♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, I don't know how old you are, but I remember bad catered food from the '60s and '70s.

Stuffed celery with cream cheese and raisins.

Of course, Swedish meatballs were very popular.

And then chicken, as we called it in the day, Kyiv, which was a pound of chicken cutlet around a knob of frozen butter, and it's coated and probably fried, and you put your fork in it, it squirts butter all over the place, onto your tie.

(laughing): And that was probably the worst of the '70s.

We got interested in chicken Kyiv, so we went to Kyiv about a year ago to track down the original recipe.

So we're going to come back in the kitchen and make that recipe as authentically as we can.

The other thing we did was a Ukrainian borsch.

Of course, there are lots of different versions of that.

We came back with one we really love as well.

So let's step into the kitchen and rediscover chicken Kyiv, and also Ukrainian borsch.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

♪ ♪ MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ - Russia's 2022 invasion has upended day-to-day life in Ukraine.

It also triggered an unexpected, and, many say, overdue rethinking about what it means to be Ukrainian.

The answers, of course, are many.

But the one response most everyone offers?

Food.

And rarely does one dish as perfectly encapsulate a nation's history, struggles, and joys as chicken Kyiv.

♪ ♪ - We've come to the city that gave the dish its name, Kyiv, Ukraine, to find out what real chicken Kyiv is and whether it can be good.

Now in a country under siege, I have to say I've been really impressed by how eager the people are to teach us what real Ukrainian cooking is and how it is distinct.

(traffic passing) - It was a restaurant in a famous, beautiful hotel, Continental, and they invented this chicken Kyiv.

It impressed people, and so then they took the recipe to Moscow restaurant, famous restaurant called Yar.

And in this restaurant, it's becoming the really iconic type of food.

And then, it appeared in 1931, in Chicago... - (chuckles) - ...when one Russian emigrant decided to open Russian restaurant in Chicago.

- And then we managed to ruin it.

- And that was... (both laugh) ♪ ♪ - The recipe is deceptively simple.

Pound flat a chicken breast, wrap it around a pat of frozen butter, then bread the resulting bundle and deep fry it.

As I began to eat my way across the city, I met cooks eager to share so many family recipes and the touching stories behind them.

Thank you so much.

(voiceover): But a great chicken Kyiv?

Well, that kept eluding me.

The trouble often is the chicken itself.

Chicken breasts easily turn rubbery, and breading hates adhering to them, falling off at the first touch of fork and knife.

It's like two separate things.

You've got this hunk of chicken, which is more flavorful than in the past, but then you've got this awkward shell.

I'd hoped eating chicken Kyiv in its hometown would be transformative, but it felt like I was hitting a dead end.

- Please don't give up.

- (laughs) - I still have two more chefs in mind.

- Okay.

- And I hope they will do something differently.

♪ ♪ - We arrived at a literal hole in the wall in central Kyiv, a fast food shop that sold what essentially were chicken Kyiv hand pies.

I knew my research into chicken Kyiv would not be complete if I didn't try the street food version.

It's actually fantastic, It's probably the best one I've eaten since I've been in Ukraine.

The breading sticks to the meat.

The meat is tender and moist and flavorful, and I don't think the meat is a typical chicken cutlet.

I, I want to say it's ground, and, and obviously, we need to look into this, because this is, this is actually really good.

♪ ♪ I also was due to meet with a chef at the heart of Ukraine's culinary awakening, Ievgen Klopotenko.

Even before the war, he had been laboring to preserve the culinary traditions that set Ukraine apart.

The Russian invasion only made his work that much more pressing.

- It's a new reality.

No lights, a lot of pain.

But we will win, And we have to fight.

- The name of his restaurant, which translates in English to "100 years back to the future," refers to his mission to uncover Ukraine's pre-Soviet culinary past.

- In 1917, I found a book which was a real Ukrainian recipe.

Ukrainian cuisine was the part of the world cuisine at the time.

It was developing like everything, and then it stopped.

It's USSR food.

And even such a thing, like a spice, was dismissed.

(makes slicing noises) Then you ask yourself, why I'm eating the same food as was in USSR?

Why I'm eating the same food as they are eating?

I want to change food, but what is that food, Ukrainian food?

They go to my restaurant, and they start to eat Ukrainian food and to discover.

- Klopotenko taught me that the secret to a better chicken Kyiv, well, it lies in those pre-Soviet roots.

Historically, Ukrainians made chicken Kyiv with ground meat, much like the street food version I had.

It was a way of using up bits and scraps, but it also meant that the meat could be really well-seasoned.

- Dill, it's our spice, as you see, as for you can see, that we use a lot of dill.

Just closing it, like a ball.

- It was a fitting transformation for a dish elevated from humble origins, only to be so much better for returning to them.

- It's for you.

♪ ♪ - Mmm.

Mmm!

- A nation has to have their food.

There is no nation without identity.

And for us, it's the main question of this war, of our all the time living, is to understand our identity.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So, I remember the '60s.

Do you remember the '60s?

- (laughing): N... - Probably not, you're too young.

'60s and '70s, and I remember big catered events, and there were some recipes that were sort of part of that.

So, I never thought we would go back to that recipe.

But actually, you went to Ukraine and discovered something really interesting about their recipe that actually makes it a recipe you really do want to make, right?

- Yeah, and I'm going to say there's a reason that chicken Kyiv is the punchline of bad wedding buffets.

- Yes.

- And traditionally-- as we know it, that is-- it's made from whole chicken breasts that are wrapped around a hunk of butter, breaded, deep fried.

And what I learned along that way is that the chicken Kyiv we know is about 100 years old.

But there was a chicken Kyiv, not called that, but same basic thing, that dates back almost 200 years.

You know, what happened was when the Soviet Union took over Ukraine around the 1920s, they kind of quashed a lot of the local culinary heritage, and as such, a lot of the kind of flavors that we're using in our butter right now disappeared from Ukrainian cooking.

But everything we've added-- lemon zest and dill and ginger and cayenne and paprika-- all of that once was quite common.

- So ginger was-- that was the one ingredient I wasn't sure about.

- Yeah.

- That was Ukrainian.

- Yeah, it was very common.

So what we're doing is we are making a compound butter, which is more traditional to the old version of chicken Kyiv.

Now we're going to form it into canals-- or footballs, as I think of them-- and we're going to freeze those for later, putting into our chicken.

I have no doubt that this is where you're going to show me up.

(clinking) - I think you're doing a good job, man.

- Mm, you know... - So we're going to freeze this for at least 15 minutes, and we'll come back and we'll start working on the chicken.

Evidently, we're not using a chicken breast.

We're using ground chicken.

- So the revelation on this trip came, literally, standing outside a fast food joint in a snowbank, next to an adult bookstore, where they serve chicken Kyiv as a hand pie to go.

- Let me just mention, we're putting in some dill seed.

- Yes.

- Granulated garlic powder.

See, we have an open mind here.

- I'm a big fan of that.

- And a little paprika and a little salt and pepper-- but okay, go ahead.

- All right, so, that got me digging a little bit more, and that's when I realized the chicken Kyiv we know actually only dates to around the 1920s, when people tried to make a fancy version of chicken Kyiv.

The original chicken Kyiv-- which in Ukraine it was just called chicken cutlet-- dates back at least 100 years before that.

And that's where they would take whatever ground or minced meats they have, form it into a patty, bread it, and deep fry it.

The French came along at some point, and had to insert butter into it.

And now we have cutlets stuffed with butter, breaded, and fried, and that's the original chicken Kyiv.

So that's what got me pursuing a ground chicken version.

Because that's gonna solve a lot of problems.

As you just demonstrated, it's a heck of a lot easier to season.

Double down on some of the seasonings that are in our compound butter.

It's more forgiving when you cook it, It's not gonna turn rubbery and dry like a whole chicken breast will.

And the best part to me, the breading adheres to it perfectly.

- Oil on hands.

- (chuckles) Take our frozen butter and insert it right in and wrap it all around.

Of course, you know, you want to make sure you seal that butter in, but you don't want to work the meat too much so that it gets tough.

One of the other advantages of using ground chicken instead of a whole chicken breast is as that butter melts on the inside while it cooks, it's going to penetrate the ground chicken much more than it would if you were just using a whole breast.

Just wrap it up and around.

- By the way, this is easy to do, so.

- Yeah.

All right, the oiled hands here are key.

I don't know, I think mine are better than yours.

- Of course you do.

- Very good.

- You wouldn't be J.M.

if you didn't.

- (chuckles) So then after we form these, we're going to freeze them for about half an hour, and that's going to firm them up to make them easier to bread.

- So this is the classic flour, egg, panko.

- Yep.

- Which I do for my kids at least once a week with chicken cutlets.

- (chuckles) - So I'm going to add a little water to these eggs.

- Okay, and I'm going to season the breadcrumbs that we've had lightly toasted in a skillet.

And this is another opportunity, again, where even though the chicken Kyiv we know, doesn't take the opportunity to season this, back in the day, they would've.

So we've got some dill, some lemon zest, and some parmesan cheese and a little bit of oil.

Parmesan might seem a little unusual, but, you know, the chefs I worked with said, "Look, you know, yeah, "we're returning to our traditions, but doesn't mean we can't introduce new things.

He liked Parmesan, we liked Parmesan, so we're using parmesan.

Just mix that up.

Obviously, it was a very challenging trip, but I was always impressed and really touched by the number of people so happy and so willing to share their heritage with us and teach us these recipes that they hold very dear.

It makes it taste all that much better.

Get a good coating here.

Now we're going to bake these.

Traditionally, they are, of course, deep fried.

But again, the chefs I worked with, they have no problem modernizing the traditional recipe.

Baking is faster, easier, less mess, so, we... - No, I'm going to argue with you about that.

I'm all for two things.

- (laughs) - MSG, yes.

Frying-- like what-- what is the problem in the 21st century with frying?

Like, nobody wants to fry anymore.

- I'm with you on the MSG part.

That's a magical substance that transforms whatever it touches.

- Yes, it is.

- But the frying, mm... you know, it's messy...

I don't know.

And it's fussy.

It's easy to over-fry and to burn things.

These, by the way, can stay in the freezer, and you can cook them off later, You just need to add a little bit more time.

And there's our breaded chicken Kyivs, which we pop in the oven for about half an hour at 375.

Just want to turn them about every ten minutes.

- We should just-- I mean, let's just say that we did a pretty good job.

- I think they look pretty good.

- They look pretty good.

♪ ♪ - So I have to say, this does look as good-- I can't believe I'm saying this-- as fried.

- There you go, there you go.

- That's the highest compliment I can, I can actually give it.

- (laughs) Now, if we did our job right, contained in the center, a core of molten butter, well-seasoned, that's going to spill out and create the sauce on our plate.

Or in my case, shoot up in my face.

- Well, yeah, that, too.

So I'm going to serve you some mashed potatoes.

Common accompaniment.

There we go.

Thank you.

- Oh, look at that.

- Ooh, yeah, there we go.

Beautiful.

- The thing I like about this is that the butter has all those seasonings in it, you know.

- Mm-hmm.

- Which means it's not just butter with some parsley... - Right.

- Which is often what I remember from the '60s.

- Absolutely.

And, again, notice, the breading isn't falling off.

It's staying adhered to the meat.

That's what you want, because then every bite is tender and meaty and crispy and well-seasoned.

- This is the ultimate makeover.

I was a little skeptical going into this, but it was worth the journey.

I mean, this chicken Kyiv is absolutely delicious.

- Now we're making a low fire.

We don't have electricity sometimes, and we're cooking on tandoor.

So today we're making borsch, Ukrainian borsch, Kyivan borsch.

- So borsch, this dish unites Ukraine.

We have different recipes, but of the same borsch.

And the 1st of July 2022, borsch was recognized as a World Heritage dish.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Ukrainian): - So there is five rules.

First one is stock.

Stock can be vegetable, it can be different meat.

Then you have to add a lot of beetroot.

A lot of beetroot.

(sizzling) (sighs) Beetroot, it's soul of the borsch.

- (speaking Ukrainian): - Third rule, you can add wherever you want and whatever you have in your fridge.

(stew bubbling) - Cabbage.

- Fourth thing is to give smokiness.

Now I have in my hands a smoked pear.

If I will add pear to the borsch, it will give us their very unique smokiness.

And the last one, fifth, it's a balance of the taste.

It has to be sweet and sour.

- One spoon, two... - More sour than sweet.

How you can do this?

You add a bit of vinegar, or you add lemon juice.

And that's the model of the borsch.

♪ ♪ (borsch bubbling) - I studied cooking borsch with my parents, with my grandma, with my father, mother.

Okay.

- (speaking Ukrainian): (exhales) ♪ ♪ From all the recipes J.M.

brought back from home cooks, from restaurant cooks all over Kyiv, we synthesized this amazing recipe that really takes what we loved from all these different borschs into one dish.

So the Milk Street recipe can start with either pork shoulder or beef chuck roast.

So working cuts with a ton of flavor, but do need to be simmered for quite a while.

I personally love the pork, because I love the way pork and cabbage work together.

But we're gonna make beef today, which is, of course, fantastic.

The beef really works well with the caraway in this dish.

So different versions of this recipe really amplify different flavors.

So we'll leave that choice to you.

We're gonna take our two pounds of chuck roast, and... we're gonna start with three quarts of water.

No need to use broth.

We're creating our own broth here by simmering the meat, and we're gonna spice this really simply.

So, we're gonna start off with two bay leaves.

Forget this whole one bay leaf for a pot of stew.

It's ridiculous.

When I cook at home, I use bay leaves by the handful.

Bay leaves acts like vanilla for all your savory dishes, so buy fresh too.

These are beautiful.

If you look at that, it's green, pliable, glossy.

It's a perfect bay leaf.

And then, absolutely one of my favorite spices, star anise.

This showed up in one of the recipes J.M.

brought back.

And it was interesting, because he was told it was because there was very limited spicing available during the Soviet era.

It's a very smart choice, because star anise, which has sort of a warm, licorice-like flavor, actually has compounds in it that really emphasize the flavor of meat.

So it brings up those sort of rich, earthy, brown flavors.

Even though we're not going to be browning this meat, we're going to emphasize that flavor.

So two of those in, and then one teaspoon of salt.

So we're going to bring the beef up to a simmer.

You don't want to boil beef 'cause that's gonna end up toughening all those fibers.

So this recipe, as is traditional in Ukraine, is cooked in two separate cooking pots.

We tried combining it all into one pot and just, you know, staggering things, but it really developed a very different flavor, and we really strongly recommend cooking it in this fashion.

While the meat is simmering, I'm gonna go ahead and prepare the rest of the borsch.

First of all, we need to prepare our beet.

For Ukrainian borsch, it's pretty common to grate them.

Beets, of course, are rich in anthocyanin, the pigment that makes them very red.

And as any cook knows, that red will stain anything and everything.

So when I'm grating beets, I like to put some foil down over my cutting board.

Makes cleanup a lot easier.

And it's really easy.

Just grate them up and down.

So the foundational flavors of our borsch, of course, outside of our beef broth, is going to be a mix of onions, carrots, and those beets.

We're going to heat three tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat.

One medium chopped onion.

I'm gonna add about a half teaspoon of salt.

Adding salt when you're sautéing onions helps the onions break down faster.

So it's been about three minutes, and these onions are looking just about right.

As you can see, there's a little bit of browning there, and it adds that tiny bit of bitter, which helps undercut the sweetness of the carrots.

Two medium carrots, grated.

Same thing as the beets, just grate them down in the large holes of the box grater, and we're going to add half the grated beets.

If we added all the beets at the same time, they're all going to turn to really soft, slightly mushy texture.

And different textures really help give the dish a lot of excitement and help keep it interesting start to finish.

So I'm stirring the carrots and onions into the beets, and then I'm adding three tablespoons of tomato paste.

Tomato paste is one of those amazing ingredients that doesn't get the credit it should.

Very valuable for, for all sorts of soups, sauces, braises, stews.

So we're just sautéing this mixture for just about another three to five minutes, just to brown it a little bit.

It's gonna start sticking to the bottom of the pan, and then we know it's done.

So this is just about there.

So at this point, we're gonna push everything to the edges.

If we added the garlic right to the pan now, it's not gonna really cook.

And we do want it to see some heat.

And then, absolutely one of my favorite ingredients, caraway seeds.

This appeared in a couple of different versions J.M.

brought back.

It's got this really sharp flavor that cuts through everything else.

So we are just sautéing that very quickly.

Takes about a minute.

So at this point, I'm going to go ahead and turn the heat off and add one 14-and-a-half-ounce can of tomato puree.

Gonna stir that in to loosen it.

And I'm gonna add smoked paprika.

We're gonna stir that in.

I've turned the heat off on the pan.

We really don't want this mix to cook any farther.

And I'm gonna add a ladleful of my beef broth to loosen it up and scrape up any brown bits.

Oh, my gosh.

This smells so good.

The smokiness and the sweetness of the sautéed ingredients and just that touch of browned onion and concentrating those flavors down really builds depth and complexity that you can't get any other way.

Now I'm just waiting for our meat to cook through.

♪ ♪ It's been about two hours, and the way to check to see if your meat is done, is just take a skewer, tip of a really skinny paring knife, and poke a piece, and it should slide out really easily, which this just did.

Always count things like bay leaves and star anise pods before you put them in a dish so you remember to take them all out.

So we're gonna add about 12 ounces of Yukon gold potatoes, and then we're gonna add the remainder of our beets.

So, remember, we cooked half our beets.

We're really getting two different flavor profiles of the beets.

And then we're gonna stir in our flavor base.

Oh, mm, smells like heaven.

So now we're gonna simmer this mix for about 20 minutes, which is about the time it takes the potatoes to cook through.

So it's been about 20 minutes, and those potatoes are perfectly tender.

You can use the same skewer trick you used on the beef.

So now we're gonna add eight ounces of cabbage.

It can be savoy cabbage, or it can be just plain green cabbage.

And then we're gonna add white beans.

It's about a can of great northern beans.

You can use cannellini beans.

And this is not terribly common in borsch, but we did find it in one of the recipes J.M.

brought back from Kyiv, and we really liked it.

They add this creamy texture and this subtle sweetness that sort of balances everything out.

And we just want to warm the beans through and wilt the cabbage.

The final ingredient here is a shot of red wine vinegar.

And this is really common to borsch, because you really want a bit of acidity to cut through the richness of the meat.

And it also serves another purpose.

So, anthocyanins, that really vibrant red pigment of beets, is well-galvanized with acid.

So the color is suddenly gonna pop once you add that vinegar.

So I'm gonna stir that in.

You know, adding acid to finish just about anything is a really good trick.

So let's go ahead and plate that.

Let's dish up a bowl, because, well, it looks amazing.

Get a little more of that really flavorful broth.

So I'm gonna put a big fat dollop of sour cream and finish with a little fresh dill.

This is really important to the flavor of the dish.

Time to have a big spoonful here.

So, the beet flavor comes through really loud and clear, and you get the varying texture.

You get the little bit of crunch from the stuff we added halfway through, and the suppleness of the really cooked-down beets, get some of the cabbage and the potato.

This is a really beautiful borsch from the heart of Ukraine.

This is just really essential to Ukrainian culture, and this Milk Street version is really a beautiful synthesis of all the recipes J.M.

found on his trip to Kyiv.

So you can get this recipe and all the other recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From cacio e pepe and skillet spanakopita, to Brazilian-style carrot cake and Thai coconut soup, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪