Typical Russian Food and Its History

The diversity of this country in truly amazing. It has openings to multiple seas and oceans and the surface of this area is marked by many unique places. You can get every type of landscape and climate here and this is why the national costumes and dishes are very diverse. The best place to see the diversity and multiculturalism of a place is the cuisine. Russia has an amazing cuisine that is truly suitable for any taste. But every single dish here has its own story. We have listed some of the most common dishes in Russia and their stories in order to better understand the culture of this beautiful country.

The Most Traditional

One of the most common dishes in Russia is soup. You will find hundreds of types of soups here and they will definitely be different from region to region. You will find the sour borsch, solyanka, shchi and so on. The history of the soups can be traced back to Medieval times. Russia had its economy based on agriculture for a very long time and they had simple accommodations, so soup was an easy and sustainable food.

Most of the soups here are plain vegetable soups that are still very delicious. The art of making a vegetable soup tasty came from the need to have good and nourishing food during fasting. Russia was always a strong Eastern Orthodox country that held regular fasting before important religious celebration. If we take the religious books back then, we see that people fasted for 216 days a year. So, the simple yet tasty soups that they are so famous for were the ideal food for fasting people.

Fish soups and dishes are also very common in Russia. This is because of the abundance of rivers this country has. It is also thanks to the religion. In some special days of fasting people were allowed to eat fish. This is why many fish recipes developed. The best one is perhaps the fish borsch.

Pickles and Meat

In Russia you will find pickles everywhere. And not only the typical cucumbers. Russians like to pickle everything from mushrooms to baby watermelons. This can be also explained by looking at the history. Some of the cities and villages in Russia had no contact with the exterior during the harsh winter and people needed a constant supply of food. Pickling was a very easy way to preserve food for the winter and have fruits and vegetables to eat during the cold dark winters.

Another traditional Russian food is the smoked meat. Here we are talking about all sorts of meat from pork to fish. This was also because people needed the food to stay good during the harsh winter. And this is how some amazing spoking and spicing techniques developed. If you want to eat good smoked meat, Russia is the place to go.

The most known Russian food is the sarma. This is actually a mix between the love for pork meat and an Ottoman recipe. It consists of pork meat with rice rolled in pickled cabbage leaves. Once you try it, you will never get enough of it.

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