Czech Cuisine - Meat Dishes

Meat Dishes

Czech traditional meat dishes were made from animals, birds or fishes bred or from those caught from fields, forests or rivers around.

Pork is quite common, and beef, calf and chicken are also popular. Pigs were often source of meals in countryside also for gathering of friends or nighbors due to fairly short period of growth (compared to beef). Not only whole baked young pigs were made.

Jitrnice is meat cutted into tiny pieces filled like sausage and with sticks on the ends. Meat from neck, sides, insides (lungs and spleen), liver, white pastry, broth and spices: salt, black pepper, marjoram, grounded allspice and ginger, garlic and sometimes onion. Klobása is smoked meat sausage-like product from minced meat. It is spicy and durable. Jelito is pork meat sausage-like product containing pork blood and hulled grain (barley) or pastry pieces. Tlačenka is meat product (it can be also chicken). This are little pieces of meat in jelly/aspic from connective tissue boiled to mush. Served with onion and bread. Ovar is simple meal from more fatty pork meat. These pieces of lower quality meat are boiled in salted watter. Škvarky the rest of tissue, which will stay after separating fat by frying small cubes of pork fai in its fat. Bacon (Slanina)

In restaurants you can find: Roast pork with dumplings and Sauerkraut (pečené vepřové s knedlíky se zelím, colloquially Vepřo-knedlo-zelo) is considered the most typical Czech dish. Cabbage is green or red made from fes cooked or from sauerkraut. There are different varieties, from sour to sweet.

Marinated sirloin (svíčková na smetaně or simply svíčková; svíčková is called both the sauce and the meat(pork side or beef side) used for this dish; na smetaně mean in cream, and it means that the svíčková sauce is with cream). Braised beef, usually larded, with a svíčková sauce, thick sauce of carrot, parsley root, celeriac, and sometimes with cream (It is traditional without cream, as common people could not afford cream in the past). This dish is often served with knedlíky, chantilly cream - sweet whipped cream, a teaspoon of cranberry compote (kompot), and a slice of lemon.

Sekaná pečeně (baked mincemeat), later only Sekaná (mincemeat) is a dish made from minced pork meat (also beef is possible). Šunka (ham) is made from pork or beef, braised, dried or smoked.

Řízek (plural řízky) in typical Czech meat meal. The word means "sliced/cutted (out) piece". These are 1x10x15cm about slices of calf, pork or chicken meat covered with Czech traditional Trojobal (Triplecoat), made from putting and pressing a bit punded and slice into smooth flour (on both sides), than taking with fork into whisked egg (and turned to cover from another side and than put into another bowl with breadcrumbs (they are from Czech rolls and braided buns mentioned below), pressed, turned and pressed. Than it is fried on both sides. (It can be frozen before or after frying, meat is not salted before triplecoat, as it tends to make it fall off) For Christmas The Czech triplecoat is used to cover carp meat pieces or trouts decorated with lemon slice. Řízek is served with potato side-dishes mainly, Dumplings are also possible.

Karbanátek (plural karbanátky) - burger; in meat version, it is made from fish or other meat grounded, often mixed with egg and it is more often covered with Czech triplecoat and than it can be vegetable based with pastry pieces or flour (It can be triplecoated) and in both versions fried from both sides or baked. When carp meat is used, it has to be grinded twice in order to make sure that bones are not present.

Smoked meat (uzené means smoked) with potato dumplings, fried onion and cooked spinach.

Beef with Tomato sauce is the meat with Rajská omáčka (Tomato sauce) or Rajská for short, and dumplings Dill sauce, shortly Koprovka is often on menues too.

Rabbit (králík) is quite common animal bred in countryside and hare (zajíc) with wild game are also served. Mutton, lamb, kid, boar, horse or deer are not so common.

Among next meat dishes containing bird meat you can find: Goose (Husa), duck (kachna), turkey (krůta) and hen (slepice) were often bred thus eaten. Pheasant (bažant), partridge (koroptev), guinea (perlička), pidgeon (holub) or other birds are not that often.

Roasted duck (Pečená kachna) with bread or potato dumplings and braised red cabbage.

Chicken in Paprika sauce (Kuře na paprice) is Chicken stewed with onion, paprika and other ingredients. Cream is added to the sauce.

Roast Turkey Cock with Bacon (Krocan pečený na slanině) - Turkey lardedwith, or wrapped in Bacon, roasted with bacon and butter.

Křupánky (crackers) is nowadays not much known countryside meal. It pen-fried chicken or other skin. Served with bread and salad (often added at the end that it got warm and slightly glassy, yet it stayed green. It was also called mišmaš, influenced by Bulgarian meal mish mash. Another version of mišmaš was fried jelito content with roll added while fried and again salad added on the end.

Fishes were mostly from rivers or ponds like trout (pstruh) and carp (kapr), which is served a lot at Christmas. Otherwise there is a lot of imported fishes too like sardines, fillet, salmon, tuna, anchovy, etc. Other types of fish are getting poplular slowly too.

Crayfish (rak) has been very common in rivers but not anymore. Nowadays it is protected. Prawn or lobsters are imported instead.