Salo: Ukraine's Most Misunderstood Food
The UAFest kitchen team
August 2026 · 6 min read
Korchma — the Ukrainian Tavern
Salo is a Ukrainian food made from slabs of pork back fat cured with salt, sometimes smoked, sliced paper-thin and eaten cold on dark bread with raw garlic. It is the food outsiders find hardest to understand and Ukrainians find hardest to explain, because the explanation is mostly about winters, farms and jokes.
It has been a Ukrainian staple for centuries: cheap, dense with energy, keeps without refrigeration, and made from the part of the animal that other cuisines render into lard.
What it actually is
The cut is the firm back fat, with or without a thin seam of meat. Salt draws out moisture and preserves it; garlic, black pepper, bay and coriander go on for flavour. Two to three weeks in the cold and it is ready.
Well-made salo is white to pale pink, firm, and clean-smelling. It slices thin without crumbling, and it should melt on the tongue rather than sit there.
The taste is mild and savoury: salt, garlic and pepper first, then a clean, buttery richness. Smoked salo adds wood smoke; a seam of meat adds chew.
Salo, lard and bacon: the difference
Each of these comes from the pig. The cut, and what happens to it after the cure, sets them apart.
- Salo — firm back fat, salt-cured for two to three weeks and eaten cold and uncooked, sliced thin.
- Lard — pork fat melted down and strained into a soft white cooking fat. Salo keeps its shape; lard is fat that has been rendered.
- Bacon — belly meat streaked with fat, cured, usually smoked, and cooked before it is eaten.
- Lardo — the Italian cousin: cured back fat with herbs, and the closest thing to salo in a Western deli.
How it is eaten
Cold, thin, on rye bread, with a raw garlic clove and a pickled cucumber. A shot of horilka beside it is traditional and optional. In a hot pan it becomes shkvarky — crackling — which goes over deruny, varenyky and buckwheat.
Chocolate-covered salo exists. It began as a joke in Lviv restaurants and stayed as a souvenir.
- Salo z chasnykom — cured with a heavy hand of garlic, the most common home version.
- Smoked salo — cold-smoked over fruit wood after curing.
- Shkvarky — diced and fried until crisp, poured fat and all over potato dishes.
Curing it at home
The dry cure is simple enough to write in one line: pack the fat in coarse salt with garlic and spice, keep it cold for two or three weeks, brush off the excess salt, and freeze it. Fat takes only as much salt as it needs, so over-salting is nearly impossible.
Buy the fat from a butcher who can tell you what it is; back fat from a fresh pig, at least 4 cm thick, with clean white colour and no smell.
Recipe
Salo z Chasnykom (Home-Cured Salo with Garlic)
Pork back fat dry-cured with salt, garlic and pepper. Time does the work.
- Prep
- 20 minutes
- Cook
- 14 days curing
- Total
- 14 days
- Makes
- 1 kg
Ingredients
Cure
- 1 kg pork back fat, at least 4 cm thick, skin on
- 200 g coarse non-iodised salt
- 1 whole head of garlic, sliced
- 2 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1 tbsp coriander seed, crushed
- 3 bay leaves, crumbled
Method
- 1Prepare the fatCut the slab into pieces about 10 by 15 cm. Scrape the skin clean and pat everything dry.
- 2Stud with garlicMake small slits across the fat with the tip of a knife and push a slice of garlic into each.
- 3CoatMix the salt with the pepper, coriander and bay. Roll each piece in the mixture, pressing it into every surface so nothing is bare.
- 4Cure coldPack the pieces into a container in a thick bed of the salt mixture, cover, and refrigerate for 14 days. Turn them every few days.
- 5FinishBrush off the loose salt, wipe the surface, wrap in paper or cloth and keep in the freezer. Slice it thin straight from frozen — it softens on the plate in a minute.
Notes from the kitchen
- The fat cannot take more salt than it needs, so the cure is forgiving; the timing is what matters.
- For smoked salo, cold-smoke the cured pieces over fruit wood for a few hours before wrapping.
- Slice with a thin, very sharp knife while the salo is still cold — it tears when warm.
The Korchma — the Ukrainian Tavern — is the sit-down corner of the festival field.
UAFest 2026 took place on Sunday, September 13 · Riverside Park, Carleton Place
What people ask
Cured pork back fat, salted with garlic and spices, sliced thin and eaten cold with rye bread. It is a Ukrainian staple with centuries of history.
It is eaten uncooked, though it is not raw in the ordinary sense — the salt cure changes and preserves it over two to three weeks.
Bacon comes from the belly and is usually cured, smoked and then cooked. Salo is the firmer back fat, cured and eaten cold without cooking.
Lard is pork fat melted down into a cooking fat. Salo is the solid back fat, cured with salt and eaten in thin slices; fry it and it gives off lard.
Ukrainian, Polish and other Eastern European delis and butchers keep it in the cold case, salted or smoked, often beside the kovbasa. To cure your own, ask a butcher for pork back fat (fatback) at least 4 cm thick.
Mild and savoury: salt, garlic and pepper first, then a clean, buttery richness that melts on the tongue. Smoked salo tastes of wood smoke, and a seam of meat adds chew.
Cured pork fat is eaten across Central and Eastern Europe — słonina in Poland, slănină in Romania, szalonna in Hungary, salo in Belarus and Russia. Ukraine is where it became part of the national identity, with its own songs, jokes and festivals.
It was cheap, kept without a fridge and carried a farming household through winter. That practicality turned into affection, and the affection turned into a national running joke.
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