With Easter just around the corner, I decided to create this mouth-watering article sharing the best traditional Easter Foods in Romania to know what we usually eat during the Easter celebrations – or what you will eat if you’re here during this time.
In my opinion, Easter foods are the best and most impressive, as there are quite a few cooked only for this occasion. And they’re delicious, as you will easily be able to imagine reading my descriptions and looking at the photos below.
And I love eating all these traditional foods, from lamb chops to Stufat and Pasca, and everything in between. I am sure you will love them too, so let’s not waste any time and check them out below.
Note: Don’t read this on an empty stomach! You’ve been warned!
Drob
Drob is the main reason why I always look forward to Easter here in Romania. It’s one of those foods that’s only prepared for this celebration, which makes it even more special.
Traditionally, it is a delicious meatloaf made from lamb organs like liver, heart, lungs, and kidneys – all mixed up with green onions, garlic, dill, and parsley and decorated with boiled eggs (as you can see in the photo above).
It might sound a bit disgusting, but the taste is amazing, trust me!
My wife makes a slightly modified version using chicken liver only (because we prefer the milder taste), and it’s perfect. I recommend trying both – or just the chicken liver one if you have never eaten Drob before.
If you’re curious about what we eat during other celebrations, check out our traditional Christmas foods here.
Lamb Soup (aka Bors de Miel)
Romanians rarely eat lamb throughout the year, but it’s the main type of meat during Easter. And since we love our soups and stews, a hearty lamb stew is a must for the celebratory feast.
This is usually a thick, delicious goo with a lot of fatty lamb meat, spring vegetables, rice or homemade pasta (called “taietei”) and a ton of tomato juice.
While I’m not a big fan of lamb meat, I have to admit that this soup is out of this world if done right – and there are plenty of ways to do it right.
Sarmale
Romanians will always find an excuse to prepare huge pots of Sarmale (cabbage rolls with minced meat), and even though lamb meat is the star of the Easter table, there’s always room for a Sarma or five.
There are actually jokes here regarding the fact that, whenever somebody serves you sarmale, you can’t get just one or two, but 5-6 at the very least. And you’ll eat them because they’re that good!
There are various ways to prepare them, but usually you have minced pork / beef meat, mixed with onions, various spices and sometimes rice, rolled in sauerkraut and boiled for hours in a mixture of the sauerkraut’s juice, tomato juice and water.
Lamb Chops
Grilled or baked lamb chops are another classic Easter dish and also one of my favorites.
It’s not always lamb chops, but also lamb ribs or any sort of a lamb steak, depending on what the family decides to have that year. Sometimes, you’ll get them all!
They’re usually served with crispy baked potatoes and fresh spring salad.
Curious to know how much this food might cost in a restaurant? Check out the article sharing beer & food prices in Romania to get an idea.
Stufat
A light, tasty stew made entirely of green onions, green garlic, curly dock and ramsons (aka wild garlic). You can also add some spinach, throw in some olives at the end, a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and you’re set.
There are other alternatives, like mixing it with some lamb meat and boiling them together for a thick, meaty stew, or you can add tomato juice for color and added flavor.
I like mine plain, especially since you’re already full of meat from all the other dishes you serve.
It’s a pretty demanding job to prepare it (washing all those leaves, then cutting them is a real chore), but the end result is surprisingly tasty. You can have it as a side dish for your lamb or enjoy it as it is.
This is one of my favorite spring dishes and I cheat a little bit and prepare it more often than just for Easter – it’s that good!
Salată de boeuf (Romanian Beef Salad)
Another dish that makes appearances at various Romanian celebrations, it deserves a spot on this list because you will most likely find it on many tables during the Easter celebrations, too.
Despite its French-sounding name, it’s truly Romanian at heart – with Eastern influences.
The salad consists of finely diced boiled beef or chicken (nobody will judge you for that) mixed with boiled potatoes, carrots, pickles, and peas, all combined in a creamy mayonnaise dressing.
It’s usually decorated with an extra layer of mayonnaise, but also intricate designs from olives, pickled peppers and parsley, it’s tasty and filling, making you wonder how do we find room for all this food during this time of the year.
I recommend checking out my article sharing the best traditional Romanian foods for even more goodies you can expect to find on the Easter table.
Pască
Pasca might look like a simple cheesecake at first, but it surely tastes like Easter heaven!
This pie, made from fresh Romanian cheese mixed with sugar, raisins, and flavors like vanilla or rum, is baked to perfection – moist on the inside, but with a crispy crust on the outside.
I saw that you get variants of this in supermarkets (including Lidl), but they’re still far away from the real deal in terms of taste. So try to enjoy a real, homemade one, to experience its entire goodness!
Cozonac
Similar to sarmale, cozonac is a Romanian dessert that’s usually baked for any special occasion – Easter included.
The photo above shows my wife’s first try back in 2014, and they were delicious.
Made from a sweet, fluffy dough rolled with an even sweeter mixture of walnuts, cocoa and raisins, then baked to perfection, these are perfect, simple sweets.
There are all sorts of variants available, including those with chocolate filling, Turkish delight, and various other combinations, but the walnut ones are the traditional bits you have to try.
Easter Eggs
Last but not least, we have the one item that won’t be missing from any Easter feast: the traditional painted Easter Eggs.
While it’s not Romanians alone that have them, we do have some world-famous painted eggs from the Bucovina region, while others come in various colors and models.
Romanians don’t have the Easter egg hunt tradition, but there’s one that’s equally enjoyable: egg knocking. Everyone grabs a decorated egg, taps it against their opponent’s, and whoever’s egg survives intact is the winner.
Kids, in particular, enjoy this tradition, sometimes using all sorts of tricks to win the contests, but this is something everybody does. We can go as far as saying that you haven’t truly experienced Easter in Romania if you haven’t knocked eggs at least once during the celebration.
Vegetarian or Vegan Considerations
Romanian cuisine is usually very meat-focused, but vegans are gaining ground and more and more traditional foods are adapted to fit their needs.
While some foods are vegan-friendly by default (like the Stufat), others can be adapted – you can make the “Beef salad” without any meat and with vegan mayo, you can focus on salads made from fresh spring vegetables, make the drob out of mushrooms or the sarmale with mushrooms and rice.
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So… there you have it! These are the traditional dishes that Romanians eat during the Easter holidays and the reasons why I usually gain so much weight during that time of the year.
Also, if you want to brag about your Romanian language skills, this is how you say Happy Easter in Romanian: Paste fericit!
I have an entire article dedicated to this matter, sharing various Easter Greetings and traditions, so make sure to read it as well.
Also, if you tried something delicious during the Easter holidays here in Romania, don’t hesitate to let us all know by commenting below!
Having lived in Romania for over 4 decades, I am here to tell you everything about this beautiful country. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Journalism, I love traveling and I’ve been writing about Romania since 2013. Currently living in Constanta.
Let’s toss in a new comment! I still have fond memories of sarmale. I never associated them with Easter; I ate them every chance I got at all times of the year! I hope I haven’t already told this story, but I had a special Easter experience in a small village. I had befriended a Romanian who was “in training” to become a priest, and for Easter he invited me to go to this small town where a friend of his was the pastor. I was allowed to sit behind the partition in the front of the church. The pastor had to keep singing/chanting loudly while he was engaged in a lot of hectic activity. The parishioners couldn’t see anything from the other side of the partition. Sometimes the pastor would gesticulate that he couldn’t find something or that we should help him in some way, all the while singing in a loud voice. The Easter mass lasted all through the night until daybreak, but there never was a dull moment. It was truly an unforgettable experience and an honor to be allowed to look “behind the scenes.”
Haha, great story! I always wondered what happens behind the curtains. I do remember when I was younger and I spent the entire night in front of the church with a crowd of people, waiting for the “light” (from the candles) to be passed over. It was interesting as well.
Wife Romanian must be an excellent chef. You’re quite a lucky fella!
As pour moi, I follow the “Mister Rogers School of Eating”: Never eat anything that once had a mother;-)
I bet faux meat could be substituted in most of the dishes requiring meat.
Can’t imagine the effort it takes to decorate those eggs! Moi would have them painted on unbreakable porcelain (is that an oxymoron?) or some type of plastic egg to save for future years of Easters. I would surely cry if one of those beauties cracked.;-(
Do you have Easter baskets full of chocolate bunnies, Peeps, candies, and little (or big;-)) toys for us kids? Those pre-made made, humongous Easter baskets are a mainstay here in the USA.
I had to Google “Peeps” to find out what they are, but yes, we do have those “gift baskets” with all sorts of Easter-related sweets and goodies. They’re still not extremely popular as people still prefer to assemble their own, but more and more types seem to become available in the stores each year.