🍢 SNACK
Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls)
Finely grated raw potato squeezed dry, shaped around a cube of cheese, rolled in flour and fried until crisp and golden, a Belarusian bar snack served hot with sour cream.
Belarusian · medium · serves 4
prep 35 min · cook 25 min
~599 cal · 15g protein · 55g carbs · 36g fat · 6g fiber · 3g sugars · 17g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
↓ Jump to Recipe
AI-generated illustration
Tsybryki are small, crisp balls of grated potato, one of the many ways Belarusian cooks turn the country's favourite vegetable into something to eat with the hands. The national tourism site calls them a good snack, and in bars they come out hot with sour cream beside a glass of cold beer.
They are made much like draniki, the famous potato pancakes. Raw potato is grated very finely and pressed in a cloth to get rid of the liquid, and a little flour holds it together. The mixture is rolled into balls, each with a piece of cheese hidden in the middle in the version most people know today, coated in flour and fried in lard or oil until the outside is crackling and brown.
Older recipes make them tiny and plain, the size of a cherry, and some cooks fill them with meat or mushrooms instead of cheese. Eaten hot, with sour cream and garlic or a spoon of melted fat, they work as a snack, a starter or a side dish.
Saved recipes and passport stamps are kept on this device. Sign in to keep them across your devices and leave reviews.
Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
- 1 kg floury potatoes
- 3 tbsp plain flour (for the mixture)
- 1 tsp salt
- 120 g semi-hard cheese (such as a mild Gouda-style cheese), cut into 1 cm cubes
- 4 tbsp plain flour (for coating)
- 300 ml sunflower oil, for frying
- 150 ml sour cream, to serve
- 1 clove garlic, crushed, optional, stirred into the sour cream
Instructions
- 1Peel the potatoes and grate them on the finest side of the grater into a bowl.
- 2Tip the grated potato into a clean cloth over a bowl and twist and squeeze it hard until no more liquid comes out. Let the juice stand for a few minutes, pour it off carefully and scrape the white starch from the bottom back into the potato.✎ Chef’s noteThe drier the potato, the better the balls hold together and the crisper they fry.
- 3Mix the potato with the flour and salt. Take a walnut-sized piece, flatten it in your palm, put a cube of cheese in the middle and close the potato around it, rolling it into a tight ball. Roll each ball in the coating flour.
- 4Heat the oil about 2 cm deep in a heavy frying pan over medium heat. Fry the balls in batches without crowding for 6 to 8 minutes, turning them often, until deep golden all over and cooked through. Drain on paper towels.✎ Chef’s noteTest the first one: if it browns in less than 5 minutes, turn the heat down so the potato inside has time to cook.
- 5Stir the garlic into the sour cream if you like and serve the tsybryki hot, with the sour cream for dipping.
Belarusian home and tavern tradition.
Ratings & reviews
Cooked it? Rate this dish:
No account needed. Sign in to leave a full review with a comment.
Cooked it?
Kept on this device, no account needed. Sign in to leave a review and keep your passport across your devices.
No reviews yet, be the first to cook it.
🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Minsk. Belarus is regularly ranked first in the world for potato consumption per head, at around 160 kilos a year, and more than three hundred potato dishes have been recorded. Past the potato it is rye bread, gathered mushrooms, salo, salted pork fat, and pots baked slowly in the oven.
🗺️
Belarus. Belarusian food is potato country at its purest, draniki pancakes, hearty stews, and dark rye bread. Mushrooms, pork, and dairy anchor a resourceful, cool-climate Eastern European table.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Belarus
DranikiCrisp-edged potato pancakes fried golden and served with a generous spoon of sour cream.
Manna KashaSmooth semolina milk porridge, lump-free and lightly sweet, topped with jam or butter.
MachankaA rich pork and sour-cream gravy for dunking soft potato pancakes, a filling Belarusian country dish.
Browse all Belarus recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Skillet or frying pan.
Storing it: Fried food is best eaten fresh while crisp. Re-crisp leftovers in a hot oven or air fryer; the microwave makes them soft.
Make it a Belarus meal
Biarozavik (Belarusian Fermented Birch Sap)Drink
KulagaDessert
Similar dishes from around the world
Empanadas de Viento (Ecuadorian Fried Cheese Empanadas)Ecuador
Catrachitas (Honduran Fried Tortillas with Beans and Cheese)Honduras
Kabab Bahraini (Bahraini Chickpea Flour Fritters)Bahrain
Obatzda (Bavarian Cheese Spread)Germany
Klui-Klui (Beninese Peanut Sticks)Benin
Baya Kyaw (Burmese Split Pea Fritters)Myanmar
Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls)?
Finely grated raw potato squeezed dry, shaped around a cube of cheese, rolled in flour and fried until crisp and golden, a Belarusian bar snack served hot with sour cream.
Where does Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls) come from?
Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls) is a Belarusian dish from Minsk, Belarus.
Can Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls) be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls) recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions. Treat the substitutions as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls) safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we still count coconut as a tree nut to be cautious, although the FDA stopped listing it as one in 2025), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Tsybryki (Belarusian Fried Potato and Cheese Balls) take to make?
About 60 minutes total (35 minutes prep, 25 minutes cooking), serving 4.
Get the Sunday Spin
One dish from somewhere in the world, in your inbox every Sunday. No spam, just dinner inspiration you can cook that day.