Traditional Belarusian Cuisine

In its development Belarusian cuisine has been influenced by the Russian, Lithuanian as well as Jewish, Tartars and some other traditions.
Belarusians have preserved many traditional recipes.

General features:

• Geographical location and weather conditions in Belarus resulted in a wide use of such products as forest mushrooms and berries, herbs, apples, pears, river fish and crab, milk products.

• Belarusian cuisine is known for a big choice of potato dishes.

• Various flour pancake dishes are popular in Belarusian cuisine.

• Mushrooms are widely used in cooking but rarely as a separate dish and are mostly used to add taste to the main dish. Usually they are stewed or boiled.

• Fish is also rarely fried and mostly baked, stewed or very often dried.

• Belarusian cuisine is known for rich soups, often dressed with sour cream, as well as cold soups refreshing for the hot summer periods.


• Marinated vegetables are widely used in Belarusian cuisine: marinated tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms etc. It is still traditional for Belarusian families to make marinated mushrooms and vegetables based on home recepies.

• Meat: Belarusians eat lightly salted lard from pork to accompany boiled potatoes traditionally in winter. Pork is widely used in homemade sausages. Low fat pork and beef are mostly baked not fried. In traditional cuisine goose was widely used however nowadays it is mostly replaced by chicken.

• Grated and pureed forms of products (meats, fish, potatoes, vegetables) are used in many dishes separately or in combination with each other. Forest berries, pears, apples are usually not mixed with each other: various jellies, kvass, purees, baked puddings are made from one type of berries or fruits but not a mix.

• Cooking methods characteristic for the old traditional Belarusian cuisine are stewing and boiling. In the old Belarusian cuisine ingredients were subjected to a long heat cooking and would become very soft and often shapeless. This softness can still be observed nowadays in traditional cooking.

• Finally present day cooking in Belarus is characterized by great creativity of combining the old traditional dishes with features of other world cuisines and mixing varieties of ingredients for example in creative rich salads.