Life

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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Slaughter (Zabíjačka)

On of the annual (or semi-annual) traditions in Slovakia is something called zabíjačka or slaughter. It’s the closest thing we have to the American Thanksgiving. The difference is that instead of killing a turkey, we eat a pig.

The whole ritual starts in late March, when people living in a village buy a pig (prasa). The small 30lb piglet is then fattened all summer long, and finally slaughtered once it gets to a respectable 200lbs. Of course, nowadays many folks do not have the yard (nor the patience) to raise a pig. As such, it is quite common to purchase an already pre-fattened pig. And if the family is small, to purchase just a half or a quarter of the porker.

Cleaning the Pig

Unlike with the case of Thanksgiving, there is no set “slaughter” date. However, there are two main slaughter seasons: in November (about a month before Christmas) and then again before Easter. On the day of slaughter (or the delivery of the pig), the whole family, friends and neighbors get together. The dead pig is placed on a wooden board, and a heat lamp is used to burn off all the hair. Then hot water is poured all over the pig to wash it. Finally, the head is chopped off and the belly is cut open.

The internal organs are then removed, including the intestines (črevá). Typically one woman would wash the intestines while another went about preparing lunch. The intestines have to be washed thoroughly, since they are to be used later as casings for sausages and hurky. They are rinsed off some 20 times, and then left to soak in water containing dissolved lemon, chopped onions and black pepper. The internal organs are cooked up into a soup (polievka or vývar) that is served for lunch. Small kidney dumplings (pečeňové halušky, dumplings made out of kidney meat mixed with flour) are mixed into it. And for the main course, there is baked meat (pečené mäso).

Making Sausages

The real fun started after lunch: making of sausages. Men cut up the meat, grind it up, mix it with the various spices and filled the intestines. Meat from the lunch soup is used to make jaternica (rice sausage) and tlačenka (meaning “pressed meat” but known as head cheese). Other pig parts (including the feet and the tail) are turned into studenina and huspenina, dishes I have no desire to learn the recipe for. Finished sausages are left hanging from a stick overnight and then put in the smokehouse the following morning. Of course, all this involved plenty of drinking and merry good time. Dinner typically consisted of the sauerkraut soup (kapustnica) and more baked meat.

Smoking Meat

The smokehouse (udiareň) was a little wooden shed with a metal roof. It contained several horizontal sticks from which the meat could be hung. Several cinder blocks or bricks were placed on the bottom, and fire was started between them. A metal sheet with multiple holes punctured in it was placed over the bricks. The purpose of this sheet was to evenly distribute the smoke coming from the fire. Various types of wood were used, but my grandma used the plum (slivka) tree. The fire was kept low to produce a lot of smoke. The sausages were left in the udiareň for about 4 days.

While the sausages were smoking, the other meat was covered with salt and left to marinate in a wooden tub (korýtko). The juices that the meat let out were periodically poured again over the meat. Bacon (slanina) was treated the same way. It was also often seasoned with caraway. Meats were then smoked for some 5 or 6 days, until the bacon got yellow and the meat got golden. Smoked meat (údené mäso) was stored in a dark pantry (komora) where it would keep all winter long.

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St. Lucia Day

In Slovakia, December 13th is known as the Day of St. Lucia (Deň Svätej Lucie). This, along with with the St. Nicholas Day, is one of the witching days, stridžie dni. St. Lucia day is the most important of all of these, since, in the unreformed Julian calendar used prior to the modern Gregorian calendar, December 13th fell on the shortest day of the year. The lack of daylight made this day very favorable for the witches (strigy, striga singular) to come out! Another Slovak words for witch are bosorka and ježibaba.

About St. Lucia

Saint Lucia (or Lucy) came from Syracuse, Sicily. She was a Christian living during the Diocletianic Persecution, the largest and the final persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Her hand was given to a pagan, but she refused to marry him. According to the legend, her suitor fell in love with her beautiful eyes. To appease him, she poked her eyes out and sent them to her suitor on a plate. Virgin Marry then rewarded her by giving her a new, an even more beautiful pair of eyes.

Celebration in Slovakia

However, In Slovakia, St. Lucia is regarded as one of the greatest, strongest witches. When the guards threw her into a fire pit to burn her for witchery, they were unable to kill her and she continued to live. For this reason, on the eve of St. Lucia day, people all over Slovakia ate garlic (cesnak). Garlic protected people from evil, and many used it to smear a cross somewhere on their body. Crosses made using garlic, chalk or blessed salt were also placed on doors to the houses and the barns to keep witches from entering. On this day, it was also forbidden for women to visit neighbors. The woman could be a witch, and if not, it was believed that she would bring bad luck. Villages were also protected by the shepheards (pastieri) who walked from house to house, and blew a horn specially prepared for this occasion. People also constructed a small stool (lucijný stôlček). It was made without nails or metal fasteners and had a hole cut out. By looking through this hole, the maker would spot the witches.

St. Lucia day was also common for love magic. Various traditions existed. In one, girls looking for a mate would make a paper star with enough corners to last until Christmas. The names of available village lads were written into the corners, and a corner was pulled off randomly every evening and thrown into the fire. The name that remained indicated the suitor.

The most famous tradition associated with this day were the walks of Lucias, pochôdzky Luciek. Young girls dressed all in white (usually by wearing a large bed sheet and a white head scarf). They dusted their face with flour and sometimes even made fake teeth out of potatoes. One Lucy carried a bucket of dry wall (vápno) and a brush (štetka). Another carried a goose wing (husie krídlo) which she used to brush off spiderwebs. This cleaning was supposed to rid the house of witches.

Sources for this article:

• Vianoce na Slovensku by Zuzana Drugova
• Wikipedia
• My grandma

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