Recipes – Page 4 – Instant Ukrainian

An Instant Pot Sviata Vecheria – Ukrainian Christmas Eve Menus

Christmas Eve is coming soon, as they say. I say it’s the most important Ukrainian food holiday of the year. Twelve dishes!

For any cook, Sviata vecheria is an overwhelming meal to make. But, a lot of the cooking time can be sped up using the Instant Pot with the recipes here on Instant Ukrainian. Plus, your vegetarian friends and family members rejoice.

There are a lot of options for making a traditional or more modern version of the Sviata vecheria meal.

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Instant Pot Mashed Beans – Kolocheni Fasoli for Sviata Vecheria

Beans are a fairly pedestrian thing. This recipe made for Sviata Vecheria, the Ukrainian twelve-dish meatless Christmas Eve meal. As such, it’s made with vegetable oil and is totally vegan. With a cup of Instant Onions, you’ll save even more time on your way to Christmas Eve.

Mashed beans may not look like much but they’re tasty and garlicky. They’re kind of the Ukrainian version of refried beans.

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Instant Pot Nachynka – Cornmeal Casserole

For one of my favourite foods, I grew up thinking that “nachynka” (also nachinka or начинка) was the word for cornmeal. It actually means stuffing. Also known as Bukovynska nachynka if it has bacon in it. But, this is a basic but delicious cornmeal side dish at heart.

Nachynka starts out as a basic polenta recipe to which you add eggs and onions and bake it in the oven. I made this an embarrassing number of times trying to get this one right for the Instant Pot – and it’s worth it. Instead of stirring the cornmeal on the stove for 45 minutes, the Instant Pot makes that a quick 9 minutes!

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Saturday Night Noodleburg for the Instant Pot

Cookbooks like Culinary Treasures published by the St. Basil’s Ukrainian Women’s League have been my go-to for figuring out the right proportions for the recipes here. Originally published in 1967, it must have been popular because my copy is a reprint in 1972.

It’s the collective knowledge of the women at St. Basil’s in Edmonton, Alberta as well as women from across Canada. Mrs. A. Hlynski of Toronto, your Saturday Night Noodleburg should be a classic – and it’s an easy casserole for an Instant Pot Saturday Night. Inspired by her 1967 recipe, I’ve adapted it for the Instant Pot and sped up the process a little bit, too.

You can’t go wrong with a casserole that’s topped with corn flakes.

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Instant Pot All-purpose Instant Onions

Onions. They go with everything, don’t they?

It’s the first step to so many recipes – heat oil or butter and saute onions, blah, blah, blah. So simple. But, time-consuming. My baba would simmer onions on low heat in butter for what seemed like hours. They never browned and these aren’t caramelized. They’re just wonderfully cooked onions.

My solution: chop and cook a lot of onions all at once in the Instant Pot. Maybe use some now, freeze the rest to use later. Then you’re covered when you need a fast topping for those frozen perohe (Sure, the box or bag says perogies but you’re stubborn and call them perohe). Or, you just want a head start on filling some traditional cabbage rolls or some summertime beet leaf holubchi. All-purpose onions are here for you.

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Instant Pot Buckwheat and Pork Cabbage Rolls / Holubtsi

I don’t often make cabbage rolls (or holubtsi or golubchi or whatever) with meat. Ground meat is hard to roll. Even if you have a small amount of rice, it just doesn’t hold together like 100% rice cabbage rolls like my traditional-Instant Pot cabbage roll recipe or even the beet leaf holubtsi recipe.

Enter buckwheat or kasha! Buckwheat filling in cabbage rolls is also great – and healthy. But, on its own it’s not spectacular though it’s a great alternative for dairy-free and gluten-free vegetarians. Here, I’ve combined some ground pork along with buckwheat to make a unique filling for your Instant Pot. You could also use ground beef or a vegan ground meat product.

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Instant Pot Beet Leaf Holubtsi

Beet leaf cabbage rolls may not make a lot of sense but they’re delicious and completely unlike cabbage holubtsi (holubchi, golubchi, golubtsi, whatever). Replacing the cabbage with beet leaves is a summer time treat.

Like many awesome Ukrainian recipes, this one finishes with being baked in cream. So, it needs to be finished in a regular oven because that cream totally curdles in the Instant Pot. A little extra time but totally worth it.

After some research, there are plenty of recipes around called beet leaf holubchi but with bread dough wrapped in beet leaves. My family always makes beet leaves filled with rice and plenty of dill. If you’re used to the bread dough version, try this one out!
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Instant Pot Cabbage Rolls / Holubtsi

The Ukrainian word for cabbage rolls have a lot of different spellings when it’s transliterated into English. Holubtsi, holubchi, holubchy, golubchi, golubtsi. Why the h and g? Regional differences, I suppose.

In my family, holubtsi are more often meatless than meaty. This applies especially to Sviata Vechera, the meatless 12-dish Christmas Eve dinner. In this version, they are also gluten-free and could go vegan by swapping out the butter for vegetable oil.

While you could finish the rolls in the oven, this recipe in the Instant Pot helps you save some time by speeding up the fillings and the final cooking.

This recipe saves almost 2 hours of cooking time!

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Modern Instant Pot Kutia

This is a more modern version of kutia. My baba liked the addition of the dried fruit and nuts – it’s more extravagant than her Traditional Kutia recipe. This is my “healthier” version. Slightly healthier. Continue reading “Modern Instant Pot Kutia”

Traditional Instant Pot Kutia

Whether it’s Kutia or Kutya (pronounced coo-tcha), it’s probably one of the most seminal Ukrainian dishes. It’s also one of the most time consuming.

The history of kutia

Kutia is a Christmas Eve dish but – in reality – its roots have very little to do with Christmas. So, let’s travel back a few thousand years to the Ukraine. What was going on? Growing wheat. So, they boiled the wheat.

But, it’s so much more than just boiled wheat. Ukrainians (and everyone nearby) celebrated the winter solstice before they adopted Christianity in 997 AD. Kutia is the centrepiece of this winter solstice dinner that was adapted into what is now the Christmas Eve meal: Sviata Vechera.
This recipe saves the overnight soaking time plus 2 hours of cooking time over the traditional recipe!
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