Ukrainian cuisine

Bread has always been the staple: rye in most regions, wheat in the south. Porridge of millet, buckwheat, barley or oats served as a «second bread». The most typical cooking methods are boiling and stewing, with frying less common; combining different kinds of food in one dish, such as vegetables with grains or meat with dairy, is characteristic. Among the best-known dishes are borsch, varenyky, halushky, holubtsi, deruny and yushka soups; among the drinks, kvas, uzvar, mead and beer. Pork is the main meat, and salo (cured pork fat) has become one of the cuisine's emblems.

The cuisine changed as new crops arrived: maize has been grown in Ukraine since the eighteenth century; the potato spread in the early nineteenth century and by mid-century was already called a «second bread»; sunflower oil began to displace flax and hemp oil in the late nineteenth century; tomatoes came later. The church calendar, with its many fast days, mattered greatly: borsch was cooked on meat stock for feast days and on mushroom or fish stock during fasts. Ritual foods include kutia, the korovai wedding bread and paska.

Regional differences are marked. In the Carpathians sheep's-milk cheeses (bryndzia, budz) and maize-flour dishes are important; in Polissia, potato dishes, mushrooms and fish; in the south, vegetable dishes of aubergine, pepper and tomato. Borsch has local variants: Galician with small «vushka» dumplings, Poltava with halushky, Polissian with mushrooms.

The «Culture of Ukrainian borsch cooking» was entered on Ukraine's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2020 and in 2022 was inscribed on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. Ukrainian cuisine is not uniform: the name covers regional cuisines with their own produce and dishes, as well as the dishes of communities living in Ukraine.