Cuisine

Bulgarian Cuisine with the verdict that it is tasty, spicy and varied goes well with good wine.
The Bulgaria “culinary” geography abounds in delicious specialties and exotic dishes: Bansko-style kapama, Katino meze and the Bansko-style starez (sausage), the tow Elena is known for its Elenski pork leg, the village of Smilyan – with its unusually large and tasty beans, the town of Karlovo – with its Karlovska lukana, the Nessebar – with its fish soup, the Rhodopes region with its patatnik, klin and kachamak and many other culinary temptations throughout the entire country.

Bulgaria is a land of traditions and there are two very special food item varieties which are unique to Bulgaria and are considered the gastronomical pride of the nation since times immemorial till nowadays – the yoghurt (kiselo mlyako) and the white brined cheese.

The Old Bulgarian cuisine is closely related to the main occupation of the Bulagrians agriculture. The everyday dishes consisted of vegetable food mainly and meat was prepared only on holidays. The Bulgarian ate soup made of dock, sorrel, spinach, nettle, beans, lentils, mushrooms and the respective stews. The traditional meat dishes have been kapama, lamb gyuvetch, chomlek-kebap, beef with gumbo, pork with pickled cabbage, stuffed fowl, sarmi made of stuffed cabbage or vine leaves and a variety of home-made sausages. Fish, egg and pastry dishes were prepared as well but they were used mainly for different rituals – home made bread, proshtapalnik, tutmanik, tiganitsa, baklava, tikvenik (pumpkin pastry), zelnik (cabbage pastry) ect. Even today when the nourishing habits of Bulgarians have changed considerably compared to those a century ago, bread is the main food for the Bulgarians. 

Very typical for the Bulgarian cuisine is the combination of milk (liquid milk and yoghurt) with other products. It enriches the technology of food preparation and adds to their sterling and healing effects.

The Bulgarian cuisine pretends to have given the patent to many Balkan specialties but at the same time has learned from the experience of the neighbors. The influence of the Orient is indisputable including the influence of Austria and Hungary as well as of the Mediterranean. The traditional cuisine is specific for the different geographic and ethnographic regions depending on the local food and customs.

The fish dishes are typical for the Black Sea Region. Crab soup, the Nessabar fish soup, belted bonito salads with onion, flue-fish cooked on tile, grilled turbot, stuffed mussels etc. Sea food dishes that has absorbed the experience of generation of cookers – Thracians, Romans, Greeks, Turks and Bulgarians.

The Black Sea Region is known also for its fig jam – green or ripe and town of Varna for its komumbs which is boiled pumpkin puree, dried fruit and sugar.   

Very fruitful is the Thracian Plane. The tastiest vegetables are grown there which are well known abroad. In the town of Plovdiv you will be recommended to taste the milk Thracian salad, cheese pasty pepper, Thracian banitsa, minced meat cake and a lot of other specialties made of vegetables, milk and meat.

Key words: Bulgarian culinary tours