Cooking bigos: Polish recipe

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Despite some common Slavic features, Polish cuisine is still very distinctive and original. One of its central dishes is the famous bigos. The Polish recipe for this soup is quite complex and laborious, but the result is beyond praise. Moreover, the ingredients in it are quite affordable. If there is not enough time, you can try to simplify the recipe or even make bigos in a slow cooker, but for the first acquaintance it is still worth trying. Try to follow all the rules of the classic recipe. So, let's prepare classic bigos.

Polish Recipe: Essential Preparations

Many decades ago, every decent Polish housewife had an impressive tub or pot full of bigos in her pantry. The more it stays cool, the fuller its aroma will be. Such a dish could be treated to an unexpected guest, to feed a wandering traveler or hunter, and it’s hard to come up with something better for a festive table. Bigos was also prepared for the Christmas evening. The Polish recipe has not changed much even now. You will have to be patient - it takes three days to cook it. So, take three dried pears and fill them with half a glass of dry red wine, leave overnight. Pour a handful of dried mushrooms with water,leave for an hour.

Rinse and boil until tender, strain the broth. Melt two tablespoons of rendered lard, known as lard, in a deep frying pan. Peel and finely chop two large onions, fry in fat. Add various meat products to the onion, there should be about a kilogram in total. The main secret of success is diversity. It is best to use boiled beef, and boiled pork, and fried pork, and a couple of pieces of duck or chicken, several different types of smoked sausages and sausages, as well as fatty ham. All this must be cut into small cubes before being sent to the pan. Twenty minutes after the start of frying, everything must be transferred to a deep, half-filled pot with water, in which bigos will be cooked. The Polish recipe advises to proceed as follows: pour tomato juice into the lard left in the pan after frying, boil and put chopped fresh white cabbage there. Stew for a quarter of an hour, covered with a lid, then send to pre-prepared meat. Cut the pears soaked in wine in advance into strips, and mix the wine with a tablespoon of plum jam. Add it all to the soup. Finally, the last component is an apple. Take two, preferably sweet and sour, peel and cut into slices in a saucepan. Add bay leaf and send to the fire.

Cook bigos

Cooking bigos should be very long, only then the products reveal all their tastes and aromasas harmonious as possible. As soon as the dish begins to boil, add some sugar, pepper and s alt to it. Taste it - it should be very spicy. Simmer covered for sixty minutes, stirring occasionally. If bigos is left unattended, it will burn very quickly. If the liquid boils away too quickly, add a little water, but remember that the bigos should be thick enough. After an hour, the dish must be removed in the cold for a day. After a day, put it out again for about half an hour and remove it again. Finally, put out the last half hour. Only now the classic soup can be called ready. This long cooking time really delivers amazing flavor, so you won't regret your efforts.