The Comforts of Polish Comfort Foods
Polish food – often rich in calories, full of carbs, potatoes and butter, consisting of soft, creamy textures and warm, hearty flavours, frequently made with simple ingredients – seems designed to give solace and provide a sense of well-being and safety to anyone who tries it.
It’s a well-known fact that in trying times, people turn to food for comfort. ‘I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war’s fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy and ever-increasing enjoyment,’ wrote American food writer M.F.K. Fisher in her legendary wartime cookbook How to Cook a Wolf.
Here’s an array of comforting Polish dishes to make at home when you are feeling down – whether you’re worried about everything that is going on in the world, tired of social distancing, or just feeling out of sorts.
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Potatoes, schabowy & new cabbage, Nakryto Restaurant, Kraków, photo: Jakub Porzycki/AG
It would be impossible to name just one dish made with Poland’s favourite vegetable. Potato has been our companion in times of poverty and war and is incredibly versatile. A bowl of mash with lots of butter and a sprinkling of dill may not be particularly Polish, but potato-stuffed pierogi and gołąbki, potato soup (kartoflanka) and regional potato dishes from Podlasie such as kiszka and babka ziemniaczana definitely are. If you need something quick, boiled potatoes with butter and dill, washed down with Polish kefir or soured milk will do the trick. And when you have more time to cook at home, you can always make potato dumplings.
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Beef rolada, Silesian dumplings and red cabbage, photo: Damian Klamka/East News
Kopytka, kluski śląskie, pyzy, kartacze, szare kluski… the array of potato-based dumplings from different Polish regions is so wide that it shames the Italians who only have gnocchi. Jokes aside, gnocchi and Polish kopytka are very similar, while kluski śląskie (or Silesian dumplings) are made with only potato flour and are therefore gluten free, pyzy are usually stuffed with either meat or cheese, just like kartacze, which have their own distinct shape and are made with raw potato dough similar to szare kluski – grey dumplings… The list goes on. Whichever you choose, serve them with fried onions and – unless you are vegetarian – crispy lardons.
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Nalesniki, photo: Damian Klamka / East News
We are not done with flour: naleśniki, or Polish crêpes, are one of the simplest flour-based dishes to make and for many exemplify the most nostalgic flavours of childhood. In naleśnikarnie – the Polish equivalent of crêperies – you can eat them with all sorts of fillings, from bacon and egg to salmon and cream cheese, and from bolognese-style sauce to spinach and cream. Yet the most traditional filling by far is sweetened cottage cheese – and obviously sweet naleśniki (which are also delicious when filled with jam) are not eaten for dessert, but as a main course, right after soup.
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When it comes to soup, most culinary cultures have a version of a warming, healing broth. In Poland we have rosół, which is made with chicken and/or beef, a bunch of vegetables we call włoszczyzna (or ‘Italian stuff’) which includes carrot, leek, parsley root and celeriac, onions charred over a gas stove and spices such as bay leaf, allspice, pepper and lovage. It has a fascinating history and can easily be called the ‘Polish penicillin’.
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Chef Krzysztof Górski trying to beat the Guinness Record in cooking the biggest tomato soup in the world, Dwikozy, photo: Jarosław Kubalski /AG
Research shows Poles are among the world’s biggest soup lovers – żurek for Easter and at every wedding party, beetroot barszcz for Christmas, chłodnik when it gets warm out. Yet probably our most beloved everyday soup is pomidorowa – the humble tomato soup. The most puzzling thing about it is that although we know it ‘should’ be made with fresh tomatoes, many of us still prefer the frugal milk bar version made with tomato paste and seasoned with Vegeta (a mix of spices created in Yugoslavia which is basically the perfect Eastern European flavour enhancer). Tomato soup is also the basis of one of the most fundamental culinary conflicts in Polish culture: should it be served with noodles* or rice?
6. Gołąbki & klopsy in sauce
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Gołąbki in a mushroom sauce, photo: Leszek Glasner/East News
The importance of tomato paste in Polish cuisine is not limited to soup: tomato paste based sauce, creamy and thickened with flour, accompanies some of our favourite meat dishes such as the famous gołąbki – cabbage rolls filled with rice and ground meat – and klopsy or pulpety which are the Polish equivalent of meatballs. Delicately flavoured ground meat’s soft texture also goes well with other creamy sauces such as mushroom or dill sauce, and – obviously – is usually served with a pile of mashed potatoes on the side.
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Traditional bread with potatoes and soured milk, photo: Tomasz Stańczyk/AG
When forced to stay at home, people all over the world start reading, watching Netflix, rearranging their wardrobes and cooking things from scratch. Poles bake bread. During the pandemic, social media in Poland have been filled with people sharing their family recipes and even their jars of leaven for sourdough bread, which is an institution and our national pride. Bread and butter are universally beloved, yet there is something uniquely Polish about a buttered slice of rye sourdough with a crispy crust – or at least we like to think so (we’re very patriotic about it, so let us have this).
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Yeast cake, the final of Smaki Regionów culinary festival, Białystok, photo: Agencja Wschód/Forum
We don’t only bake bread though! In the first days of the pandemic not only pasta and rice disappeared from supermarket shelves, but also flour and yeast. There are few more comforting smells in the world then the smell of a freshly baked yeast cake sprinkled with streusel and topped with a decent amount of butter and jam. Yeast cake smells like your babcia’s smile, like the holidays, like running barefoot in the garden. To sum up – it smells like happiness.
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Budyń with berries, photo: Karol Makurat/Reporter/East News
While baking breads and cakes needs some time and work (which in itself can be comforting and therapeutic), sometimes a quick and simple pleasure is what is really needed. Enter: budyń. In five minutes and with just a bit of mixing you can have a bowl of sweet, gooey, milky goodness. What exactly is budyń? It is very similar to a custard and consists of potato starch, sugar and flavourings which you mix with warm milk and boil for a couple of minutes until the mixture thickens. The most popular flavours are vanilla and chocolate, and, if you don’t feel like making it yourself, you can buy it in a packet at the store. It tastes like love in a bowl.
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Ptasie mleczko, photo: Marek Wiśniewski/Puls Biznesu/East News
There’s no denying the magical power of chocolate. All around the world in times of sorrow people turn to this magnesium and endorphin-filled delicacy, yet chocolate choices differ across the globe. The most popular choices in Poland include our iconic sweets such as torcik wedlowski (a large, circular chocolate-covered wafer by Poland's most famous chocolatier), Prince Polo (Poland’s most popular chocolate bar, interestingly enough also including wafers), ptasie mleczko (chocolate candy with a marshmallow-like centre) and chocolate-covered prunes. A couple of those, and suddenly you start believing that everything is going to be all right!
Written by Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, Apr 2020