Many of these recipes come from index cards, notepads, small-run recipe books and family lore. One thing that’s hard about Ukrainian food is that it’s a fairly labourious – but labour of love – to make.
Enter the Instant Pot. This pressure cooker is going to speed up a lot of the steps while making it easier to work on other things or get on with your life.
I’m a fourth generation Ukrainian Canadian. My family came to Canada in the “first wave” of Ukrainian immigration to Canada from Western Ukraine to Western Canada. Most of the recipes here reflect that. You may say perogies. We say perohe (pair-oh-heh) and not varenyky like most Ukrainians do.
This site started when I connected what the Instant Pot could do. W
hen Baba needed to boil the daylights out of wheat for five hours to make Kutya (or Kutia or or Кутья or coo-chiya), the Instant Pot can help with that. The Instant Pot also makes the cooking process worry-free. You don’t need to constantly stir or check on the food while it’s bubbling away.
The recipes here estimate the total cooking time and not just the cooking time you punch into the Instant Pot. There are a lot of tips and shortcuts as well.
After five years of accumulated web traffic, the more popular recipes here include:
Instant Pot Studenetz: a garlicky headcheese recipe. The Instant Pot cuts out hours and hours of boiling and guarantees a great result. Look for tips in the comments.- Nalysnyky – Ukrainian crepes filled with cheese and dill: not an Instant Pot recipe but my favourite dish.
- Instant Pot Nachinka: a traditional cornmeal casserole dish which is lighter than a polenta with the addition of eggs.
- Instant Pot Sour holubtsi – cabbage rolls: traditional Ukrainian cabbage rolls made without meat and a sour cabbage head.
- Instant Pot traditional kutya: at Christmas time, this becomes the number one recipe on the site. The Instant Pot saves hours of time boiling the wheat.
There are also a lot of recipes involving beets that are not as popular.
InstantUkrainian.com has no advertisements or referral links.
Що? A recipe site without pop-ups and ads? Так.
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Слава Україні! Героям слава!