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Fried Hamburger (Fašírka)

Ingredients: 1lb pork, 3 cloves garlic, one quarter medium onion, one egg, bread roll about the length of your open hand, milk, salt, black pepper, flour, bread crumbs, side (4 boiling potatoes, quarter of chopped up red cabbage, salt, sugar, caraway, butter, few slices of red pepper)
Prep Time: About an hour, including boiling potatoes

Nowadays, it’s easy to satisfy your hamburger craving in Slovakia. Many major cities have a McDonald’s. And even those that do not will have a myriad of street vendors selling all kinds of burgers. But, even with all this hamburger variety around, don’t forget to try the traditional Slovak take on this American staple. The dish is called fašírka, and is a juicy breaded ground pork patty fried in oil.

Or make it at home. Making fašírka is easy! I completely documented this recipe while at my grandma’s in Slovakia. But just as I was about to post it, I had a second thought. I love this dish way too much. I really wanted to make sure I can prepare it, all by myself, from scratch using American ingredients. So that’s what I did. Using the photos I shot in Slovakia, I recreated my grandmother’s recipe. It turned out great. But I’ll let you be the judge. And best of all, fašírka is another very cheap dish to make. From the ingredients, which could not have cost more than 7 dollars, I made 9 patties and enough mashed potatoes for 3 hearty dinners. Plus several sandwiches.

Prepare the side

Start by preparing the side. I served the dish with a side of mashed potatoes and red cabbage. Cook the potatoes in their skin until soft (45 minutes?). Then peel them under running cold water so you don’t burn your hands. Add butter and salt and mash them until creamy. Also chop up as much cabbage as you like. Fry it on oil for about a minute. Then add enough water to cover the entire bottom of the frying pan. Also add salt and few tablespoons worth of sugar. I also added caraway seeds. Cover and let steam until soft. Open the lid occasionally and add more water as needed.

Onto the main dish

Ingredients for fašírka. In addition you will need bread crumbs.

Slice the bread and soak in a bath of 1:1 water and milk. Season the meat with black pepper, salt, 3 grated cloves of garlic, and about quarter of a medium onion.

Once the bread is soft, grab it in your hand and squeeze out the liquid. Add to the meat and work in until no bread chunks remain. Also add flour to stiffen the meat mixture. I ended up using twice the amount shown in the photograph.

Next, place more flour in a bowl. Dust your hands with flour. Take several tablespoons worth of the meat mixture and roll between your palms. Flatten to make a hamburger. The patties I made were about 3/4 the size of my palm and about half inch thick. Dip them in the bowl of flour, and evenly cover on both sides. Set aside. I ended up with 9 patties.

Now make the dough. Combine about half a cup of flour with one egg, salt and enough water to make liquid mixture with the consistency of milk. You can also add little bit of beer if you like. Next, heat up oil in a frying pan. Then setup your “assembly line”. It starts with the flour-covered patties, goes through the dough to a bowl of bread crumbs and finishes in the frying pan.

Fry the breaded patties for about 5 minutes on each side until golden brown. One neat trick I learned at my grandma’s is to use a knife and fork to flip the patties. It works so much better than a spatula!

And that’s it. Serve with mashed potatoes, cabbage and little bit of veggies. Top the mashed potatoes with grease from the frying pan to give them the authentic fatty Slovak taste. On the left is the dish I cooked up. On the right is what I had at my grandma’s. You will notice that Slovak bread crumbs are much finer than the American variety. Also, my grandma used canned cabbage and veggies. Otherwise, I think the two dishes look very much alike. They both tasted wonderful!

You can also eat this dish on the go. In fact, it is very common for parents to prepare a fašírka sandwich for their kids before a long bus or train ride. It goes great with sliced onion and mustard. I also topped it with red pepper and a slice of provolone cheese.

Like this recipe? Then please digging, thumb up, or buzz this delicious dish. Thank you very much!

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Guide to Slovak Snacks and Wafers

Your visit to Slovakia will not be complete without trying our delicious snacks and sweet wafers (keksy). Although much has changed since the fall of Communism, these remnant of my childhood are luckily still around! The packaging has changed for some, but the original taste is still there. Read on to learn more about the traditional Slovak snacks.

Salty Snacks

Here are my three favorite salty snacks: zemiakové lupienky, chrumky and slané tyčinky (clockwise).

• Zemiakové Lupienky (potato crisps) – these white chips are made out of 35% potato starch, 19% potato flour, vegetable oil and salt. They have a unique taste that is nothing like a potato chip. It’s as if someone took salty snow and fried it. They are fluffy yet crispy, and melt in your mouth. Very good choice to follow a glass of cold Slovak beer.
• Arašidové Chrumky (peanut crunchies) – these little orange “peanuts” are made of cornmeal, fried peanuts 35%, vegetable oil and salt. Although chrumky taste or look nothing like Doritos, they have very much in common. They are finger-licking good and so hard to resist! They consist of a fluffy cornmeal based body which is coated in the fried peanuts. Chrumky are my favorite beer snack.
• Slané Tyčinky (salt sticks) – these mini pretzel sticks are probably my all time favorite Slovak snack. There are several companies making salt sticks, but the best are these skinny ones made by DRU. The inside is soft and sweet and the crust is golden brown and crunchy. These salt sticks are made with wheat flour, vegetable oil, salt, sugar, baker’s yeast, malt flour, dehydrated milk and sodium hydroxide. The last chemical is used to produce the crunchy crust during baking.

Keksíky and Other Sweet Goodies

Here are many of the classic sweet snacks, including my favorites, horalky and kávenky. So what cavity-causing culprits do we have here? From top to bottom:

• Banán v Čokoláde – name of this snack means banana in chocolata. It consists of a yellow jello substance covered in sweet chocolate. Very tasty!
• Sójová Tyčinka – is a sweet dark yellow soy stick. I don’t particularly like these but they are definitely a classic.
• Horalky – are a must try during your visit of Slovakia! These traditional wafer bars are named (my best guess) after the mountain people who inhabited the Tatra mountains forming the border between Slovakia and Poland, goraly or horaly. A female mountain person would be called a horalka, the singular form of horalky. The packaging of these wafers features pictures of plesnivec alpský or edelweis. This beautiful protected flower inhabits the High Tatras and horalky make for a great snack to bring along for a hike in the mountains. The wafers are filled with a peanut filling and are coated in a cocoa sauce. By the way, make sure to get the horalky made by Sedita. These are the original recipe. Sedita is the new name of Pečivárne Sereď, the bakery in Sereď that baked many of these great wafers during communism.
• Dobošky – are also wafers filled with a peanut paste. I suspect these are supposed to be an alternative to Horalky. In my opinion, these are not as good.
• Tatranky – are very similar to horalky, except that they are filled hazelnuts (lieskové oriešky). These wafers are also coated with a cocoa sauce. They are named after Slovakia’s highest mountains, the Tatras. The are also named by Sedita.
• Fidorka – is a circular wafer bar coated in chocolate. Fidorky come in more flavors than any other wafer bar here. Each flavor has a unique color. There is the dark chocolate with hazelnuts in red (pictured), sweet chocolate with hazelnuts in green, sweet chocolate with coconut filling in blue, dark chocolate with dark chocolate filling in brown, and sweet chocolate with milk chocolate filling in yellow.
• Kávenky – are coffee flavored wafer bars made by Sedita. These are probably my favorite keksíky (although I like them all). I am actually eating one right now as I am writing this post. They consist of 4 crispy wafers joined by a sweet coffee flavored filling. They are made with wheat flour, hazelnuts, cocoa and roasted coffee.
• Perník – is a gingerbread bar. It is sliced in half and filled with fruit jam made out of apples, strawberries, raspberries and also a layer of plum preserve (slivkový lekvár). It is then coated in chocolate. Other flavors besides plum exist, but plum is the traditional filling.
• Miňonky – are little wafers filled with cocoa and coated in dark chocolate. Besides the cocoa filling, minoňky also come filled with sweet cream or nuts.

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