Cabbage soup might elicit a collective cringe in the West, where it’s connected to crash diets and the impossible quest for a “bikini body.” But in Ukrainian homes—and across much of Eastern Europe—it’s seen as the opposite: comfort food. My grandmother makes kapusta (cabbage soup) for every special occasion. It’s the first thing we eat on Canadian Thanksgiving, before the turkey hits the table. As a kid, I took my one obligatory spoonful through gritted teeth—payment for the “good stuff” that came after. These days, it’s one of the dishes I look forward to most.
Kapusta (ka-poo-sta) simply refers to the vegetable itself—“cabbage” in Ukrainian—not specifically the soup. The literal translation reminds me that this recipe is really a product of immigration. You don’t find it in glossy cookbooks, but in the spiral-bound collections put together by women’s leagues or church groups, tucked into pantries across the country. The covers often bore Ukraine’s national symbol, a blue trident, while the recipes inside were so spare you had to call your last remaining relative to figure out the missing steps.
Consider me your last remaining relative. When I finally asked my grandmother (my baba) how she makes her version, she admitted she’s been winging it for 50 years. The phrase “you just taste it” came up one too many times. My grandfather, chiming in from the background, gleefully declared the secret was to “boil the shit out of the cabbage.” Well, dear reader, I’ve tested and retested this recipe so you don’t have to wing it.
Baba’s original recipe started with two cans of Campbell’s Beef and Bacon soup as a base, bolstered with slow-cooked cabbage, carrots, onion and extra bacon and bacon fat for good measure. And while I’ve always loved the soup, adding vegetables to canned soup wasn’t really in keeping with the way I cook at home. So I turned to the spiral-bound Ukrainian Daughters cookbooks for a happy medium: a version built on chicken stock, canned no-salt-added black-eyed peas, some sauerkraut for tang, and plenty of tender slow-cooked cabbage—still finished with bacon and a little fat for flavor.
If you’ve always associated cabbage with crunchy coleslaw, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how sweet and mellow it becomes when slow-cooked in this soup. A base of chicken stock and black-eyed peas makes it deeply savory, while bacon adds a smoky hit of umami. Finished with a spoonful of sauerkraut for a cool, tangy crunch, each bowl is satisfying—you’ll find yourself going back for more.
The more recent waves of Ukrainian immigration to Canada have brought more cookbooks, and with them, another version of the dish—perhaps the original. Known as kapusniak, it’s quite different from the soup I grew up eating. Instead of fresh cabbage, it relies entirely on sauerkraut, simmered with vegetable stock and a single onion, and finished with a sprinkle of dill. Described as “zestful” in many of the Ukrainian cookbooks now found on store shelves and church bazaar tables, it can be so bracingly sour that recipe headnotes often suggest adding a spoonful or two of sugar to tame the bite. My version of cabbage soup has more balance, although both are hearty and nourishing.
Even when it’s served before Canadian standbys like barbecued steak, Thanksgiving turkey, Jell-O molds or pumpkin pie, our family’s kapusta is a savory reminder that no matter what the main course looks like, we will always be Ukrainian.
Photographer: Jake Sternquist, Food Stylist: Holly Dreesman, Prop Stylist: Gabriel Greco.
