Česká Kuchyně · The Czech Table

Czech Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Step into the old kitchens of Bohemia, where svíčková rests under a velvet cream sauce, dumplings rise light as clouds, and every buchta begins with real butter. Honest ingredients and deep flavor, the way the Czech lands have always cooked.

Explore the Recipes
Butter✦ Sádlo✦ Cream
An elegantly plated Czech dish on a dark restaurant table
✦ Svíčková na smetaně
From the recipe collection
Máslo

Butter First

Bohemia's kitchens were built on butter from village dairies. Every sauce, dumpling, and pastry in this collection begins with it, never with a refined seed oil.

Sádlo

Golden Sádlo

Sádlo, the rendered pork lard of the Czech larder, fries bramboraky to a crackling gold and carries a Sunday roast the way no vegetable oil can.

Nikdy

Never Vegetable Oil

No seed oils, no shortcuts. Only the traditional fats that the hospody and home kitchens of the Czech lands have trusted for generations.

✦
From Our Kitchen

Czech Bohemian Recipes

Six beloved dishes from the tables of old Bohemia, each cooked with the honest fats that bring out the best in every ingredient.

Neděle Svickova na smetane, sliced beef sirloin with a creamy root vegetable sauce

Svíčková na smetaně

Beef sirloin in cream sauce

3 hr 30 min·6 servings·Medium

The crown of the Czech Sunday table. Slow braised beef with root vegetables, bay, and allspice, finished into a silky cream sauce and served with bread dumplings.

Ingredients

  • 1.2 kg beef sirloin or eye of round, in one piece
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 60 g butter, plus 2 tbsp sádlo (lard) for searing
  • 2 carrots, roughly chopped
  • 1 parsley root or 2 parsnips, chopped
  • 1 small celeriac, about 200 g, chopped
  • 2 onions, quartered
  • 5 allspice berries, 5 black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 400 ml heavy cream, plus 1 tsp sugar and lemon to balance

Instructions

  1. Season the beef generously and sear it on all sides in the sádlo until deeply browned. Lift it out.
  2. In the same pot, melt the butter and let the carrots, parsley root, celeriac, and onions take on color for 8 to 10 minutes.
  3. Add the spices, bay, and vinegar, return the beef, and pour in water to come a third of the way up the meat.
  4. Cover and braise gently on the stove or at 160°C (325°F) for about 2 hours 30 minutes, turning once, until tender.
  5. Remove the beef and bay leaves, then blend the vegetables with the braising juices until completely smooth.
  6. Stir in the cream, simmer 10 minutes, and balance the sauce with sugar, lemon juice, and salt.
  7. Slice the beef across the grain, nap it with the sauce, and serve with bread dumplings and a spoon of cranberries if you like.
Šumava Pstruh na masle, a trout fillet glazed with browned butter and fresh herbs

Pstruh na másle

Trout in golden butter

25 min·2 servings·Easy

The quiet classic of Bohemia's cold streams and ponds. Fresh trout cooked gently in foaming butter with caraway and lemon, the way it is served in the Šumava foothills.

Ingredients

  • 2 whole trout, cleaned, or 4 fillets
  • Salt and white pepper
  • 2 tbsp plain flour, for dusting
  • 120 g butter, divided
  • 1 tbsp ghee or clarified butter
  • ½ tsp caraway seeds, lightly crushed
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • 3 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped
  • Lemon wedges, to serve
  • Boiled potatoes turned in butter, to serve

Instructions

  1. Pat the trout very dry, season inside and out, and dust lightly with flour.
  2. Warm the ghee with 40 g of the butter in a wide pan over medium heat until it foams.
  3. Cook the trout 4 to 5 minutes per side (3 minutes for fillets) until the skin is golden and the flesh flakes. Lift onto warm plates.
  4. Wipe the pan, add the remaining butter with the caraway, and let it turn a deep hazelnut brown, swirling constantly.
  5. Pull the pan off the heat, add the lemon juice, and let it hiss for a moment.
  6. Stir in the parsley and spoon the fragrant butter generously over the fish. Serve with buttered potatoes and lemon.
Hospoda Bramboraky, crisp golden potato pancakes with garlic and marjoram

Bramboráky

Crisp potato pancakes

40 min·4 servings·Easy

The beloved pancake of every Czech hospoda. Grated potatoes seasoned boldly with garlic and marjoram, fried in hot sádlo until the edges shatter like lace.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg starchy potatoes, peeled
  • 1 tsp salt, plus more to finish
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
  • 2 tsp dried marjoram
  • ½ tsp caraway seeds, crushed (optional)
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 tbsp plain flour
  • 2 tbsp whole milk, if needed to loosen
  • 150 g sádlo (pork lard), for frying

Instructions

  1. Grate the potatoes finely into a bowl, sprinkle with the salt, and let them stand 10 minutes.
  2. Squeeze the grated potato firmly by the handful to press out as much liquid as possible.
  3. Stir in the garlic, marjoram, caraway, pepper, eggs, and flour to make a thick batter, loosening with milk only if needed.
  4. Melt a generous layer of sádlo in a heavy skillet over medium high heat until it shimmers.
  5. Ladle in thin rounds of batter and fry 3 to 4 minutes per side until deeply golden and crisp at the edges.
  6. Keep the finished pancakes on a rack in a low oven while you fry the rest, adding sádlo as needed.
  7. Season with a last pinch of salt and serve hot, on their own or beside a glass of cold Czech lager.
Jižní Čechy Kulajda, a creamy dill and mushroom soup topped with a poached egg

Kulajda

Dill and mushroom soup

50 min·4 servings·Medium

South Bohemia in a bowl. A gently soured cream soup of forest mushrooms, potatoes, and fresh dill, crowned with a soft poached egg.

Ingredients

  • 40 g butter
  • 250 g fresh mushrooms, sliced, or 30 g dried forest mushrooms, soaked
  • 400 g waxy potatoes, diced
  • 1 litre water or light vegetable broth
  • 2 bay leaves and 4 black peppercorns
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 250 ml sour cream
  • 2 tbsp plain flour
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar, or to taste
  • A large bunch of fresh dill, chopped, plus 4 eggs for poaching

Instructions

  1. Melt the butter in a soup pot and let the mushrooms cook until their moisture is gone and they smell sweet.
  2. Add the potatoes, water, bay, peppercorns, and salt and simmer about 15 minutes until the potatoes are just tender.
  3. Whisk the sour cream with the flour until smooth, then temper it with a ladle of hot soup.
  4. Stir the cream mixture into the pot and simmer gently 8 to 10 minutes so the soup thickens and loses any floury taste.
  5. Season with the vinegar, a little at a time, until the soup is pleasantly tangy, then fold in most of the dill.
  6. Poach the eggs in barely simmering water for 3 minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks still soft.
  7. Ladle the kulajda into deep bowls, settle a poached egg in each, and finish with the remaining dill.
Pekárna Buchty, golden baked yeast buns dusted with flour on a bakery board

Buchty

Baked plum jam buns

2 hr 45 min·12 buns·Medium

The sweet yeast buns of every Czech grandmother's oven. Pillowy dough folded around plum jam, packed shoulder to shoulder in a buttered pan and baked to a glossy gold.

Ingredients

  • 500 g plain flour
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 70 g sugar
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 250 ml warm whole milk
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 100 g soft butter, plus 60 g melted for brushing
  • 1 tsp vanilla sugar or grated lemon zest
  • 250 g thick plum jam (povidla)
  • Icing sugar, to dust

Instructions

  1. Whisk the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt, then add the warm milk, yolks, soft butter, and vanilla sugar and knead 10 minutes to a supple dough.
  2. Cover and let it rise about 1 hour 15 minutes until doubled.
  3. Divide into 12 pieces, flatten each into a disc, and spoon a teaspoon of plum jam into the center.
  4. Pinch the edges closed into tight parcels and set them seam side down, snugly side by side, in a buttered baking dish.
  5. Brush generously with melted butter, cover, and let them rise another 30 minutes.
  6. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 25 to 30 minutes until deep golden, brushing once more with butter halfway.
  7. Cool briefly, dust thickly with icing sugar, and pull the buchty apart while still warm.
Kavárna Palacinky, thin golden crepes filled with sweet cheese and dusted with sugar

Palačinky

Czech crepes with tvaroh

35 min·4 servings·Easy

The dessert of Prague's kavárny. Thin, lacy crepes cooked in butter, rolled around sweetened tvaroh cheese and jam, and finished with a snowfall of sugar.

Ingredients

  • 250 g plain flour
  • 2 eggs
  • 500 ml whole milk
  • A pinch of salt and 1 tbsp sugar
  • 80 g butter, melted, divided
  • 250 g tvaroh or farmer's cheese
  • 3 tbsp icing sugar, plus more to dust
  • 1 tsp vanilla sugar and grated lemon zest
  • 3 tbsp sour cream
  • Apricot or plum jam, to serve

Instructions

  1. Whisk the flour, eggs, milk, salt, sugar, and 2 tbsp of the melted butter into a thin, smooth batter and rest it 15 minutes.
  2. Beat the tvaroh with the icing sugar, vanilla sugar, lemon zest, and sour cream until creamy.
  3. Brush a hot pan with melted butter and swirl in a thin layer of batter.
  4. Cook each crepe about 1 minute until lightly golden, flip, and give it 30 seconds more.
  5. Stack the finished crepes under a cloth, brushing the pan with butter between each one.
  6. Spread each crepe with the tvaroh cream and a ribbon of jam, then roll or fold into quarters.
  7. Dust with icing sugar and serve warm, with an extra spoon of sour cream if you like.
A cook working at a warm stove in a busy home kitchen
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Maxkro Kuchyne

Maxkro Kuchyne is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of the Czech lands, where lunch begins with a bowl of soup, sauces are blended until they shine like satin, and no one has ever measured the butter with a small spoon. We write these recipes down the way they are still cooked in family kitchens and village hospody, patiently, precisely, and always with the dumplings made from scratch.

Our only house rule is an old one: butter from the dairy, sádlo rendered slowly the traditional way, cream from the top of the jug and nothing else. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never sat on the tables we learned from.

Dobrou chuť, may it feed you well.