What do people eat in Ukraine?
Ukrainians eat a warm lunch that starts with soup, most often borscht, followed by a second course such as varenyky or holubtsi. Bread is on the table at every meal, and salo, cured pork fat, is the classic snack.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is often syrnyky, small fried pancakes of soft curd cheese served with sour cream, jam or honey. Three are about 330 kcal. Other mornings it is sandwiches, eggs or a bowl of kasha, buckwheat porridge, with tea or coffee.
Lunch
Lunch is the biggest meal and comes in courses. First is soup, usually borscht, a beetroot broth with cabbage, potato and often meat, about 250 kcal a bowl with a spoon of smetana, sour cream. It comes with pampushky, soft yeast rolls brushed with oil and crushed garlic. The second course is meat or fish with potatoes or kasha.
Dinner
Dinner at home is often varenyky, boiled dumplings filled with potato, cabbage, cherries or soft cheese, served with sour cream, fried onions or melted butter. A plate of potato varenyky is about 500 kcal. Holubtsi, cabbage leaves rolled around rice or buckwheat with meat, and deruny, fried potato pancakes, are the other home classics.
Starters
A meal often opens with salo, salted pork fatback sliced thin and eaten on rye bread with garlic or onion. A few slices, 30 g, are about 240 kcal. Pickled cucumbers and tomatoes and salads of beetroot or cabbage sit on the table beside it. Borscht itself counts as the first course.
Desserts
Sweets lean on curd cheese, honey and fruit. Syrnyky and varenyky with cherries double as dessert. Medovyk, a layered honey cake, is a family favourite, and Kyiv cake, two layers of hazelnut meringue with buttercream, is named after the capital. At Christmas there is kutia, wheat with poppy seeds, nuts and honey.
Drinks
Tea and coffee are the everyday drinks. Kvas, a lightly fizzy drink made from fermented bread, is the old summer one. Uzvar, a compote of dried apples, pears and plums, is drunk on Christmas Eve and through the winter, about 90 kcal a glass. Horilka, Ukrainian vodka, goes with salo and pickles at a celebration.
Street food
Bakeries sell pyrizhky, small baked or fried buns filled with cabbage, potato or cherries, and deruny come hot with sour cream. Chicken Kyiv, a breaded chicken fillet with herb butter inside, about 500 kcal, is a Soviet era classic that restaurants still serve. In the Carpathians, banosh, cornmeal cooked in sour cream and topped with brynza cheese and cracklings, is the mountain dish.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Borscht can be eaten at any meal, breakfast included, and every family insists its own version is the right one. Salo, pure white pork fat, is eaten raw on bread as a snack. Cherries go into dumplings, and in 2022 UNESCO listed Ukrainian borscht cooking as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.