Everyday Meals of the Ordinary Soviet Family
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- Опубліковано 16 чер 2024
- Regular Soviet family's list of the most popular meals during the 80s. Cooking in the USSR.
0:00 Intro
0:10 The Ushanka Show features stories about life in the USSR, discussions, and entertainment.
7:02 The video discusses various topics related to food and dining, including lunch, cafeteria, and cooking in the USSR.
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"Ushanka Show" is a collection of stories about life in the USSR.
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Hello, comrades!
My name is Sergei. I was born in the USSR in 1971. Since 1999 I have lived in the USA.
Ushanka Show channel was created to share stories as well as my own memories of everyday life in the USSR.
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there is a cereal here in US called Kashi
what about Dr, sausage, its date's back to ww2 USSR.
how do you spell that pickle soup thingie. asorta
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rassolnik
Yeah cereals back in the day were usually warm oatmeal things. Like grapenuts, cornmeal, Cream of Wheat, and quaker oats.
Most people don't think about it anymore and it is considered something old people eat.
Semolina kasha in the US is called "cream of wheat"
Birchtree22 is correct. Here in the U.S. semolina is sold under the brand name Cream of Wheat. It's also referred to generally as "farina".
@@bundeswehr7676 I thought grits was made from corn germ. Specifically, it is supposed to be made from corn germ taken from hominy corn. Hominy is made from corn which was preserved in Lime. Naturally, you need to wash corn preserved in lime thoroughly & repeatedly. Turning corn into hominy is something which comes from the Indians.
Some of the other offerings were cracked bulgar wheat. So, basically, they have a good hearty hot cereal like a lot of Americans. The little Sputniki's are really delicious. They're actually a dumpling.
@Howie Felterbush Cream of Wheat always has been known and always will be known as Farina if one is looking for No Name cream of wheat. Farina is also sold under the name Farina for babies and babies ate Cream of Wheat my whole life anyway.
I do believe he was looking for the word porridge or hot cereal however Kasha is its own type of grain deal. But I think he uses it to mean any hot cereal.
In Germany they say Eat breakfast like a tzar, lunch like a king and dinner like a beggar. So very similar.
Ya ya ))
There were no tzars in Germany. There was the Kaiser und Kaiserin.
In the UK it depends what day of the week it is. During the working day breakfast is light - maybe cereal or just toast. Lunch would be light as well. The biggest meal would be in the evening when we would have it at home. On a Saturday unless working, breakfast could well be a full English carnivorous fried meat feast. If you decided to skip on that then lunch would still be light, but dinner could be 3 courses in a restaurant, Indian food being very popular. On Sunday the biggest meal would be lunch, the main course being huge, which we would often go to a pub for, and run into three courses.
Simon Jones I’m from England and I don’t eat like that ever I eat whatever is going on special offer
@@nemo7782 Wortstamm beider ist Caesar.
The thing I notice about food in Eastern Europe (and this isn't just the USSR): There's lots of butter and dairy, lots of pickled foods, and lots of root vegetables. Obviously that's not all there is, but it shows how much the climate of Eastern Europe effects the cuisine.
I lived and worked in Moscow in the early 2000s and was fortunate enough to be invited into the homes of Russians to eat. I've had most all of the dishes you feature here and enjoyed them. I was kind of apprehensive of the dish "herring under fur coats" the first time because it was translated to me as "furred herring", so I thought it was herring mixed with fur.
As far as dinner, it may be a light meal for everyday eating but for a special occasion, like when you've invited a foreigner over for dinner, there are two parts: the zakuski and then main meal. There are so many dishes set out as zakuski, the first time I thought it was the main meal, and after I'd stuffed myself I learned that the main meal was arriving on the table. Afterwards I was as full as if I'd visited my grandmother for dinner. But the food and the hospitality were great.
Being an American child during the Cold War, I love hearing how kids from the USSR had it growing up. Asked a friend I work with now who grew up in Bulgaria if he saw Star Wars as a kid. He said he had to get a card punched saying he watched 4 or 5 Soviet propaganda films before seeing a Western film. Said his grandmother took his card, watched the films and got it punched for him so he could see Star Wars sooner. Any similar stories? Thanks.
Fish Squish Guy
In Soviet Russia you don't watch Star Wars - STAR WARS WATCHES YOU😁
But Bulgaria wasn’t part of the Soviet Union so you lied
E
Bulgaria may not be part of the Union but it was part of the Warsaw Pact.
@@ezrathegreatconquerorBulgaria shared a lot of things with the Russians. Similar alphabet, similar Churches. They shared military technology. The Czechs always wanted to be a little different but Bulgaria was a loyal follower to Russia.
Chinese theaters just stole Western films. The quality of the bootleg varied.
I worked with a dear lady who didn’t own a car, didn’t eat out, sometimes had leftovers for lunch, and she saved all of that money. She worked extra jobs, too. Then every July she took a wonderful trip somewhere in the world! When she saw young girls ordering food in and going to Starbucks, she would tell them to save that money for later. They always looked at her like she was crazy! And she even traveled to St. Petersburg one summer!
I never waste good food, I will almost always do something with it, if not then I will give it to the wild birds.
@@321scully My dogs get my left overs.
@@rrich52806 I’m glad it doesn’t get wasted - lucky dog🙂
Why only the young girls and not the old women?
@@rrich52806 My hens get all our kitchen scraps and I get eggs and compost in return . We don't make left overs they are eaten by us. Waste not want not . I didn't grow and cook it for you to feed to your worthless dog. And I'll not an old lady
Semolina is sold also as a brand called "Cream of Wheat". Many people I know we all grew up eating this and loved it. Now it is considered "Baby food" (yes babies love it too!) but it is a hearty breakfast, and even a good snack. Some like it lumpy, others like it smooth.
i thought it had to be wheat, what else is there.
@@zeno15sti33Semolina is wheat.
smooth please
Zoomers got the black chef removed from the Cream of Wheat box. It’s the most racist generation in America in a very long time 😂
I think we're confusing SEMOLINA and FARINA, which are similar. Cream of Wheat is FARINA, made from the wheat we make bread from if I recall. I read up on this once, but am starting to forget! Semolina is yellow looking and I think it's made from the hard wheat we use for pasta. Semolina has more flavor, and the porridge has more character. I still associate Cream of Wheat with small children or being sick, but they are pretty similar, and of course delicious with butter and salt if that's allowed.
Спасибо сергей. I enjoyed the video. I have Russian neighbors and I have learned some Russian words. We watched this video together and it brought tears to their eyes, as they remember the USSR and many of the hardships. I have never met a more warm and caring people in my life. Please continue to enlighten us.
my mother came from a poor background during WWII
She was incredible
She created dishes from few ingredients
BUT there was one meal, eat it now,
or eat it later, your choice !!
I can hear her still now "waste not, want not"
Spaseibo bolshoi
That generation was the best.
I believe "Porridge" would be the best translation for that breakfast dish you described.
It certainly has that texture.
Porridge is usually made out of cornmeal.
@@DWilliam1 rolled oats in Scotland and England salt, sugar, and water/ milk
@@DWilliam1 you have rice porridge as well
@1manuscriptman In the US we call corn porridge, porridge. I’m sure in Europe you call many things porridge. We have oatmeal, Farina, Cream of Wheat but that’s what we call it. I’ve only heard people call corn meal porridge, porridge. It’s like we don’t use the words lorry or Loo and instead call it truck or toilet respectively.
I lived in St. Petersburg from 1992 to 1996, and encountered all of these dishes during my time there. I also learned to make quite a few of them at home, both while living there and after returning to the US. "Tvorog" is actually called "farmer's cheese" in English. Cottage cheese curds are typically larger and the consistency is more runny than farmer's cheese. I love how "tvorog" can be used in sweet and savory forms. I had never heard of "grechka" (buckwheat groats) before living in Russia. I learned to cook it by wrapping the pot in a blanket after bringing it to a boil and leaving it to steam for awhile so the groats were tender. As mentioned below, many forms of "kasha" can be found in other countries, although prepared different ways. "Stolovaya" (cafeteria) cuisine ranged from pretty good to pretty terrible, depending on the day and mood of the women preparing it.😉 The green sorrel summer borshch is the BEST when it's really hot out, as is the cold summer beet borshch. I have made "vinigret" (cold chopped vegetable salad with beets, pickles, potatoes, carrots, peas and a few other ingredients with a light mustard dressing) for parties and everyone LOVES it, particularly due to all of the chopped dill and scallions included in it. Благодарю за отличный видеоклип!
The description of that salad made my mouth water! It sounds delish.
Sergei, my mother's parents were from Kyiv. I remember as a kid my mom would make borscht served cold with a dollop of sour cream. She also made cottage cheese and sour cream over wide egg noodles (boiled) , topped with cinnamon. I remember boiled meat wrapped in dumplings that were boiled. My dad's parents were from Lithuania, so many meals you showed brought back fond memories. Cheers.
Wow I remember that noodle dish with the cottage cheese and cinnamon from my grandmother when I was very young, haven't thought about that in forever
We're Jamaican and my daughter goes to school in Kharkiv Ukraine, kyiv is one of her favorite place to go to "unwind" when school is out.
That sounds good.
drooling here
Yes, my Jewish MIL would make noodle kugel : she'd mix cooked noodles, cottage cheese, a jar of apricot jam, raisins, cinnamon, and maybe sour cream, bake for about an hour. Delicious winter food. Huby still makes it now and then. Lovely.
Hi Sergey . The sorrel soup ( green borsh) you have mentioned can be made with spinach, but it has to be English spinach if sorrel is not available. You will need to add some lemon juice to it for that ' sourness' touch. I often made it for my family, without meat, as a summer soup, because unlike meat based soup it could be served at a room temperature and even straight from the fridge. Very refreshing on a hot day when one prefers something light and cool.
I was skinny in high school. My brother & I got $2-$3 per day for lunch so I would save mine up to buy CDs. I was hungry but had great music collection
I tought your avatar was a pice of hair on my monitor.
Funny. Hahahaha.
@@agbottan another victim!
Shelby 😁 same here
@61gisele year I was born :)
@61gisele, There was not arduino at that times.
I never had to ask my mother if she liked cooking. The food spoke for itself 😂
I showed this video to my dad who grew up in the Soviet Union and he said this is very accurate. Good job! 👍🏼 keep up the good work!
This video made me so damn hungry. My 7 year old daughter and I are going to try to make some of these. The recipes are not hard to find, but I would never know they existed if you didn't make a video. Thank you comrade general secretary Sergei!
General secretary 😂
My grandma made vareniki all the time, mostly with potatoes and fried onion inside or strawberry or blueberry for a treat, that was the boiled stuff but we also had piroshki, which I always thought were the similar to pierogis because they were often fried either after being boiled or just fried, she would usually put mashed liver in them or my favorite was with what she would call "kapusta", but it really wasn't cabbage so much as fried sauerkraut. I loved it so much I miss her cooking and watching your channel brings back all the memories.. she stopped cooking as much about 5 years before dying and died in 2019 at 101 years old having been through a LOT over there especially post 1917 and during WWII. But now she can be at peace with grandpa after such a long time being without him, that's the only thing that calms me is knowing that
It is always nice to see Russian food being shown off, it's much more delicious and healthy than most people seem to expect. But to be fair, you can win friends anywhere if you can make good pancakes :)
They liked their vegetables which are very healthy.
I spent a semester in the Kuban region in the fall of 2001 (being there for the 9/11 attacks was strange). I was a vegetarian at the time. Even then, I ate really well. Post-Soviet Southern-Russian cuisine is a hidden gem.
Have been to Russia several time and mostly hated the food in restaurants… everything is lacking flavor and ingredients (especially meat) arent great.
But I always liked what people made in their homes for me. Especially pancakes ;)
@@bingobongo1615 It is well known that Russians especially (and to a lesser extent people of many of the former Soviet republics) tend to be unused to spicy food unless they've spent some time in the West.
@@bingobongo1615I’m sure it’s because you weren’t used to the cultural food. Same thing if you went to China, I assure you you would not eat their food, which isn’t actually sushi
Always love too see what everyone is eating around the world
One thing I've noticed about the US vs other countries is lunch. Here in the US you eat something fast for breakfast. Lunch is prepacked. Often it's something microwaved. Dinner is the big meal. This is, of course, dictated by employers and the typical work schedule. Now lunch just means the legally mandated half hour break. Some companies are pushing 15 minute lunch breaks. Effectively, they are banning lunch at work.
Yes, it's completely ass-backwards... we should be eating our big meal early in the day, and eating light suppers. Makes no sense to consume most of your calories at the end of the day. I don't know how workplaces can get away with 15 lunch breaks... disgusting. 30 minutes is bad enough. It's unhealthy to eat too quickly, and when you eat quickly, you tend to overeat because it takes several minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that you've had enough. There's some of our obesity issue right there, between those two issues, I think. I've heard an Irish UA-camr comment that the Americans she knows eat super fast, and it's because we unfortunately have to because our damn lunch breaks (starting in school) are so short.
@@kck9742 What's really bad is how blind people in the states are to the whole situation. At most you get a grunt and shrug. Some will say "It is what it is." Which has to be the most defeatist statement I've ever heard.
So much for the "Greatest country in the World". I swear people repeat that as a form of self hypnosis.
In France lunch is 2 hours plus you sit around for rounds of coffee afterwords
@@danmorgan3685 n
@@Hari-sv5og Having a brain break in the middle of the day can only do good things for a person. Meanwhile, in the US I had an employer who said even the 15 minute breaks weren't required they were just something nice they did for the employees.
I'm not happy or surprised by workplace shootings here. What does surprise is the lack of workplace riots.
All the same dishes in Estonia too! This video brought back so many memories, tastes and smells...:)
During intermissions at Bolshoi theatre, they offered 'julienne' - was mushrooms baked in a creamy gravy. Best flavour ever! Also there was a Georgian pepper relish was also delicious. Never get tired of Solyanka, eat it every day.
I was also born in 1971 as a first generation Canadian. My mother was Ukrainian and my father was Croatian. We were really big on soups too for lunch. Cabbage, potatoes, meat. Fresh bread was also a staple in our home. Smoked meats for cold cut sandwiches... liverwurst... rye bread.... good cheese..... yum yum oh those thin pancakes at the end of your video ... we call them palačinke.... yummy!! Served with a sweet cream cheese filling rolled up and served with some kind of berry sauce.
Dear Comrade Sergei - I happened upon your channel by accident. I'm very thankful I did! I served in the US military where of course USSR was the "bad guy" - so I learned only the "bad stuff" - but I always admired the Soviet people and I wanted to learn more about everyday life in the Soviet Union ... Your channel does this very well. Thank you! :)
Love the Russian language tutorial mixed with food. This is awesome. Please keep this going.
Spasibo!
Did not expect this to make me hungry, but soviet breakfast looks pretty damn good.
It really is!
Breakfast was also the only really gold food I had on my business trips to Russia… restaurants really suffer from not having higher quality ingredients (and specially meat) but breakfast is always great
My Father grew up in a German tradition home and my Grandmother was absolutely convinced that Buckwheat gave a person hives. My Dad had Buckwheat Pancakes anytime he could and I think he did so as a means of rebellion. As I said, I regularly eat Buckwheat groats that I get from Amazon. Thank you
I loved buckwheat pancakes as a kid. My great grandma would make then in animal shapes for me!
You get a Porche, I'll keep my borsh.
[ Soviet Union Slogan ]
BORSCHT COMRADE
"Hammer with pointy ends": meat tenderiser.
Yup, sure will make you “ gentle” lol.
I kid because I enjoy.
Made me hungry. Wish this stuff was more easily available. We need Russian/ Ukranian takeouts.
@@vandoo66 And Georgian too! Georgian food looks so delicious.
Comrade Trotsky saw the sharp end of a hammer with a pointy end
Wait -- soup for lunch is super-common in the US. There are restaurants that specialize in soup and sandwich or salad.
Super common? I am the only guy who brings soup to work
Those are the places you go when you have a cold and need to eat extra healthy I think. Most places in America to me seem to be sandwich (burger) based or chicken unless you go upscale. Like for a business lunch.
@@UshankaShow When I was growing up in the 1970's, men would usually carry a thermos in their lunchboxes for soup, and even children's lunch boxes had small thermoses for the same reason. My first lunchbox was just like this one: i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/b7/ea/b7b7eaad6359bf1d7825e134c040a09e.jpg. (I wish I still had it!)
@@UshankaShow Hmm it's kind of a children's choice. It's usually not considered a meal to itself. I love soup for lunch, usually Ramen noodle soup, chili, stew.
Soup is pretty common for lunch, 2 or 3x a week. . I make soup for dinner in the winter at least once a week
I'm an American living in Poland. Traditional Polish food is very similar to Russian cuisine. My wife and my mother in law cook many of the dishes shown in this video. Since living in Poland I have learned to appreciate Slavik cooking. There are very few pre-prepared foods available here at the supermarkets. Everything is made from scratch the way it should be. People here are rarely overweight. Only the old woman. Unfortunately with the opening up of eastern European countries to western fast-food franchises that is starting to change. McDonald's, KFC, and the like are taking over. The former state-subsidized local eateries for students and workers that served good basic healthy inexpensive local dishes are now very rare. More the pity. It's next to impossible to find a local grilled sausage to eat on the street but a Big Mac with fries and a shake is no problem. Fat, salt, and sugar. Just what people need to keep healthy in this new era of post-communist Europe. As for trying to find a good hot bowl of healthy soup, forget it. Have a super-sized coke instead. Progress, some would say. Not I.
You are thinking like an entrepreneur. Now you just need the start-up money to open up your own healthy cuisine bistro. Put a few keto friendly foods on the menu and you're all set.
So agree with you. Everything turn upside down. Nothing could be better then a home cooked meal.
Sad that our (America) only major contributions to the world is fast food 😔. A home cooked meal is timeless.
stop being a crybaby ...free will😭
@@brucespruce5597 Stop being a jerk. Free will!!!!
Reminds me of traditional New England food I had growing up. Lots of cold weather vegetables, soups, stews and boiled dinners. Minus the seafood of course, but didn’t get that too often as a kid.
14:15 the word I think your looking for is “tender” that hammer with the pointy ends we called a meat tenderizer. When you only have cheap tough cuts of meat, it helps break down the connective tissue making it easier to chew.
Great video! Thanks for sharing this!
@USHANKA SHOW Thanks for much for such a great video! Taking the time to explain the meals, each dish, and how it was usually paired was very interesting. I really enjoy your stories a lot, thank you.
My pleasure 😊
Milk noodles! we had that sometimes in germany , and I loved it as a kid. We had something like tagliatelle ("ribbon noodles in german"), only made with eggs in them (basically the standard german noodle), boiled in milk with a pinch of salt, with a small amount of butter added, and maybe a little cinnamon and sugar over it. Also soup for lunch is very popular in germany. And for breakfast, boiled oatmeal is also quite popular. So, something like kasha. usually with milk over it, and maybe a little jam, or fruits.
But I definitely have to try that fried cottage cheese with flour. It looked absolutely delicious. And actually, I think beef from old milk cows is best. Also for roasting or barbecue, btw. best barbecue I ever had was from beef I bought quite cheap, as it was deemed "soup meat". A brasilian told me that the pieces we usually boil are actually the best for barbecue, and he was right....
Sergei I am Pole and was born in 1991 (in Poznań city) and a lot of those meals are my childhood foods ^^ :D in Polish army zupa grochowa is still main meal for obiad :D
I recently had buckwheat kasha for the first time when a friend from Dagestan made some :) it was tasty! I grew up with “semolina kasha”/farina.
I’m looking forward to trying to cook some of these meals! Thanks a bunch for sharing.
In the Southeastern US, it was common to have "soup and a sandwich" for lunch at a diner. Winter construction workers would have hot soup in a thermos or heat soups on-site. That has been mostly replaced by microwave and fast food. I remember making tomato or meat/cheese/veggie sandwiches and Wednesdays I'd bring a portable grill for grilled cheese sandwiches and let other people use it. The guys loved Grill-day. I love soup an still eat it for lunch several days a week.
11:07 looks like my mom's split pea soup. She would cook it with a ham hock and serve with corn bread.
Yum
That's still happening at my house! My mother grew up in MS and that soup is in my DNA.
For our english speaking friends:
Kasza - Grits, groats and a bit more general term
Pierogi have to be stuffed. The thing in the picture is more like kopytka, at least here.
Obed (Obiad in my country) - sort of a late lunch at 1-2 pm, also the biggest meal of the day (like dinner). At least in Poland. Our friend here seemed to have a bigger meal at the end of the day.
Obiad traditionaly was made of soup and a second course in Poland, not so much now most places. Cooking for 2-3 days was common and I even do it today. There's a lot of slavic dishes that are much tastier the next day. It seems that Ukrainians and Russians actually had the biggest meal at dinner, not so much for Polish people.
Everyone likes some barszcz (bortsch) and it indeed has to be eaten with potatoes or on special occasion with a kind of pierogi called uszka in Polish, no idea about Russian or Ukrainian, we got some differences here, I guess you could call it pelimeni in Russian.
Soral, or szczaw in Polish, was used to make soup, in Poland we didn't call it a barszcz.
Rasolnik looks like rosół but the pickles used suggest that's it's pickle soup (ogórkowa), the only difference is that we put sour cream in it usually so it's more white. The recipe is simple, do a basic slavic vegetable soup just fry pickles that are cut up into small pieces and throw them in. It's delicious.
Pea soup is actually split pea soup (the yellow stuff) It's amazing and a staple. Grochówka in Poland. Nowadays I pack it full of kielbasa and pork.
In Poland we used a lot of chicken and beef bones to make broth. Amazing stuff and yeah, takes a whole day to make it properly
The Polish eat jajecznica (scrambled eggs) for breakfast. Looks like this is different as it's more like jajko sadzone, a fried unscrambled egg
Nothing complicated abous "russian" salad. Boil vegetables and eggs, cut them up into tiny cubes (there's actually a tool for that), add mayo.
Leniwe pierogi, very popular in Eastern Poland. Dough and stuffing combined, that's where the name came from. The recipe is to kneed a dough using flour, an egg and cottage cheese. Then cut it the same way you do with kopytka. Boil, pour melted butter on top, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Voila, leniwe pierogi.
@@asmaani74 ooooh right. I forgot about pierogi leniwe. Been a while since I heard about those, you're right
Thank you. Food history explains a lot.
Thank you for sharing your memories and life stories with us. Great video.
Glad you enjoyed it
My mom grew up in the Soviet Union and she always cooked like this. Dad was Canadian and had a huge appetite and ate anything she cooked.
Hi Sergey, this channel is really unique. It's amazing how nice you could explain in english what we ate in USSR with great photos. I grew up in Orenburg region and we had absolutely the same food:) Thank you.
I came here not only for learning experience, but to also see how many foods I recognized from LIFE OF BORIS' channel. Guy does some pretty good how-to videos on cooking Eastern European dishes.
Blin, it is good! Boris inspired me to make kompot a bunch of times a few summers ago and it was really delicious when served cold. And I'm happy to say that I discovered an Eastern European market here in Michigan that sells Tarhun and Kvass.
The breakfast dish you couldn’t translate, the semolina kasha, would be called “Cream of Wheat” in English. Semolina is a kind of wheat. And if any of those kashas were made from corn, in American English, they’d be called grits. Grits are very popular in the South. Even northerners like them, although they aren’t as popular as oatmeal.
I'm not an American but for some reason I grew up with a lot of soups with my grandma. Never have borscht yet drill. Still want to try cooking it though because of LifeOfBoris showing me how!
Great to see another soup fan for comfort food;
Sergei, I think that what you had was farmers cheese, not what is sold as “cottage cheese” in our supermarkets. They are almost the same thing. They are made the same way. The milk is curdled so it separates into the curds ( casein ) , and the liquid part is the whey. The whey is sour. In the states they add some of the whey back into the curds. That us what is sold here as cottage cheese.
I was about to comment the same thing. Farmers cheese is used to make sirniki, not cottage cheese. I only use farmers cheese to make them.
"you eat what your mom cooks for you" that's right! and I can't wait to try the cottage cheese cakes for breakfast.
Thank you very much for the show, me and my wife immigrated to Israel as little kids in the early 90's (I'm from Argentina, she's from pre-independence Moldova), so I watch your episodes as a way to better understand her background and her family's,I'll send her the link to this ep.
I have to admit that before I dated her I had no idea what buckwheat was, let alone ate it, now I do enjoy it occasionally :P
I'm from Lithuania , I was born in 1993 and lived post Soviet Union .
Everything food related here you describe is essentially was my childhood meals , both in home and school .
If you like sweet cottage cheese you should try cottage cheese with peaches. You can get it in some breakfast restaurants but I think it’s generally more popular in the southern states
ua-cam.com/video/8CYY8EM5xYE/v-deo.html
Or with pears. (I grew up in the Florida Panhandle.)
Or with pineapple.
Canned peach halves?
Peaches and cottage cheese is sooo delicious! It's a super combination
Hi Sergei, very interesting. It's important that the everyday history of the USSR is kept alive. Please continued with the videos. I was born in the West (UK) in the 1950s. It's very hard to explain to young people today what the Cold War meant to ordinary citizens on both sides. To us, the USSR as a secret, almost magic, land totally closed to Westerners where interesting, remarkable things happened - all buried for us under our own obvious anti-Soviet prejudice and propaganda. I was privileged to visit the Black Sea area in the early 70's - Yalta where the East and the West put aside their differences to fight Nazism and Odessa with the amazing Battleship Potemkin steps. It was like travelling to another planet - but underneath politics, people are still people, good and bad. It wasn't so different really. I also visited Leningrad - as it was called for most of my life - in the mid 1990s. The Soviet Union was still very obvious.
What is this Leningrad that you speak of? I know where St Petersburg is.
I find your presentations VERY interesting. Just recently found your site. Thank you
my parents cooked like that more than 20 years after we left the soviet union
Aussiedler?
I'm from Canada and my mom's parents are from the Ukraine and I'm very familiar with quite a few of these dishes. Seeing this vid just reminds me of Christmas at my grandparents. Some of the names are different but I could recognize allot of these by sight. lol. And everything had garlic and sides of sour cream.
I was in Kiev last January.
I was determined to try BORSCHT.
I knew that it was made from beets, and thought that it might be bland or tasteless.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
It was DELICIOUS!
I never imagined all of the veggies and meat in Borscht.
I was told by my two Ukrainian companions that I must have Vodka with it (tradition) as well as a small bread roll.
They suggested horseradish in the Vodka, and I complied.
Different, but tasty.
One of my friends (both female) actually had Chicken Kiev.
In Kiev. 😊
Our restaurant was a really unusual place in the underground mall in Independence Square.
Dont remember the name, but very cool!
I cannot recommend Kiev enough!
It's красивий!
I dated a Ukrainian girl a few years ago in my hometown of St. Louis.
She was a sweetheart!
Ukrainian girls are funny in a lot of goofy ways.
Sergei, since you brought up the subject of potatoes, Kate (Yekaterina) claimed that U.S. potatoes taste like fish.
Is that your opinion too?
I strongly disagreed with her.
I asked where she got them and how she prepared them.
It was then I learned the importance of potatoes to Ukrainians.
"What did you and Slava (her roommate) have for dinner last night?"
Kate: "Meat and potatoes."
"And the night before that?"
"Meat and potatoes."
And so on....
She asked me once, "Why do all restaurants in America put cucumbers on sandwiches?"
Me: "Huh?...."
Lol
Me: "Kate, where did the bruises on your thigh come from?" 😜...
Kate: "From work. I am clumsy."
(She worked at a hotel as a service worker cleaning rooms. Apparently she wasn't very good at it).
Miss her.
(Sits back and waits for the douche-bags to "correct me on "Kiev". Popcorn at the ready).....
That underground Mall is called GLOBUS. I've been there too, a truly fascinating place indeed.
I miss Ukraine so much and as soon as this pandemic is over I'm going back ASAP. 😍👍
Kyiv, use the correct name comrade
@@viktorias63 Do we use Muenchen, Torino, or Moskva in English?
funny how so many people in the old world - eurasia mainly - depend for much of their sustenance on a single New World food: the potato.
Your videos brought back some good memories. Thank you for sharing.
Glad you liked them!
My dad LOVES buckwheat kasha with milk. He goes to the Russian store and buys a big thing of precooked buckwheat and just adds warm milk and voila, he has a good meal.
Mannia kasha in our family is made out of cream of wheat by the way.
Ok I keep editing this and adding more because these are all my childhood. Syrniki are my favorite! My aunt used to make it the absolute best and I miss her so much.
Thank you for your comment! Glad this video brought some good memories. Recently we made some syrniki:
ua-cam.com/video/e_fZeEvfU6A/v-deo.html
As A Kid In Malaysia I Always Thought That The Russians Ate Roast Volga Bears
I always thought that the Russians Ate Roast Volga Bears For Dinner, Nothing About Roast Volga Bears On The Ushanka Show
For older Lithuanians, the foods here and timing of meals were very similar except they had a thing known as supper (as distinct from dinner). I do not know what post-Soviet Lithuanians really eat now with the advent of pre-packaged foods. One difference is in beet soup. From what I saw, Lithuanians did not eat Ukrainian style borscht but made instead a very simple all heavy beet soup. Also some uniquely Lithuanian foods for special occasions the dish known as cepelinai which was essentially a very big potato dumpling.
Just discovered this channel and this video in particularly! In my view, you ate very much like I did and still do here in Appalachia.
The pictures of Soviet times are very much appreciated. All your stories are. Thanks again friend.
My pleasure
What a great video. Thanks so much for this insight into your culture.
Well, that was very interesting, indeed. I only wish the names of the dishes were in the video (such as the Russian words for "breakfast", "lunch", and "dinner" were in the video), because then I could Google the recipes and cook some of these delicious meals, too. :-)
Ushanka Show .. That saying the General quoted at 2:12 was expressed in a different way in North America. It goes " Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper ( poor person ) "
Continuing to watch your top 15 posts.
On my college tour in 1989 two classmates made a bet that one would need everything that we were fed. After a few meals over there it was a pretty sure bet he was going to win, the food was fantastic. I wasn't sure if we were getting great food just because we were Western tourists But it looks like we had a lot of the things that you showed here. I'm really happy you were able to eat so well.
If I'm right I see you live in Michigan now, maybe the Southwest area near Berrien County closer to Chicago? Can you recommend any good Russian restaurants in the Chicago area? My favorite restaurant in the entire city is Polish, Czerwone Jabluszko or Red Apple buffet on Milwaukee north of Irving Park road, fantastic food some of which looks similar to what you showed here especially the pierogies.
The word you were looking for when you were talking about pounding the cutlets with a pointy mallet is "tenderize".
Gentle, tender close enough.
I call it beating the heck out out it or pounding the meat.
Just what a UK citizen needs right now, soothing video from someone who understands great change...
I discovered your Channel about 2 or 3 years ago and I've learned more about the Soviet Union from your channel then I have anywhere else on UA-cam
Excellent Video! Thanks a lot!
So Breakfast in USSR was your equivalent to Oats Meal
it was sour cream with side dishes
Lunch at the end looked wonderful! I don't know why buckwheat isn't more popular here either, I love it.
I think it intimidates people who are novice cooks. A lot of people don't know how to cook it. I love making a breakfast pudding for my celiac daughter
What do you stir into it to make it tastier? I bought some last week but haven't tried it yet.
@@Torgo1969 - maple syrup and a little butter. Dried fruit. Berries. Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper. When she was younger my daughter added a scoop of peanutbutter and a tablespoon of chocolate chips
Torgo1969 The pro tip is to dry roast it in the pan until it smells a little toasted and nutty. Then add water. To me it’s very tasty with minimal stuff on it, butter, s+p works for me.
All of what you were eating looks SO good to me. Thanks
this is so great!! brought back a lot of memories. watching this video i honestly couldn't remember if i ate lunch at school or not. i remember lots of kashas in kindergarten though. haha i hated gerkules/hercules (oatmeal), but toasted manka (farina/cream of wheat) and buckwheat were my favorite. im surprised you didn't mention what you drank. kisel, kvas, kefir, and all the juices we had are so different from what people drink here. im also surprised you didn't mention shchi, tefteli, bigus, plov, zharkoye, golubtzy, vinegret, bliny/blintzes, or stuffed peppers...but i guess if your mom didn't really enjoy cooking that makes sense too. you should do a video on holiday food. all my american friends are always blown away by the spread at the new years table that russians put out. i dont really know any other nationality who does meal courses at home, even for the holidays.
Kasa is also the same word for "porridge" in Hungarian :)
Now I feel like cooking a big pot of soup tonight for my Ukrainian fiancé🙂
I'm pretty sure they are not much different from soups we make in Poland. Most of our soups are substantial and wholesome.
P.s. pozdrawiam Pani Agnieszko i jak to mówią- przez żołądek do serca
@1manuscriptman the soups I'm accustomed to from my family, who were originally from Mexico, were also very substantial and I grew up eating them with corn tortillas with avocado spread on the inside. Mmmm, so good! Big chunks of meat, cabbage, potatoes, onion, squash, and corn... if it weren't so hot outside right now where I live I would love some Mexican soup.
I think the "catch all" English word you may be looking for is *Porridge*
It seems to have the same flexibility for time of the day meal choice ["camping situational" ease of preparation] but primarily describes breakfast and usually the former definition of "cereal" in the morning before USA's industrial mass market idea and definition currently.
🙋♂️ Irishmen married into a Texan Hispanic family for context.
Love the show and people from all over the world. 😊👍 Diversity is fun and good I think.
Really Appreciate you Bro ,old memories😊
Pancakes made with buckwheat flour are great. I like the sort of sweet, earthy taste.
I live in Colorado and there's a Russian deli a mile away. My favorite food there is red beets with mayo and meatloaf cabbage rolls
I'm in Colorado too, and there's a Russian restaurant a couple of miles away. They serve the delicious meatloaf cabbage rolls there! They call them "Golubtzi" or something like that. They're so good...
@@sobrcelt sounds good!
What are names of these establishments? Also a Coloradan need some new Russian places to eat!
@@FluffyBuzzard2TheMax Masha and the Bear, on Iliff and Peoria in Aurora
@Hamsaphina royal deli in aurora
Very informative thank you! I was eating 1 of the dishes watching the video 😋😋
This video is giving me second hand nostalgia. Never experienced your memories, but I feel like I miss them.
Soviet Union: sour cream shortage
Sergei: *starves*
I LOVE me some sour cream... my dad, who was half Jewish, hated it... weird man, LOL.
@@kck9742 people who wear small hats make sense none
Just put it my iv fam.
This looks like torture for someone who is used to middle eastern cuisine. With lots of rice, herbs and spices.
The most yummy food ever actually, true it looks weird af but man... few days ago in work my russian friend made russian salad and i went to tears from happyness
@1manuscriptman pretty sure not much of this is bland, but also, filling as possible is inherent to Slavic foods which are heavy on dairy, and the cold region where spices can't grow, and warmth is important. I agree slightly with filling but bland statement, but that isn't a Soviet thing, it's a Russia thing.
@1manuscriptman I must reiterate that spices were probably in short supply because they would have to be imported, and the USSR would require friendly socialist trading partners for that. That aside, I should stop arguing. Do you have the source for this? It sounds interesting.
@1manuscriptman no, it sent, I haven't yet gotten to it
Hello Sergei!
I grew up until I was 22yo in the Socialist Republic of Romania under Ceausescu’s rule. I was born in 1966. So quite a while ago😁
My mom had the same style of cooking. Basically, just like you, I grew up on leftovers. I remember returning from school and getting a bit of food into a small pan from a big pan in the fridge and heating it up on the stove . That was same dish for 2-3 days in a row.
I kept thinking that my mom also didn’t like to cook, so that’s why she kept cooking basically same dishes over and over and over.
But then, later in life, after living almost 40 years her in the great USA, I started changing my views. What was I thinking??? My mom cooked over and over same dishes because there was not much of a choice in what to cook. Especially in the wintertime. We couldn’t just walk willy-nilly to the store and get fresh produce so she can cook healthy for us. The basic staples of everyday cookiing were also rationed. Potatoes were our basic food in the winter especially. She used only pieces of meat in her dishes, just for giving the taste basically , because the fresh meat was rare to find. So these day I think mom was a godess!
These days I consider myself very lucky that I didn’t grow up on fast food, like the majority of kids in the US do these days.We also eat freely lots of onions, garlic and my favorite ingredient vinegar. It was socially acceptable to have a garlic breath. In my class in elementary school, there were at least couple of kids with garlic breath everyday. We were pouring that mujdei (google it if interested) over everything. Also my mom was born in Transylvania, so all of our dishes had some sort of way to spice it up. That might explain why at almost 60 I scored 0 on my trivascular exam!
And just like you, Inwas shocked no one around here have much liquid foods at anytime of the day!
I recently list my wife to cancer and I started just cooking for myself last few months. I’m back to my childhood’s style of foods: lots of soups and stews (thank God for the abundance of fresh produce in the American stores🙏) and basically having same dish for 2-3 days in the row. I haven’t touched fast food in many months and I don’t realy miss it. Everything they make, I can make better. Besides, I know exactly how my food is handled, because I supervise the cooking🤪
Anyways, thanks for bringing this to life and make folks aware of how lucky they are to live in this great country! At least, I’m hoping they realize how lucky they’re that they’re lucky.
Awesome my good comrade! I would love track down some of these recipes. Growing up brainwashed in the USA in the 80s I never ventured far enough to imagine. Now I'm fascinated. Your videos are awesome....could you provide more Cyrillic recipe names and translations?
Very interesting. The pounded fried meat reminds me somewhat of Southern chicken friend steak. I for one, like soup for lunch. So your soups and borschts look so delicious. As for beets, I love them. Fresh only. Not very popular in the USA, at one time anyway. Would love to have some of these recipes.
ua-cam.com/video/KclZU0SGGfY/v-deo.html
@@UshankaShow can’t wait to try! Thank you! 😄
Maggie, how did you find my video? Suddenly views skyrocketed several days ago
I think the closest English equivalent is "porridge". There is wheat porridge, oat porridge, buckwheat porridge, corn porridge, etc.
Americans just call it "hot cereal", or something more specific like oatmeal, or brand names like cream of wheat, cream of rice...
@@shaggybreeks Usually. But if you want one English word that covers the range, it would be porridge; and Americans still remember what "porridge" means.
@Lassi Kinnunen "Food" is also the name. Some people like to be more specific.
I don't know why this channel ended up in my feed, but I'm very glad it did
I don't know either 😊
Even after the collapse of the USSR, the lunches in the “stolovka” are some of the best I have ever tried )
The video shows pictures of fried meatballs, but I don´t think we hear what they are called. Fried meatballs are very typical danish food, and we call them "frikadeller". Apparently russians call some thick susages "frikadelki". In Denmark "russian salad" is very common, we buy it in the stores. It is made of red beets and look like the beet salad in the video.
those fried meatballs in thumbnail are called kotlet in russian, in english i think it's cutlets
'Frikadel'ki' - smaller (1-2 inch) round meatballs.
We have Sorel and people in the United States my age and older love it and always used it. I grow it in my garden.
Thank you for sharing! These look delicious.
Thanks for making this -- super interesting.
In the 1980’s I spent 6 weeks aboard the Soviet Hake Trawler “Mys Kurilsky”. The food was ghastly, kasha & what was probably reindeer meat,
cramped living conditions & cockroaches. This was right when they shot down KAL 007. We thought that we wouldn’t be able to land in Vancouver.
That reminds me of seeing “American” dressing in German supermarkets lol.
So, what is "American" dressing?
VictorLepanto No idea, I didn’t buy it. It looked like Thousand Island without the relish.
A ton of German websites say that its recipe is a mix of yogurt, creme fraiche, ketchup, Mayo, oil, and some lemon juice.
@@carlosmarte3154 "creme frache?" Something that a few years ago you couldn't even buy in America.
VictorLepanto Haha, It depends on where you live I guess. I’m in Atlanta so there’s plenty of specialty markets. One sauce that I did try and find to be delicious was Knoblauch (garlic) sauce. It was like garlic butter with the consistency of mayo. Great on anything from baked potatoes to salmon.
“American” dressing is what is called “Ranch” in the US but the German version is more fluid. “Cool Ranch” Doritos here are called “Cool American”. My favorite salad dressing is “American Caesar” from Edeka. I’m not too sure what exactly makes it “American” since being American I have never had Caesar dressing any other way.
My mouth is watering. You are bringing me back to my childhood!!!
My family is Jewish with Eastern European roots. (I say "Eastern European" because map changed every few years -- we *think* most of our roots are in what is today Belarus.) In addition to the famous potato knishes, my grandparents used to really enjoy kasha knishes, which were filled with buckwheat kasha. Less frequently they would also just have a dish of kasha, prepared almost exactly the way you describe. They, and my parents, also enjoyed beet borscht (with sour cream, of course!) but I never really developed a taste for it. I'm also taking another look at the pictures of what you called "cottage cheese" -- but it looks very much more like what my grandmother would call "farmer's cheese" and was sold in the nearby supermarket with that name by at least 3 different brands. She would eat it plain or on bread (which I did *not* like) or mix it with sugar or some spices to stuff blintzes or pockets/dumplings (which I *did* like). I also remember different types of beef sausage that would be cut up & mixed into scrambled eggs, looking very much like some of the dishes you spoke about. It's amazing how different cultures can overlap -- and how often that overlap involves food. :-)
ב''ה, the farmer's cheese is still sorta prevalent around NYC - a decade ago anyway - and basically the neufchatel (pardon my lack of punctuation) sold as "low fat cream cheese," but a bit heavier and with less fillers somehow when you do just get that wrapped chunk. [In other words, neufchatel was Normandy's name for this popular pan-European cheese.]
Good on bread with classic American grape jelly/jam or another preserve. Somehow doesn't feel right on Wonder bread, calls for something a bit darker and sturdier.