Saltibarsciai

Cold beet soup, known in Lithuanian as saltibarsciai, meaning cold borscht, is a cold summer soup found in the cuisines of Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine, historically associated with the culinary traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where cold sour soups were eaten across every level of society. In modern Lithuanian cuisine the beetroot-and-kefir saltibarsciai version is especially prominent and is regarded as one of the best-known Lithuanian summer dishes, and an annual cold beet soup festival has been held in Vilnius since 2023. Related versions include the Polish chlodnik litewski, the Belarusian chaladnik, well attested in eighteenth and nineteenth century ethnographic sources, and the Russian svekolnik, commonly made with bread or beetroot kvass, with the recipe historically varying by region, season and social class.