Cuisine of Odesa facts for kids
The food in Odesa, Ukraine, is a tasty mix of many cultures! You'll find influences from Russia, Jewish culture, Georgia, France, Germany, Italy, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Greece. But many recipes are also unique to Odesa, creating a fun blend of flavors.
Contents
Popular Odesa Dishes
Odesa cuisine has many special dishes. Here are some of the most common ones you might find!
Starters
- Vorschmack: A savory spread, often made with herring.
- Aubergine dip (also called "Aubergine caviar"): A creamy dip made from eggplant.
- Tzimmes: A sweet stew, often with carrots and prunes.
- "Bull's heart" tomato appetizer with bryndza: A fresh salad with a special type of tomato and cheese.
- Baked peppers with garlic: Sweet peppers baked and flavored with garlic.
- Loader's sandwich from Privoz: A simple, hearty sandwich.
- Meze Odessa style: Small plates of various appetizers.
Main Dishes (Meat)
- Essig-fleisch: A beef stew cooked with prunes.
- Gefilte helzele: A stuffed chicken neck, a unique dish.
- Stuffed peppers: Peppers filled with meat and rice.
- Cabbage rolls "little fingers" and dolma: Cabbage leaves or vine leaves wrapped around a filling.
Fish and Seafood
- Gefilte fish: A classic dish made from ground fish.
- Fried gobies: Small fish from the Black Sea, fried until crispy.
- Fried flounder: A flat fish, popular when fried.
- Marinated fish: Fish preserved in a tangy marinade.
- Danube herring with baby potatoes: Fresh herring served with small potatoes.
- Roe cutlets: Patties made from fish eggs.
- Odesa mussels: Mussels from the Black Sea.
- Pilaf with mussels: Rice cooked with mussels.
- Black Sea mussels on the beach: Mussels often cooked fresh by the sea.
- Rapanas baked with cheese and garlic: A type of sea snail, baked with cheese and garlic.
- Rachki (small shrimps): Tiny, tasty shrimp.
- Black Sea sprat cutlets: Patties made from small sprat fish.
- Deep-fried Black Sea sprats or tsatsa: Small sprats, fried whole.
Other Dishes
- Fried semolina: A simple, comforting dish.
- Salamur: A special sauce made from brine, garlic, and spices. It's great with fish or vegetables.
- Odesa borscht with gobies: A unique version of the famous beet soup, with fish.
- Placinte: Thin, savory pastries.
- “5 minutes” pickled cucumbers: Quick and easy pickled cucumbers.
Desserts
- Varenyky with cherries: Sweet dumplings filled with cherries.
- White cherry jam: A delicious jam made from white cherries.
- Vertuta: A rolled pastry, often with sweet fillings.
- Blintzes (nalistniki) “little fingers” with quark: Thin pancakes filled with a type of soft cheese.
- Napoleon cake: A classic layered pastry with cream.
- Walnut stuffed prunes: Prunes filled with walnuts.
About Odesa Cuisine
Odesa's food is known for being relaxed and full of flavor. As the famous writer Mikhail Zhvanetsky once said about Odesa food:
"Odessa cuisine loves to sit, you shouldn't take it off the stove and swallow it quickly. Let it sit on the stove or in the refrigerator. Odessa bazaar smells. Odessa dill smells. Odessa garlic sticks fingers together. Odessa horse mackerel detaches from the ridge and melts in the mouth. Aubergine dip sharpens and flavours any pork chop. Odessa red borscht with beans. Green with egg ... From one chicken - neck, stuffed legs, broth, and noodles. Wine in Odessa is called "daddy made" - it is sucked through a tube from a 12-liter glass bottle. In short. Come to Odessa hungry, enjoy it, and eat".
Because Odesa is right on the coast, its food includes lots of seafood. The most famous dish is gefilte fish. It's often served on holidays and made with different kinds of fish like pike or carp. Fried fish is also very popular, especially Black Sea flounder and gobies. Small fish like Black Sea sprats are often made into tasty cutlets. Another favorite is pilaf with mussels. Sometimes, mussels are even fried right on the beach!
A common snack in Odesa is boiled shrimp, which locals call "rachki." For cold appetizers, vorschmack and grilled aubergine dip are big hits. Stuffed chicken neck (gefilte helzele) and stuffed vegetables like bell peppers and zucchini are also very popular.
One interesting thing about Odesa cooking is that they often make food items smaller. For example, pelmeni and varenyky (dumplings) in Odesa are smaller than in other places. Cherry varenyky are especially popular. Even cabbage rolls are made tiny, often called "little fingers." The dessert nalistniki (thin pancakes with quark) are also quite small.
Odesa Specialties
Odesa and its region have some very special local ingredients:
- The forty-day potato variety: This potato grows in a village called Roksolany. It grows quickly and tastes amazing. It's considered the best potato in Odesa for mashed potatoes and roasts.
- White crayfish from the village of Mayaki: The Dniester estuary used to be famous for its crayfish. While not as big an industry now, crayfish from Mayaki are still a popular snack with beer in Odesa.
- The Mikado tomato: This is an early-ripening tomato variety. It grows tall and produces flat, round fruits that weigh about 150-200 grams. It has a great taste and is often used in salads, especially with sheep cheese.
- Gobies: These are small fish from the perch family. In Odesa, they are caught, then fried or stewed in tomato sauce. They can also be salted and dried to eat with beer.
"Whatever one may say, but gobies are another “sacred gastronomic cow” of the city by the very blue sea. Some Odessa residents, who grew up in Moldovan courtyards and remember the smell of fried gobies cooked outside in a primus stove, wry when people who got sunburnt on the first beach day, run to the nearest restaurant to try this local delicacy. They, those people, can tell you about their grandfather, about his tarred boat, about morning fishing and how you can catch gobies lazily from the pier. Then, without any hesitation, eat it for breakfast fresh, salted with seawater and seasoned with summer."
- Black-Sea turbot: This is a large flatfish. Two types are caught: Kalkan and brill. Kalkan can grow very big, up to 115 cm long and 28 kg! Brill are smaller and live closer to the coast.
- Black Sea sprat: This is a small fish from the herring family. In Odesa, it's often called "sardelle." It's a popular commercial fish.
- Aubergine (Eggplant): This vegetable is very popular in Odesa cooking. It's the main ingredient in the famous aubergine dip.
"… From the aubergines we immediately made aubergine dip. Of course, not that bland, sweetish yellowish gruel, which is sold as canned food, but that real, home made, famous Odessa aubergine dip- the food of the gods! - green, with onions, vinegar, garlic, Moldavian pepper, devilishly spicy, from which "bites" are made on the lips ... In order to cook such a dip, the aubergines had to be (of course!) not boiled, and not to stewed, and, of course, not fried, but baked over coals. The aubergine should be charred. Then the skin is pilled from them, and the steaming, half-baked green pulp with white seeds is finely chopped. But God forbid chopping them with a knife. From contact with metal, the aubergine loses its natural green colour, turns black, and then the dip is no longer any good. The aubergines must be chopped only with a wooden knife. Then you get a real Odessa aubergine dip. What could be easier."
"And this combination of Jewish and Greek traditions remained. I cook it very often, especially if I want my table to have some accent. In every home has its own recipe, it is absolutely dietary, easily made, eaten as a pleasant spicy snack with a slice of black bread. It is cooked in large quantities, immediately before the arrival of guests, so that it does not wind up and does not give excess juice. Pairs well with everything except kissing. However, smells are obligatory for the food Odessa principle. Garlic, grease, dirty hands - one cannot leave the table sterile and light. Aubergine dip is good because it does not upset the balance either in the stomach or in the head."
- Bryndza: This is a salty cheese made from cow, goat, or sheep milk. It's used in sandwiches, snacks, salads, and even hot dishes like mamaliga (cornmeal porridge). Aged Bessarabian sheep bryndza is especially prized.
- Frogs from Vilkovo: In the city of Vilkovo, frog legs are deep-fried. This area became known for raising frogs for export to other countries.
- Odesa mussels: Mussels are a popular seafood in Odesa.
- Urda: This is a cheese made in Bessarabia from whey and sheep's milk. It's used to make "quick" bread called gözleme.
- Bessarabian paprika: This spice is made from sweet red pepper, ground with vegetable oil. It's a very common spice in Bessarabian cooking.
- Rachki: These are Black Sea shrimp (Palaemon adspersus). They are very important for fishing in the Black and Azov seas. Rachki are like Odesa's version of potato chips! They are usually boiled, but sometimes fried with garlic.
