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Lithuania’s National Snack! Fried Bread

You don’t have to be in Lithuania long to figure out what their favorite snack is. We liked Lithuanian fried bread so much, we ate it every day!


I had never heard of this food before, let alone, it being someone’s national snack. When most of the western world has elevated French fries to the apex of snackdom, Lithuania just chomps away on its own slice of toast.

Lithuanian Snack Food - fried bread.

Have you figured it out yet? It’s fried bread. Yep, that’s it. Fried bread.

Now, when some of us hear the title of “fried bread” visions of carnival elephant ears covered with granulated sugar comes to mind. The American version, as in most American versions, is fatty and sugary, which, of course is…well, delicious!

So we were keen to give the Lithuanian version a try. What was delivered to us was a savory fried rye bread. This particular order was decoratively cut into triangles, apparently dipped in garlic and butter and splattered with cheese before being served to us. We ate them with toothpicks.

Guess what, it is delicious! How could it not be? Did you catch the key words, butter, garlic, and cheese? I think they are probably just as fatty as our American version, but they are in no way sweet. We liked Lithuanian fried bread so much, I think we ate them almost once a day for the rest of our stay.

Here are a couple more delectable dishes you can find in Lithuania. First is another take on dumpling called Cepelinai. It is very large, stuffed with meat and covered with butter, sour cream and onions. Yum!

Lithuanian Snack Food - cepelina.

And then there is a typical sharing dish, hard, brown sliced Lithuania bread topped with smoked salmon and a lemon wedge. Delicious!

Lithuanian Snack Food, salmon and butter on bread.

We have tons of info on Lithuania, one of our favorite countries in Europe. If you are thinking of going, check out one of these articles:
Eastern European Capitals That No One Thinks to Visit, So Go Now!
Lithuanian Apple Cake Recipe
Top 10 Things to Do in Kaunas, Lithuania
Trakai Castle- Worth the Visit

Author Bio: Corinne Vail is a travel photographer, food lover, and a perpetual traveler who has been travel writing for over 14 years. For many years she lived overseas in Germany, Japan, Turkey, South Korea, and the Netherlands teaching the children of the US. military. She’s visited over 90 countries, and she’s not stopping anytime soon.

Go to Lithuania, and give fried bread a try.  What national snacks have surprised you?

 

John P. Rogers

Wednesday 11th of January 2023

where is the recipe ? ? ? ? ?

Aiste

Saturday 27th of May 2023

@Corinne Vail, Important step: fried and cooled bread must be rubbed with galic! Br

Corinne Vail

Wednesday 18th of January 2023

Here you go: bread, fried in oil, topped with cheese! Enjoy!

Kari

Sunday 2nd of December 2012

Looks delicious!

corinne

Sunday 2nd of December 2012

Surprisingly so. We had them multiple times, yet I don't know if they would ever become a craving.