
Sharing drinks with friends is fun. The morning after when you have a screaming headache? Not as much. While there’s not much else to do with a hangover aside from waiting for it to pass, that hasn’t stopped people from coming up with their own hangover cures. Some of the odd ones that came up while researching this were drinking water from pickles and sauerkraut. But that’s not exactly the yummiest option and for that, we turn to the hangover foods enjoyed all around the world.
To be clear, a lot of hangover foods from other countries don’t necessarily carry a reputation for being hangover-only meals, but the fact that they’re all comfort foods with high amounts of fat and salt makes them a go-to for a post-tequila pick-me-up.
1. Haejangguk (South Korea)

Let’s kick things off with a dish that literally has ‘hangover soup’ in its name. Haejangguk or ox bone hangover soup is a flavor-rich soup made by slowly boiling bone, marrow, and ligaments for hours to create a dish capable of curbing a soju-induced hangover. All that salt and fat creates a sticky collagen substance that you can taste as you slurp your ox soup.
The broth and vegetables of haekjangguk are prepared separately. The bones are boiled for four hours and then strained before being stored in a fridge. While some cooks avoid fat in their dishes, getting the fat to congeal is the goal of this dish. You know your broth is good when it cools down and its surface turns into a jello-like substance. As for the vegetables, they’re mostly napa cabbage and are added to a pot of broth which is then boiled.
2. Sinigang (Philippines)

There are tons of ways to make sinigang, a sour soup from the Philippines. Variants of this dish are distinguished based on the meat used in them. The most popular variant is pork followed by milkfish and salmon, but other fringe variations include chicken or beef. You will sometimes hear sinigang be called ‘tamarind’ soup, but this is a misnomer since the souring agent for the dish varies from region to region. Guava, green mangos, and bilimbi can all be used for giving your sinigang its distinctive sour flavor.
Sinigang usually starts with boiling onions, tomatoes, and green chili peppers together in a pot before adding seasoning and your souring agent of choice. This is followed by the meat and, lastly, the leafy vegetables which are typically variants of Chinese cabbage.
3. Phat Khi Mao (Thailand)

Another hangover food with a straightforward name, phat khi mao or drunken noodles is a Thai hangover solution that packs a lot of heat. As with many Asian dishes, there’s really no standard phat khi mao, but one common thread is that they all use ho fun noodles which are flat white rice noodles. Some versions use chicken, as seen in the image above, but seafood variants made of shrimp aren’t unheard of.
Preparing phat khi mao starts with softening your noodles. Similar to konjac noodles, these noodles are soaked in hot water for about 15 minutes while your meat and aromatics, such as bird’s eye chili and Thai basil, are sauteed in a wok.
4. Poutine (Canada)

The Canadians were really onto something when they came up with poutine, a French fry dish drenched in gravy and mixed with cheese curds. It’s a cozy no-fuss dish that’s easy to slap together and even easier to enjoy, especially if you’re not really keen on tasting a lot of flavors while your head is still spinning.
Poutine is as straightforward as it gets. Fries, gravy, and cheese curds, it isn’t rocket science. But it’s simple dishes like this that benefit the most from good execution. Seasons and Suppers, a Canadian food blog, recommends making your fries from scratch by cutting up Russet potatoes and soaking them in cold water for at least an hour. They are then blotted and subject to their first round of frying. After they fry a little, but aren’t browned, take them out and increase your oil’s temperature before adding them back to the oil to get them to crisp.

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5. Ciorba de Burta (Romania)

Ciorba de burta is a Romanian tripe soup with a creamy texture thanks to the sour cream that goes in the dish. The spicy, creamy flavor is made even richer by the choice of meat. Unlike regular beef meat, beef tripe has a more complex, almost liver-like taste that isn’t as strong as actual liver, making it easy to adapt to even if you’re not a big fan of innards. The chewy texture of the tripe adds an interesting twist to the dish.
Ciorba de burta consists of tripe, carrots, celery, parsnips, and parsley as well as beef bones for making the broth. The ingredients are boiled together while a mixture of sour cream and eggs is made separately. The egg and sour cream mix is then poured slowly into the pot to avoid cooking the egg and cream, kind of like how you would make egg drop soup.
6. Rassolnik (Russia)

If you like the idea of a sour soup like sinigang but don’t have the key ingredients for the dish, you can try Rassolnik, a sour soup from Russia that’s made with dill pickles. Rassolnik is a light broth soup mostly made of chicken, potatoes, carrots, and, of course, dill. Considering its country of origin, this hangover food has enough comforting powers to get rid of the last traces of vodka in your system.
Rassolnik starts with making a chicken broth to which potatoes and barley are then added. This is left to simmer while onions and carrots are sauteed separately to bring out their flavors before being added to the soup. Shredded cook chicken is added to the soup together with dill pickles. Of course, this is just one way to make Rassolnik as other recipes use beef instead of chicken.
7. Lihapiirakka (Finland)

Once you count out stews, soups, and fried chicken, few dishes are as cozy as the many versions of meat pie that exist all around the world. This hangover food from Finland called lihapiirakka tastes and feels like a hug in a pocket of dough. Empanada fans will find the flavors of this hangover food familiar as it’s stuffed with rice, diced meat, chopped boiled eggs, and onions. Don’t let the stuffing fool you though, the more notable flavors of this dish are in the dough which is similar to brioche. What you get is a chewy, bread-like texture that brings dinner rolls to mind.
8. Dรถner Kebab (Turkey)

At this point, who hasn’t heard of kebab? It’s a global favorite that has made its name outside of its home in Turkey. The dish is flavorful meat and vegetables tightly wrapped in a blanket of flatbread, either pita or naan, that you can chow down on the way to work after a morning of heavy drinking.
9. The English Breakfast (United Kingdom)

A lot of hangover foods are eaten at breakfast for obvious reasons, but few of them are explicitly breakfast-only meals with the exception of the famous English breakfast. This plate of greasy goodness is a collection of fried sausages, eggs, bacon, and ham. It’s often served with tea or coffee — great for waking you up after a night of shots — and has regional variants depending on which part of the U.K. it comes from. Some versions use Irish soda bread, haggis, and Cornish hogs pudding, according to Historic UK.
10. Rosรณลย (Poland)

Rosรณลย is Polish chicken noodle soup made with chicken broth, carrots, and fine noodles. Unlike the other soups here that involve separate cooking for different components of the dish, this one only calls for the noodles to be cooked separately while everything else is basically a “throw it all in the pot” type of deal. That said, don’t make it with just chicken meat as the flavor of this dish heavily depends on what goes into the broth. The neck, wings, and organs of the chicken are all seasoned and boiled together for about an hour before the vegetables and noodles are added.