Not Noodles but Porridge ── Ukraine’s Hrechka, the World’s Third-Largest Buckwheat Producer

Buckwheat groats, called “hrechka” (гречка) in Ukrainian, are one of the grains eaten most often at the Ukrainian table. Unlike in Japan, though, they are not ground into flour and made into noodles; the whole groats are boiled to make porridge (kasha). According to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ukraine ranked third in the world for buckwheat production for four years running, from 2021 through 2024.

The bigger picture of Ukrainian cuisine is covered in Ukraine’s Table: Borscht’s UNESCO Listing, and Cuisine That Changes by Region. Here we focus on buckwheat as a crop: how it is eaten, its name, and how much of it is produced.

Boiled Whole, Not Made into Noodles

The entry “Traditional foods” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), compiled by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, lists buckwheat (kasha), millet, and cornmeal from the Hutsul region and Zakarpattia among the grains most commonly eaten in Ukraine. The same entry describes dishes made by boiling or baking groats of wheat, barley, buckwheat, millet, oats, and corn as “old Ukrainian foods.”

According to the same entry, besides porridge, buckwheat has also been used in the following ways:

• Lemishka (лемішка): a thick porridge made by kneading buckwheat flour
• Salamakha (саламаха): a thin porridge made by boiling buckwheat or rye flour in water
• Kvasha (кваша): a sweet dish made by fermenting buckwheat or rye flour
• A filling for pyrizhky (small pies) and varenyky (boiled dumplings)
• A filling for holubtsi (cabbage rolls), where groats of buckwheat or millet are wrapped instead of rice or meat
• A side dish for boiled or roasted meat

As a plant, buckwheat does not belong to the same grass family as wheat or rice. IEU’s entry “Grains” states that wheat, rye, barley, rice, oats, and corn belong to the grass family, while buckwheat belongs to the knotweed family (Polygonaceae) — the same family as the buckwheat used for noodles in Japan.

The Encyclopedia Says It Came from Asia in the 11th Century

IEU’s “Traditional foods” entry explains that rye arrived in Ukraine around 2,000 years ago, and that buckwheat then came in from Asia in the 11th century. It does not describe the specific route by which it was introduced.

A Name Linked to “Greek”

The entry for “гречка” in the Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (Етимологічний словник української мови), compiled by the Potebnia Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, connects this word to “грек” (a Greek) and explains it as the name of a plant that reached the East Slavic peoples through the Greeks. The same entry states that Polish hreczka and Slovak hrečka were borrowed from Ukrainian.

What the dictionary gives is an explanation of how the word came to be, not a record showing that buckwheat was actually brought from Greece. It needs to be read as an answer to a different question from IEU’s explanation, seen above, that it came “from Asia.”

Production Varies More Than Twofold From Year to Year

According to FAOSTAT, the FAO’s statistical database, Ukraine’s buckwheat production over the 10 years from 2015 to 2024 ranged from 85,020 tonnes (2019) to 210,720 tonnes (2023). The harvested area also moved widely, from 69,200 hectares to 185,300 hectares.

Figures from 2022 onward do not include the territories occupied by Russia after its full-scale invasion, or parts of the combat zone. The reason the State Statistics Service changed the scope of its data collection is explained in Wheat Harvest Down Both in Volume and Area by Three-Tenths: Ukraine’s Three Major Crops in Numbers.

Ukraine Ranks Third in the World, Russia First

Lining up production by country in the same FAOSTAT database, the order from 2021 through 2024 does not change: first Russia, second China (mainland), third Ukraine. Ukraine’s share of the world total was about 9.8% in 2023, and around 6% in each of the other three years.

The ranking is also shaped by how each country compiles its statistics. Ukraine is the only country in this table with an official figure for all four years; the figures for China and the world total include FAO estimates. “Third in the world” is a ranking with that qualification attached.