but this just might be my favorite Ukrainian dish. These are fried cottage cheese pancakes, usually topped with some combination of sour cream, sugar crystals and fruit jam.
Deruny. These are potato pancakes very similar to latkes, if you’ve ever had those. They’re usually cooked in sunflower oil (sunflower products are a HUGE export of Ukraine, if you didn’t know!) and served with smetana. These weren’t my favorite, but I ate them anyway.
Mlyntsi/ nalysnyky. These are thin pancakes similar to crepes, served folded up. When served alone, they’re called mlyntsi. When stuffed — usually with farmer’s cheese, honey, fruit jam, etc. — they take on the name nalysnyky. These are also amazing topped with honey, jam or sour cream. (Can you see how I’ve gained like, 20 pounds so far?)
Shuba. This is a traditional dish comprised of layers of pickled herring, grated raw onions, grated boiled carrots, grated hardboiled egg, grated boiled potatoes, grated boiled beets and mayonnaise. Sometimes it also includes grated boiled apples, if they’re in season. It sounds really gross, but it’s actually really good… in moderation. Mama Natasha made shuba every single week. I think I have at least 40 photos of shuba on my iPhone’s cameral roll.
While I DO love shuba (again, IN MODERATION), I’m not gonna lie… I spent a lot of time feeling like Lily when she had to make Mrs. Eriksen’s secret seven-layer salad.
Holubtsi. So, I actually don’t have any photos of holubtsi itself, just the above photo of Ira and Mama Natasha making it! I’ll have to take a photo next time I eat it. Holubtsi is stuffed cabbage leaves. It’s usually not pescetarian-friendly, but Mama Natasha made a mushroom-based version so I could try.
Kutia. So, hear me out. This one LOOKS gross, but it’s actually really good! Kutia is a traditional Christmas porridge served during the holiday season. It’s made with wheat berries, honey, walnuts, poppy seeds, dried fruit and sweetened condensed milk.
Zapekanka. The word “zapekanka” literally translates to “casserole” in English. This dish is like a cottage cheese-type of cheesecake, for lack of a better description. A lot of times, Ukrainians will bake nuts, raisins and dried fruit into the zapekanka, or they’ll just make it plain. Let me tell you, EVERYONE at my school LIVED for zapekanka day. Even my counterpart, Oksana, got so stoked about it!
Medovik. Medovik is a seven-layer cake made with honey and sour cream. It takes forever to make because it’s so delicate, but it’s absolutely delicious. Like, melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
Hretchka/Gretchka/Buckwheat. Buckwheat is to Ukrainian food what rice is to Mexican food. This grain is incredibly popular in Eastern Europe because it’s cheap and nutritious (think: the quinoa of the former USSR) and it’s usually served either alone, topped with a fried egg or with ketchup on the side.
Kholodets’. So, I lucked out here because as a non-meat eater, I never had to try the infamous Ukrainian kholodets’. This is basically meat Jell-O. I have no idea how it tastes and I plan to keep it that way.
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So, those are just a few of the “traditional” dishes here in Ukraine. I eat a lot of these dishes CONSTANTLY, since food variety isn’t a thing here to the level it is in the U.S.
But, don’t get me wrong — there are a lot of non-traditional dishes I eat as well. Olga frequently made this amazing fish dish topped with carrot, onion and apple slaw, and she’s made ratatouille several times before as well. Mama Natasha frequently makes mushroom stew with mashed potatoes, and also tons of other mayonnaise-based dishes, like egg salad and Olivier salad.
Honestly, I could probably write an ENTIRE blog JUST about Ukrainian food — both the dishes and culture. But, hopefully this serves as a good introduction to Ukrainian dishes.
Now that I’ve moved out on my own, I’m looking forward to experimenting a bit more and making some foods that are more… uh, familiar? to me. Helloooooo grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup!
But, I’m looking forward to experimenting more with Ukrainian foods, and discovering more dishes that I’ll replicate and bring back to the U.S. once my service ends.
This post was originally published Dec. 10, 2020. Its timestamp has been updated to reflect the timeline of my Peace Corps service.
In Ukraine, it is not customary to do two or three dinners) Perhaps this is the tradition of a particular family. Kutia is very cool)
Very interesting! Both of my host families — as well as the host families of most other PCVs — had two dinners every night, and our language and cultural facilitator explained during training that it’s very common for Ukrainian families to have two dinners every night. Of course, this is just my experience in Ukraine, and I realize that every culture has multiple sub-cultures, and no tradition or experience is all-encompassing of every culture.)