What to eat in Minsk
Belarusian cooking in the capital: draniki with sour cream, machanka with pancakes, potato babka, cold summer soup, cured pork, krambambulya and kvass.

[ ] Eat draniki
    Pancakes of raw grated potato fried until the edges turn lacy and crisp, served with sour cream or machanka. There is almost no flour; the starch does the binding.
[ ] Try machanka
    A thick gravy of pork, smoked meats and sour cream, into which you dip pancakes or draniki. The name literally means the thing you dip into.
[ ] Try potato babka
    A bake of grated potato with crackling and onion, cooked in a clay pot until the top browns. Dense, filling and served with sour cream.
[ ] Try kholodnik in summer
    A cold beetroot soup on kefir with cucumber, herbs and half a boiled egg, bright pink in colour. Served with hot boiled potatoes on the side.
[ ] Try vereshchaka
    Pork ribs braised in a sweet-sour sauce built on kvass or beer with onion. An old gentry dish, served with pancakes or buckwheat.
[ ] Eat kalduny
    Dumplings, or draniki with a meat filling inside, served with sour cream and crackling. The name comes from an old word linked to sorcery.
[ ] Try palendvitsa and salo
    Air-dried spiced pork loin sliced thin, and salted salo with garlic. Cold cuts sold by weight at the market.
[ ] Try forest mushroom dishes
    Ceps and chanterelles in a sour cream sauce, mushroom broth, dried mushrooms in soups and fillings. In autumn mushrooms are a main ingredient here rather than a garnish.
[ ] Try zhur and krupnik
    Zhur is a sour soup on oat or rye starter with smoked meats; krupnik is a thick barley soup with mushrooms and potato. Winter dishes of village origin.
[ ] Try klyotski dumplings
    Potato balls with or without a meat filling, boiled and served in broth or with crackling. The ones with a filling are called klyotski with souls.
[ ] Try local baking
    Pies with berries, curd cheese and poppy seed, honey cake and sour cream biscuits. Home baking sold by the slice in bakeries and at the market.
[ ] Buy forest berries and honey
    Blueberries, lingonberries, cranberries and wild raspberries at the market in season, plus honey by variety: linden, buckwheat, heather. Berries are sold by the cup.
[ ] Drink kvass
    A fermented rye bread drink: sweet-sour, lightly fizzy and barely alcoholic. In summer it is poured from street barrels.
[ ] Try birch sap
    A clear sap collected from tree trunks in spring, faintly sweet and nearly neutral. The season is three or four weeks in March and April.
[ ] Try krambambulya
    A honey and spice infusion with cinnamon, clove and pepper, drunk cold in small glasses or hot in winter. A historic gentry drink.

Checklist from Unload: https://unloads.me/c/food-minsk