I’d like to promise that the recipes I include under my new ‘My Polish Kitchen‘ banner won’t be all about cabbage! Polish food is so much more than that, yet it would be wrong not to pay homage to Poland’s national dish – Bigos, or Hunter’s Stew.

There are probably as many individual recipes for Bigos as there are cooks in Poland. Bigos is a savoury dish, traditionally made with sauerkraut (kapusta kiszona) or cabbage and meat. It used to be cooked in a cauldron or on a camp fire and Polish hunters would add whatever meat they had to hand, for example, venison or other game. It is even mentioned by Adam Mickiewicz in the epic poem Pan Tadeusz.

Without these, still a dish of no mediocre worth
Is bigos, made from legumes, best grown in the earth;
Pickled cabbage comes foremost, and properly chopped,
Which itself, is the saying, will in ones mouth hop;
In the boiler enclosed, with its moist bosom shields
Choicest morsels of meat raised on greenest of fields;
Then it simmers, till fire has extracted each drop
Of live juice, and the liquid boils over the top,
And the heady aroma wafts gently afar.

~ Pan Tadeusz, Adam Mickiewicz

Bigos evolved and became a national staple; it is frugal (cabbage is plentiful in Poland!) and keeps well.  Almost any kind of sausage or meat can be added. Smoked meats or sausages (such as kabanos) are ideal, too, adding extra flavour, along with juniper berries, caraway, bay leafs. Some like it very sour, whilst others prefer to sweeten it a little with honey or prunes. I’ve also seen recipes with a little tomato paste added. My Mama’s secret is to make it a tiny bit creamy by adding a little mushroom soup.  The real trick is to cook it for a long time, on a low heat, or to re-heat it to intensify the flavour in the days after it has been cooked.

Bigos is a great crowd-pleaser and it had graced our family table on almost every celebratory occasion!

SMACZNEGO!