Food in Ukraine

Video Transcript

There are certain parts about food that are really culture shocking for Americans and other cultures. So there's two dishes that foreigners absolutely don't accept, and can't eat, and can't even look at it, while we Ukrainians, Russians, and Slavic people like it. Which, the first one we call "the herring on the coat." It's basically a herring covered with beats, boiled beats, and on top goes a layer of mayonnaise, plus other ingredients. It's like a whole layered dish. It looks weird, and it sounds weird, like "vegetables with herring? who eats that?" but we Ukrainians love it. It's a big dish, we make it around New Year's. New Year's is the biggest holiday for us. And a second dish, its original name is called "kholodets," yeah? What it means, is a layer of meat under a layer of Jello, Jello made of broth. So, what they do... we take meat–pork, it's usually pork–which, we eat a lot of pork there. That's another thing that’s surprising for Americans. You're not accustomed to eating so much pork. Just, it's so much fat. In Ukraine, it's like number one! Everything's made of pork. So, basically a whole thing of pork, boiled until it's falling apart–in America you have something like it, called pulled pork–and then all this broth, they strain it, add a ton of garlic, and put it... they take a bowl put a meat, and on top goes broth, put it in the fridge, and it turns into Jello. It's a cold dish, served cold, and we eat it like that. It's meat under Jello. It looks weird, but it's delicious for Ukrainians.

A Ukrainian national discusses different Ukrainian dishes.