FOOD CULTURES OF THE WORLD - UKRAINE

Overview

Ukraine is a large eastern European country. Its territory covers 233,090 square miles. It is bordered by Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Moldova, as well as the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The Dnieper, the Dniester, and the Buh are the three major rivers in Ukraine. Ukraine is a unitary republic divided into 24 provinces ( oblasts) centered around large cities.

Its population of just over 46 million people consists of ethnic Ukrainians (77%), Russians (17.3%), Moldovans, and Romanians (0.8%). There are also significant minorities of Belarusians, Bulgarians, Tartars, Jews, Armenians, and Greeks. This diversity is also reflected in Ukrainian cuisine, its ingredients, and its culinary techniques. Ukraine, throughout its history, has been subject to numerous invasions and domination by foreign powers. These influences also led a diverse and multirooted culinary tradition.

Religion also plays an important role in Ukrainian culinary traditions. Of those Ukrainians who are religious, 76 percent are Ukrainian or Russian Orthodox Christians. Eastern-rite Catholics make up 8 percent of the religious population, while Roman Catholics and Protestants make up 2 percent each. Less than 1 percent of the population is Jewish or Muslim. Under Soviet rule, religion was strongly discouraged, and today over half of Ukrainians claim to be atheist or to belong to no faith. Despite this, religious holidays and holiday dishes remain popular.

Food Culture Snapshot

Oleh and Viktoriya Shevchuk are a young couple living in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Oleh owns a small construction company building summer homes outside of Kiev. Viktoriya is an economist working for a private bank. They have no children. Their eating habits have been shaped by both traditional and Soviet foods that their parents served at home, as well as modern influences. Being middle class has allowed the Shevchuks to travel to western Europe and to Mediterranean resorts. They like the gourmet foods they sampled while traveling. Since they both have busy work lives, the Shevchuks also like the new convenience foods that are available in Ukrainian supermarkets.

The Shevchuks live in a typical “bedroom” district of Kiev, on the left shore of the Dnieper River. Like most other people living in the countries of the former Soviet Union, their sources of food are the supermarket, small local shops, and farmers’ markets. The Schevchuks shop together at the markets and supermarkets.

As they return home after work, they make small, everyday purchases of bread, cookies, and soft drinks at the small local shops. The Shevchuks own a car and once a week drive to the nearest large supermarket, which is a part of the MegaMarket chain. There, they stock up on porridge grains, convenience foods like instant noodles, and cold cuts, milk, and eggs. Since they are young and have had greater exposure to the western European diet, the Shevchuks purchase many items that are not traditionally Ukrainian such as dry breakfast cereal and yogurts. At the Levoberezhny market, which is not far from where they live, the Shevchuks shop for vegetables and fresh meat. Just like their parents, they try to maintain good relationships with specific stall owners, who then supply them with the better and fresher vegetables and cuts of meat.

Major Foodstuffs

Ukraine was traditionally seen as the breadbasket of eastern Europe, and it continued to play this role under Soviet rule. Unlike the relatively cold and poor-soiled terrain of its northern neighbors, Russia and Belarus, Ukraine’s land was able to support a wheat-based cuisine. Millet and rice play a popular but secondary role. Rye and oats are much less important as grains in Ukrainian culinary traditions, but sourdough rye breads are also common. Various breads, cakes, and filled and plain dumplings are all usually made of wheat flour, sometimes in combination with milled buckwheat.

Vegetables and legumes are also very important to Ukrainian cookery. Beets are the most iconic and popular of the vegetables used in Ukrainian cooking, providing a key ingredient in its most well-known dish, a rich soup known as borsch. Beans and lentils are used in soups but are also mashed and served mixed with fats or in combination with other vegetables. Carrots, tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, and corn are also very important in Ukrainian cuisine. In western Ukraine, where the influence of Balkan cuisine is quite strong, corn is a major source of starch in the form of a local version of polenta known as mamalyga, which is often eaten with a salty sheep-milk cheese. Potatoes are not as common as is in the cuisine of Russia, or especially Belarus, but they still are very popular and commonly presented as a side dish, often in combination with other vegetables or even fruit. Potatoes are also used to obtain starch for use in jellied desserts. Onions, turnips, and cabbage are also important, with cabbage used either raw, fermented, in soups, or stuffed and stewed. Eggplants were seen as “foreign” in the distant past but have now become quite common in Ukrainian cuisine.

Meat is also a popular ingredient. Pork is the most common meat for Ukrainians. As in other traditional cuisines, every part of the pig is used.

Lard, or salo, is particularly common in Ukrainian food. It is cooked or preserved, often through salting or smoking. Lard is used as an ingredient or as a fat for frying. Many Ukrainian dishes, including doughnut-like desserts, are fried in rendered lard. Lard is used with other meat ingredients to make them moist. Eating pork became an important source of national and religious identity because, in the early-modern era, Ukrainians constantly fought the Muslim Turks and Tartars.

Beef became popular only in the late 19th and 20th centuries, since buffalo (traditional bovines in Ukraine, not to be confused with the American bison) were beasts of burden rather than sources of meat. In the west and the south of Ukraine, lamb is a common source of meat as well. Ukrainians do not eat horse meat, but Ukrainian Tartars still use it as an ingredient in their traditional dishes, usually served only on holidays.

Chickens, turkeys, and ducks are also eaten in Ukraine. Fish, especially carp, is a popular ingredient for soups and is also prepared in aspic. Herring, salted or marinated, is a popular appetizer, often associated with Jewish Ukrainian cooking. In the south, on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts, saltwater fish is caught in great variety.

Eggs are also commonly used in the rich dishes of Ukraine. They are either fried plain or prepared as rich, multi-ingredient omelets. Eggs are also an important ingredient in dough for dumplings and holiday breads and pies.

Milk is used as a base for soups or a liquid for boiling dumplings. It can be soured and drunk or made into other drinks and cheeses. Cottage cheese, tvaroh, is popular throughout the Ukraine, while bryndzia, or feta cheese, is popular in the west and in the coastal south of the country.

Fruits such as apples, pears, plums, and cherries are eaten fresh or cooked in drinks and desserts. Berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and currants, are also popular ingredients. Watermelons and an endless variety of other melons are eaten as desserts, preserved, or used in main dishes. Fruit can also be used in savory dishes such as soups and condiments. Sunflower seeds are popular in many dishes but are also eaten roasted as a snack. They are also used as a major source of sunflower oil, which is very common in Ukrainian cooking.

Ukrainian food is not particularly spicy but is quite flavorful. Onions, garlic, dill, caraway seeds, anise, mint, and red and black pepper, as well as bay leaf and cinnamon, are used as common spices and flavoring agents. Vinegar is also a common condiment.

Cooking

Ukrainian dishes tend to be fairly complex, including multiple ingredients that surround, modify, or amplify one central ingredient. This is particularly well illustrated by borsch, the world-renowned soup that became symbolic of Ukrainian food in general. Borsch can contain up to two dozen ingredients in addition to beets, the definitive ingredient of this soup. Borsch is generally based on pork or beef stock, to which other ingredients are added. In some cases, when borsch is prepared in the style of Odessa (a southern port city) or Poltava (a city in central Ukraine), a goose or chicken stock is used.

Ukrainian cuisine, unlike Russian food, favors sautéing (smazhennie) ingredients before they are introduced into other dishes. Beets are either sautéed or baked before being placed in the stock. Vegetables—carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, and sometimes turnips—are also sautéed and then added to the soup. All ingredients are added in a particular and usually precise order, depending on the recipe. Kievan borsch recipes included beet kvass (a fermented malted beverage). Poltava-style borsch is made with goose and wheat-flour dumplings. Chernigovstyle borsch features apples, tomatoes, beans, and squash, while Lvov-style borsch, infl uenced by the cuisine of the Austrian Empire of which it was once a part, has sautéed frankfurter sausage added to it just before serving.

While borsch is perhaps the best-known Ukrainian dish, the cuisine also includes kulesh, a somewhat less famous but nonetheless traditional soup. At its most basic, kulesh is a millet, potato, and lard soup-porridge, originally meant to be prepared in the open field. It is very filling and easy to prepare.

Since it was developed by the mobile Cossack warriors, kulesh can be prepared from various ingredients on hand. When moving over long distances by water, Cossacks could replace the potatoes and millet with underwater tubers of river plants, and lard could be replaced with almost any other protein.

Ukraine has a great variety of flour-based dishes. Slavic practices, and possibly even some Turkish influences, have mixed to create Ukrainian dumplings: vareniki, similar to Polish pierogi. Ukrainians fill vareniki with cherries, sweet or savory cottage cheese, sautéed onions or shkvarki (fried poultry or pork skin cracklings), and fat. Almost any filling can be used, including potatoes, liver, cabbage, beans, or sweet fruit and poppy seeds. Pampushki are very small buns made of raised yeast dough that can be made from buckwheat or wheat flour and then either boiled or baked. They are often served with butter or oil and garlic-flavored sauce as an accompaniment to borsch.

Halushky are a typically Ukrainian dish, but similarly named and prepared dishes are known in the rest of eastern Europe. The simplest recipes are boiled squares of dough served with butter, oil, or lard. The dough can also be mixed with cottage cheese, potatoes, and apples.

Milk and eggs are important components in Ukrainian cooking. Milk is usually simply drunk or soured into yogurt-like drinks and cottage cheese. A typically Ukrainian milk dish is ryazhenka. This is a thick, sour milk that was baked fi rst. This caramelizes the milk sugars, giving ryazhenka a color like café au lait and a lightly sweet-sour flavor. Eggs are traditionally made into yaishni, rich omelets with cream or sour cream and flour, with many other ingredients. Hard-boiled eggs can also be baked in sour cream or chopped, mixed with raw eggs, and fried into patties.

Meat in the past had been eaten mostly on holidays, but in the years after World War II it became much more common. Meat, particularly pork, is usually prepared in two stages: first sautéed, then stewed with vegetables and flavorings. Lard may be used as a frying fat. Water, broth, or kvass can be used as a stewing liquid. Shpundra is an exemplary dish of this kind: Small cubes of pork are fried in lard and then stewed in kvass with beets. Meat rolls or cabbage rolls stuff ed with meat are common preparation techniques as well, producing dishes called zavivantsy.

German and Polish culinary practices have introduced pattylike dishes of fi nely chopped ingredients including meat (especially pork) or vegetables, mushrooms, and eggs. Since traditional cuisines call for every part of the animal to be used, Ukrainians prepare kendiukh, the stuff ed stomach of a pig, filled with spiced and finely chopped head meat.

Poultry, whether chickens, ducks, geese, or even turkeys, is commonly made into broths and soups and often stewed with sour cream sauce or together with rice, or halushky.

Sausage is a common way to preserve meat. Kovbasa, homemade sausage, is made soon after the slaughter of pigs. Cleaned intestines are filled with chopped meat, lard, salt, garlic, and pepper. These sausages are either fried or smoked in ovens. Sausages are preserved by packing them into clay jars and sealing them with lard. Kyshka, blood sausage, is also made, as is headcheese ( zeltz ).

The fish served in Ukraine varies by region due to the country’s geography. In the north and center of Ukraine, river fi sh, particularly carp and pike, are popular. In the south, along the Black Sea coast, saltwater fish are more common. Everywhere, salted or marinated herring is popular as an appetizer. Southern Ukrainian cuisine is well known for fresh sea fish that is fried and served very simply with a side of potatoes. Northern and central Ukrainians use a mixture of river fishes to make soups, fried fish, or fish served in aspic.

Vegetables are common in the fertile Ukraine. They can be prepared as side dishes with meat or made into soups. Many vegetables are often mashed and dressed with onions, poppy seeds, oil, and vinegar, and served as a main course or an appetizer. Beans, beets, and squash can be prepared as “caviars” of this type. Mashed potatoes mixed with mashed beans and poppy seeds are called tolchonka. Vegetables can also be prepared with grains such as wheat berries, millet, or rice to make rich porridges. Finally, vegetables are often preserved in salty or spiced brines. Almost every vegetable can be preserved this way, and Ukrainians are fond of salted tomatoes and cucumbers, and even salted watermelons. Mushrooms are picked in the woods and are dried, pickled, or eaten fresh. Mushrooms are made into soups and can be fried and served with potatoes.

Fruit and berries—apples, plums, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and many others—are often eaten plain. They are added to savory dishes, especially borsch, or served with meats. Fruit and berries are made into the traditional sweet dishes uzvar, fruit kholodets, and fruit babki. Uzvar is made of meticulously cleaned fruit (fresh or dried) and raisins boiled in water and sweetened with sugar or, more  traditionally, honey. Spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, and lemon zest, are used to fl avor uzvar. The whole mixture is cooked until the fruit is soft and then chilled to thicken the dish.

Kholodets is made of fruit, sugar, and spice syrup mixed with pureed fruit and then chilled. Fruit babki are essentially fruit puddings made of mashed fruit mixed with eggs and flour, baked, and eaten while still warm. Fruit is also often made into a jam or povidlo, a thick fruit butter most traditionally made out of plums. Sugar is usually added toward the end of cooking the fruit, letting the povidlo remain light-colored.

Ukrainian desserts can also be made out of dough and then either baked or fried and served with a sauce or a topping. Baked pastries are usually made with choux pastry (a light, airy dough made with butter, water, flour, and eggs) rather than yeast-risen dough. These include bubliki, small bagels of choux pastry that are baked and topped with powdered sugar. Puhkeniki are doughnuts that are either fried and smothered in jam or filled with jam and then fried and topped with powdered sugar. Shuliki, simple cookies made of sweet dough with poppy seeds and honey, are broken into pieces and allowed to absorb a sauce of poppy seed, milk, and honey.

Korzhiki are a slightly thicker version of shuliki, or they can be made with hazelnuts and just served plain. Simple fried cookies, verguny, are extremely popular in Ukraine and, like borsch, have many regional variations. They are made of thick, sweet dough made with the addition of rum, brandy, or vodka. The dough is rolled out thinly, cut into small strips, and fried in melted lard. When ready, the cookies are dusted with powdered sugar and can be eaten hot or cold. Solozheniki are another common dessert, consisting of light, rich pancakes wrapped around a filling and then baked under a meringue. The pancake dough is runny and made with more milk and eggs than flour, while the fillings tend to be made of one of the traditional Ukrainian ingredients of fruit, fruit jam, or poppy seeds.

Traditional Ukrainian beverages can be divided into alcoholic and nonalcoholic varieties. Vodka, known as horilka, has been popular since the 17th century. It is often flavored, most commonly with honey and hot pepper. The Crimean Peninsula is well known for its wines such as the Masandra variety.

Medovukha, or mead made from fermented honey and water, is an ancient beverage common across Europe and still popular in Ukraine. Beer (pyvo) is also very popular among Ukrainians. Non-alcoholic beverages include the traditional fermented kvass, which can be made out of a single or multiple ingredients including bread, beets, and fruit. Yeast is added to the warm mixture, which is then allowed to ferment. Tap water often is seen as unsafe, so most Ukrainians either boil the water they drink or consume the many mineral waters on sale across the country. Tea and coffee are popular beverages, as are more recently introduced sodas, including many of those consumed in western Europe and the United States.

Typical Meals

Breakfast ( snidanok ) in Ukraine traditionally tends to be fairly filling, but this has been changing. Dishes mixing grains and fats are common. These could include buckwheat-flour-and lard-based lemishky (a gruel) or buckwheat cooked as porridge with the addition of butter. Farina and oatmeal are also common breakfast porridges. Various egg dishes, whether elaborate yaishni omelets or just eggs boiled or fried sunny-side up, are commonly eaten. French toast is a popular dish, usually served with savory toppings such as meat or cheese, rather than sugar or jam.

Meat dishes such as frankfurters or meat patties are often served for breakfast. Sandwiches with sausage, cheese, pâtés, or other toppings are well liked. Ryazhenka and cottage cheese, or cheese fritters, are popular breakfast dishes made with milk. Milk itself, as well as buttermilk, and tea or coff ee are commonly served as breakfast beverages. In recent years, yogurts and dry cereals have become more popular, particularly among younger Ukrainians.

Lunch ( obid ), the midday meal, was traditionally the main meal of the day, but with new work schedules this distinction has often been transferred to supper ( vecheria ). The main meals of the day are likely to include a soup, a main dish, and a dessert, and sometimes also an appetizer. As with every meal in Ukraine, bread is an important accompaniment.

While vegetables play an important part in Ukrainian cuisine, salads of raw vegetables are less common. They are served as an appetizer, often made of cabbage or tomatoes and cucumbers dressed with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar. Other appetizers could be salted or marinated fish such as herring or anchovies; marinated mushrooms or vegetables; or rich salads with meat and potatoes dressed with mayonnaise.

The appetizer course can be accompanied or even replaced by a shot of vodka ( horilka ). Winter meals usually include a borsch or cabbage soup, such as kapusniak, or other soups made with grains or mushrooms. Chicken broth with rice or noodles is also popular, as are soups made with milk and pasta. If in the past a rich soup or stew and bread would be the only food served at an everyday lunch, today there is often a meat-based main dish, served with starch side dishes. Most common today are meat-based stews (especially made with pork) and fried patties ( bitkil ). These are served with a porridge (especially buckwheat), macaroni, or rice. The stews can also be accompanied by halushky or pampushki.

Desserts, depending on the meal, can range from a simple kompot (fruit compote), uzvar, or kissel’ (sweetened juice thickened with starch, with fruit added) to fancier pastries, creams, or cakes. Drinks that are served with dinner could be the traditional kvass, mineral water, or soda, with coff ee or tea accompanying dessert. The lighter evening meal is often similar to breakfast. Porridge, eggs, and fritters (meat or vegetable), as well as tea served with cakes, cookies, or preserves, round out the meal.

Modern Ukrainians now have lives scheduled around work patterns similar to those in western Europe or the United States, and their meal patterns have also changed. Many snack foods are now sold, including chips, popcorn, and puffed corn (like corn pops, salty and sweet), as well as the more traditional roasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

Convenience foods, such as instant soups or noodles, have become the normal midday meal for many students and office workers.

Eating Out

Eating out has increased over the course of the 20th century. Traditionally, Ukraine had some country inns where simple meals were served along with alcohol. In the 19th century, Ukrainian cities acquired more restaurants in the European sense as well as Russian-style traktiry, or roadside inns with simple restaurants. In the Soviet era, eating outside the home was encouraged, and communal cafeterias sprang up both in the cities and attached to plants and collective farms. The most recent development has been the appearance of fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s.

The communal canteens and restaurants mixed traditional Ukrainian dishes with those from the rest of the Soviet Union. Ukrainians, when eating out, often expect this mixture of cuisines on the menu, which is likely to include Russian caviar appetizers, grilled meats from the Caucasus, and pilafs from Central Asia. French-influenced dishes such as mushrooms baked in cream sauce ( julliene ) have become iconic for fancy restaurant meals. Even plain canteen-served foods are drawn from many ethnic traditions. An example of an ethnic food served in a canteen would be the Tartar-influenced azu, or roasted beef served with a tomato-based sauce and pickles.

Modern Ukraine has fewer Soviet-style canteens and many more cafés serving light foods along with teas and coffees. Fast-food restaurants are very popular.

McDonald’s and other international chains share space with Ukrainian-owned fast-food establishments that often serve traditional foods such as vareniki (stuffed dumplings) or bliny (little pancakes). Simple snack bars selling hot dogs and drinks are often located around major public transportation stops. Beer pubs serving Ukrainian and international beers have become very popular. Kebab stands have become common in large cities, as they are in the rest of Europe.

Special Occasions

Bread, like in other Slavic cultures, is considered sacred and is used to commemorate important life events, with some special breads tied to specific occasions.

In the distant past, bread baking was a ritual occasion and seen as a sacred act. Even today, when welcoming guests, Ukrainians serve bread and salt as a sign of hospitality. In addition to special breads, other ritual dishes are made to commemorate many holidays. Paskha, the rich Easter bread, is made out of yeast-raised wheat dough, with eggs, milk, and spices, especially ginger and saffron. Western Ukrainians tend to decorate the paskha with dough ornaments such as a cross and keep it low and round, while the Russian-influenced eastern Ukrainians make paskha into a tall but plain glazed bread. This bread is not eaten until it has been blessed in church with other Easter foods during the Easter service.

The Easter meal is also the time to serve babka, a rich bread made with eggs, raisins, sugar, and spices, which usually includes lemon zest, saff ron, and vanilla. Elaborately painted eggs ( pysanki ) are an important part of Ukrainian Easter. Other rich egg and meat dishes are served during Easter, a major ritual feast. Shuliki cookies are the traditional food for church holidays (such as the Feast of Transfiguration) that are celebrated in August.

The Christmas season is a major occasion for ritual foods. On Christmas Eve, meat and milk are not allowed, so the supper that evening is a collection of vegetable and fish-based dishes. Beans or peas are mashed and dressed with onions, garlic, and oil.

A meatless borsch flavored with kvass is served, as well as a sauerkraut soup (kapusniak). Porridges, stewed fruit, and dumplings with poppy seeds are also served. The meals on Christmas Day itself are very rich and include roast meats, rich borsch, fried homemade sausages (kovbasa), and studenets, meat set in jellied aspic and served cold.

Symbolically connecting the meal to the birth of Jesus in a manger, hay is spread under and on the table. As the Christmas season is symbolically connected with the life cycle, certain foods served on Christmas are also served during funerals. Most commonly, these foods include kalach, a round, braided bread symbolizing the cyclical nature of life, and kolyvo or kutia, a dish of boiled grains with poppy seeds and honey. The grains and seeds allude to death, rebirth, and the harvest. Finally, fi sh dishes, especially carp, are a traditional part of Christmas suppers. As caroling, or koliaduvannia, is a common Christmas tradition in Ukraine, the carolers are rewarded with gifts of food: pastries, pancakes ( oladky ), or even whole sausages.

Weddings, with their connections to fertility, are an occasion for special breads and other foods. The korovai, primarily a wedding bread, is made of a rich egg dough with sugar and spices for flavoring and color. It is circular in form and has decorations made out of dough on top of it. The bride and groom go around it and are then given pieces of it to eat. In some regions of Ukraine, other traditional breads are used. In the west, dyven is a rich bread shaped into a circle or a wheel that is carried by the bride. She looks through it to see a bright future. In other regions, small buns called shyshky, or pine cones, are baked, as is lezhen’, a long bread made with eggs and a coin baked in.

Soviet holidays such as the New Year and Victory Day, celebrating victory during World War II, are important for many Ukrainians. Festive foods introduced during Soviet rule include the oliv’ie or stolichniy salad, a mixture of potatoes, peas, carrots, and meat dressed with mayonnaise. At family picnics, at summer houses, or on beaches, many Ukrainians like to grill marinated pork or lamb shish kebabs ( shashlyk ).

Diet and Health

Many younger Ukrainians see the traditional Ukrainian diet of starchy foods along with fatty pork as unhealthy. Today, the population of Ukraine, like that of the rest of Europe, is heavily urbanized. The traditional diet, created to restore the strength of people engaged in heavy farm labor, is no longer relevant to modern work and life.

Indeed, in the 20th century, a diet rich in fat and carbohydrates,along with industrial pollution, heavy smoking, and drinking, has contributed to a rise in cardiovascular disease among Ukrainians. Ukrainians also argue that the traditional diet was varied and natural and should be retained instead of consuming industrially processed and imported foods. Pollution from the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl is also a major concern.

Ukrainians retain many traditional folk remedies for various disorders, as modern medicine is poorly funded and often seen as corrupt. Herbal teas are used to soothe a system out of order. Chamomile tea is used in case of a stomachache. Black tea with honey and lemon is used to soothe sore throats. Alcohol, honey, garlic, and even hot milk are seen as medicinal for many respiratory disorders. Strong-smelling herbs and garlic have been seen as not only medicinal but also useful for scaring away evil spirits. These beliefs have been retained in the Ukrainian countryside and were resurrected after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Written by Anton Masterovoy in "Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia", Ken Albala editor, ABC-CLIO, USA, 2011, volume 4 excerpts pp. 377-384. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.