MEALTIME CUSTOMS

In general, Ukrainians eat a light breakfast. It can be bread with butter served with coffee or tea, or pastries, such as a cream-filled blintz. Kasha (cereal), steamed buckwheat, barley, or millet with milk may also be served. Their main meal is eaten around mid-afternoon and usually consists of soup, such as borshch and a dish with meat or poultry. The third meal of the day takes place around 6 or 7 p.m. It is usually a time when all family members get together. Eating at a restaurant is considered a luxury, and is usually not done very often.

Ukrainians eat with a fork in their left hand and a knife in their right hand. It is considered impolite to hold your hands under the table during dinner, or to put your elbows on the table. In order not to seem wasteful, Ukrainians may eat everything on their plates. When they are visiting, Ukrainians may ask for second helpings to show appreciation for the food. Hosts often give guests a loaf of bread with salt on top, a tradition that dates back many centuries. Bread and salt were once considered necessary ingredients for health. The bread represents hospitality and the salt represents friendship.

Ukrainian meals.

People in Ukraine like to eat good and tasty food cooked of fresh product. Fast food is not very popular in Ukraine as Ukrainian women prefer to cook at home. And many of them are real masters at cooking.

Since old time Ukrainian national cooking has been famous for great variety of tasty and useful dishes. Ukrainian women always collected recipes of cooking different dishes. This tradition is kept nowadays as well.

The most popular dish in Ukraine which every Ukrainian lady can cook is borshch. It has up to 20 components. There is a proverb that says: “Each hostess has her borshch” as there is a lot of variants to cook it.

borshch is a national Ukrainian dish

Soups are very popular in Ukraine. And you can find a lot of them in Ukrainian cuisine. The most popular of them are yushka, sherba (fish soup), chicken broth, noodle soup, pea soup, mushroom soup and milk soup. All of them are very tasty.

Ukrainians cook meat in different ways. You will be able to try here cutlets, boiled meat, meat dumplings, fried and roasted meat. People usually have meat as the second course or as main course. As garnish or as a side dish they usually have fried, boiled or mashed potatoes, vegetables cooked in different ways or salads.

Try varenkis!

There are a lot of dishes cooked from flour. In Ukraine you can try varenyks, pancakes, halushkas and different kinds of pies.

pancakes are very popular in Ukraine

Among traditional drinks you will find kvas, uzvar, stewed fruit, juice, sour milk. Sure, tea, coffee and cocoa are also very popular here nowadays.

Traditionally Ukrainian alcoholic drinks are not very strong. They are good wines, honey drinks and beer. Stronger drinks, like horilka, traditionally had herbs and were used in small doses to warm the body but not to make the person drunk.

For visitors from some countries, it is a novelty just to be able to enjoy a soft alcoholic beverage in public places such as sidewalks or parks. For Ukrainians, this is simply a normal and common summer ritual when the weather warms up. You will notice that pivo is not really popular with women, but some men will enjoy various brands marked mitsne meaning “strong” with alcohol contents of around 7%. While Ukraine does not have the history of beer making that Germany or Belgium boast of, it is still a popular drink and developing craft. There are several major beer brewing companies in Ukraine: Obolon, Slavutich, Chernigivsky, and L’vivskiy. If you are at all familiar with the different major cities or regions of Kyiv, you can easily tell just by the names where these brands are produced. Ukrainians consume about half as much beer as Western Europeans, but from an economic perspective the market has been growing steadily over the last few years and is currently the second larges among CIS countries. The major producers have been introducing various products in the last few years, labeling them “premium,” “light,” “ice,” or a number of other variations of usual lager beers. More recently, unfiltered, dark, and “red” beers have made their appearance, and a few pubs around town brew their own ales in-house. Bitters and stouts have not come on the scene yet, but it may only be a matter of time.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1195