Banitsa Recipe (Traditional Bulgarian Food) - Happy Foods Tube (2024)

FAQs

What is banitsa made of? ›

Banitsa is prepared by layering a mixture of whisked eggs, plain yogurt, and pieces of white brined cheese between filo pastry and then baking it in an oven. Traditionally in Bulgaria, lucky charms are put into the pastry on certain occasions, particularly on New Year's Eve.

Shopska salad

One of the most popular Bulgarian dishes, this salad is made out of chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, sliced peppers and onion as well as white cheese and a dressing with sunflower or olive oil and optionally some vinegar and salt.

How to make banitsa. Mix crumbled Feta cheese, with yogurt, eggs and baking soda. Lay a sheet of filo pastry on your worktop, spoon some of the filling over (you can spread it slightly) and roll. This is then rolled into a snail like shape and placed in a greased oven-proof dish.

Banitsa is made with homemade or commercially made pastry sheets that are prepared from a baker's hard dough including flour, eggs, and water. You can find pastry sheets in every Bulgarian shop, just ask for “kori za Banitsa”. The filling is made of white cheese (Bulgarian “sirene”), yogurt and eggs.

Bulgarians love soup and salad. The shkembe is a traditional Bulgarian soup made from tripe. If you look at a Bulgarian cookbook, chances are 'Shkembe' will be one of the first recipes you come across.

The lion is the national symbol of Bulgaria depicted on the country's coat of arms. Bulgaria's currency is the lev, the name originally deriving from the Bulgarian word “luv” meaning “lion” in English.

Religious Demography

According to the 2021 census (the most recent), 69.5 percent of the population identifies as Eastern Orthodox Christian, primarily affiliated with the BOC. The census reports Muslims, the second largest religious group, are 10.7 percent of the population.

While banitsa is usually made with cheese, burek can be made with other fillings such as spinach or meat.

How to reheat banitsa? ›

Banitsa is best served warm. Refrigerate leftovers. You can reheat it in a microwave for a minute or two or in a regular oven for 10 minutes at 350°F. Bulgarians often eat banitsa for breakfast with yogurt.

I wouldn't call Bulgaria and especially Sofia and the mountain and black sea resorts as dirt-cheap but definitely it's still significantly cheaper than in the rest of EU. Outside of the big cities like Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas, life is simple and slow and really cheap - for a West-European guy at least.

Yoghurt. Bulgarian yoghurt is a traditional Bulgarian dairy food, a hallmark of the country, produced by microbial lactic acid fermentation of pasteurized milk, inoculated with a starter culture of only two lactic acid bacterial species—Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus (L.

It worked because of tiny bacteria called Lactobacillus bulgaricus. Lactobacillus Bulgaricus is unique to the Bulgarian climate and nature. That geographical region is the only place on Earth where it can be naturally found everywhere — in the air, soil, grass, trees, water, everywhere.

Banitsa's origins can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire, where it was known as "borek." The dish made its way to Bulgaria in the 15th century and quickly became a favorite among the locals. Over time, the recipe for Banitsa evolved, with each region in Bulgaria adding its unique twist to the dish.

We ate the banitsas with vegan fillings – apple, raisins and brown sugar, and potato and mushroom – but only when eating them did it occur to us that maybe that pastry wasn't all vegan (as the filo pastry is traditionally made with egg and probably butter).