Ukrainian cuisine is widely popular among Slavic cooking. It has been known far beyond Ukraine for a long time, and some dishes of Ukrainian origin, such as borsch (beet soup) and varenyki, have become part of international cuisine.
Most of the dishes contain many components and require complex cooking techniques. Vegetables, dough, meat, and dairy are all widely used in cooking Ukrainian dishes. One of its distinctive features is frying animal fat (lard), whereas meat dishes are often accompanied by rather unexpected combinations, which gives them a special ‘Ukrainian’ taste. National Tatar cuisine is widely available in Crimea.
The country’s best known dish is Ukrainian borsch – beet soup (more than 100 types) with pampushki (dumplings). Depending on the recipe, borsch may contain between 15 to 30 ingredients. In addition to that, every cook mixes them in unique proportions and add various spices to it.
Lard is eaten raw, salted, stewed, smoked, or fried. Not only is it used for frying, it is used for stuffing any non-pork meat that does not have lard. It is even used in sweet dishes, in combination with sugar or syrup.
Ukrainian cuisine often uses pork, veal, and poultry either fried or stewed. These dishes are especially popular in the form of various cutlets (chicken Kiev, Poltava cutlet, Cossack cutlet, Bukovyna cutlet, and others), or roast meat (home-made, Crimean roast meat, steppe-roasted meat), mince meat balls (Ukrainian style, made of rabbit, and others), cold boiled pork stuffed with garlic and lard, pork stewed with cabbage and lard, mutton stewed with prunes, goose with apples, twisted chicken slices with mushroom filling, chicken stewed with dumplings (galushki), shashlyk, pork with bacon and 'shpundra' beet, minced meat, stuffed cabbage, and stuffed poultry.
Dishes made of meat in pots, various goulashes and sausages, scrambled eggs with lard and sausage, as well as fried mashed potato balls with various fillings and meat stewed with various vegetables, are especially tasty.
Fish has long been an important component of nutrition for Ukrainians. Favorite dishes are crucian carp baked in sour cream, pike stewed with horseradish, carp stewed with onions and sour cream, pike-perch baked with mushrooms and crawfish, twisted fish fillets, carp stuffed with mushrooms and boiled buckwheat, and others.
The country's other popular dish is varenyki made with cheese, potato, or stewed cabbage filling. In summer, varenyki are traditionally made with berries and served with sour cream and other dairy products. Various boiled cereals (kasha) are also very popular: millet gruel, boiled buckwheat, kasha made of pumpkin and rice, buckwheat or corn flour, etc. Notably, boiled cereal is not only used as a garnish but also as a separate dish, which is served with milk, sour cream, sunflower seed oil, or fried with onions and lard. Dough dishes are innumerable - from varenyki and pancakes made of different types of flour to baked patties and pies with various fillings.
Popular drinks are dairy products, especially baked milk and ryazhenka (fermented baked milk). Another popular drink is stewed fruit (compote). Strong drinks such as gorilka (vodka), cognac, wine, and strong liqueur are pre-requisites for any holiday feast. Among the great variety of legendary Ukrainian gorilkas (vodkas), honey vodka with red pepper especially stands out as embodying the versatility and spontaneity of life itself - the pepper's spice, the honey's sweetness, and wild herbs' strong aroma.
Christmas kutya (boiled kasha with raisins and honey) is by far the most unique dish among Ukrainian cuisine. It is eaten three times per year: on Christmas Eve, on Christmas, and on the Epiphany. Grains are the basis for kutya.
Various fruits and vegetables are widely used in Ukraine: there is almost not a single dish, in which they are excluded. The most popular dishes are stuffed vegetable leaves (including maple leaves), kidney beans stewed with beets or other vegetables, potatoes with cream, home-made cucumber soup, cabbage soup with mushrooms, rabbit stewed with vegetables, cold beetroot soup, and beet porridge.
Traditional Ukrainian cuisine widely uses various beans, especially kidney beans (but not in pods). Beans are added to other vegetables.
The most popular kitchen herbs and spices include onion, garlic, dill, caraway seeds, anise, mint, lovage, angelica, savory, and red pepper. Key imported spices and herbs are bay leaves, black pepper, and cinnamon (for sweet dishes). Vinegar plays an important role as a flavoring for meat, cold, and vegetable dishes, although cooks often use it excessively.
Popular fruits and berries eaten by Ukrainians fresh, dried, smoked, or soaked are cherries, plums, pears, currants, watermelon, and, to a lesser extent, apples and raspberries.
Sweet and baked dishes in Ukraine are also unique and original - various sweet pies, patties, flat dry shortbreads, apple tarts, dumplings, and biscuits.
Good non-alcoholic drinks made in the country are kvass (a drink made of the byproducts of bread fermentation), brew, famous stewed dried vegetables (uzvar, a kind of compote), and honey. A countless number of top-class wine varieties are made in Crimea and the Carpathian Mountains.
Just as any cuisine with a rich historical past, Ukrainian cuisine is subdivided into several regional sectors. For example, West-Ukrainian cuisine is substantially different from the East-Ukrainian cuisine. The influence of Turkish cuisine on Bukovyna, Hungarian cuisine on Gutsul cuisine (the Carpathian region), and Russian cuisine on Slobodskaya Ukraine is beyond a doubt: Central Ukrainian cuisine is most varied, especially that in regions close to the central Right-Bank. Borsch, which is very popular in Ukraine, has numerous varieties within the country. Almost every region makes it in its own way, based on special recipes.