What’s So Special About BIGOS?

bigos-fot_darius_dzinnik_gettyimages-1358823447-s.jpg, default, Polish bigos cooked according to an old recipe with wine and plum, photo: Darius Dzinnik / Getty Images

#polish cuisine

Recipes

Today, ‘bigos’ – often referred to in English as ‘hunter’s stew’ – is a sauerkraut stew and a dish you should really consider putting on your ‘must try’ list if you are on a quest to explore local Polish cuisine and culture. It is true that it may be a controversial experience as the stew is an acquired taste with some very strong sour notes. However, it is not just a staple in our culinary tradition, but also a part of Polish literary heritage. What’s so special about this dish?

Nowadays, the most popular bigos recipe combines sauerkraut and meat – but there is also a vegetarian version connected to the Polish fasting tradition. Meat and no-meat versions contain a lot of other ingredients such as mushrooms, dried or smoked plums, nuts, honey, red wine and even caramel. The list of meats you can add to bigos is equally impressive: beef, pork, sausages and game. Honestly, there is no one canonical recipe for a perfect Polish bigos. Regions and even individual cooks have their own versions, which differ when it comes to proportions and special ingredients added to achieve the perfect, unique taste.

'Pan Tadeusz', directed by Andrzej Wajda, photo: Canal+

The cooks' aim has always been quite ambitious as they want to prepare a dish that is a perfect combination of sour, sweet, salty and umami. Sounds intriguing? Well, after all, it did inspire one of the masters of the Polish language, Adam Mickiewicz, who described it in his epic poem – Pan Tadeusz – about the adventures of a group of aristocrats in the Lithuanian countryside. It is a classic from the 19th century and, since its publication in 1834, it has been studied by each generation of Poles for its literary merits, but apparently there were some things which proved to be impossible to convey in speech even for the great Mickiewicz. That included the taste of bigos. Why was that?

According to the poet, it was simply impossible to describe the wonderful taste and colour of the dish accompanied by its marvellous smell, as it was something that could be fully appreciated only by a hungry person's stomach. Moreover, Mickiewicz was adamant that bigos was for a healthy and active country nobleman and tasted best eaten after a successful hunt in the Lithuanian forests.

In the pots warmed the bigos; mere words cannot tell

Of its wondrous taste, colour and marvellous smell.

One can hear the words buzz, and the rhymes ebb and flow,

But its content no city digestion can know.

To appreciate the Lithuanian folk song and folk food,

You need health, to live on the land, and be back from the wood.

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 one’s 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.

(trans. Marcel Weyland)

As we can see, the poet kindly and in a few elegant verses left a very generic cooking instruction. First, you need a big pot that preferably should be hanging over a bonfire (imagine a dense forest growing all around you). Then you put sliced sour cabbage and the best parts of a good quality meat and you boil it until the air around is fragrant with the aroma. It may not be the most informative recipe, but Adam Mickiewicz got one crucial thing right: good bigos has never been made of scraps.

Cover and page from Stanisław Czerniecki’s ‘Compendium Ferculorum’, 1682, ed. Jarosław Dumanowski & Magdalena Spychaj. Photo: Wilanów Palace Museum

In all his undertakings, Adam Mickiewicz researched the Polish culinary heritage and soon discovered Stanisław Czerniecki’s Compendium ferculorum as a source of the culinary inspiration for the traditional dishes happily consumed by the Pan Tadeusz characters. That may be true, but, in the 17th century, no self-respecting court cook would use sauerkraut for sourness in any bigos. He would add lemons or vinegar instead.

Then, the old-Polish version might not contain veggies at all. Dishes like bigos or bigosek (a little bigos) were made of meat or fish and various spices. Sauerkraut replaced lemons only in the 18th century as it was a cheaper and more effective way of getting a desirable sour taste. Eventually, bigos evolved into the dish combining meat and veggies that we know today.

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Nela Rubinstein and Felicja Krance, New York, 1983, photo: Czesław Czapliński/FOTONOVA/East News

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Not a big fan of sauerkraut yourself? Here is a recipe for fish bigos from the 17th century cookbook of Stanisław Czerniecki: you can take baked fish of your liking, take out the bones, chop limes, add some olives and boil it all in olive oil with wine. Spice your bigos with sugar, pepper and cinnamon, and serve hot or cold. Looking for some less extravagant cooking inspiration? Try the recipe from Nela’s Cookbook by Aniela Rubinstein (1909 - 2002). The author, a socialite who hosted parties for the glitterati in New York, Los Angeles and Paris, a woman of absolute taste and wife of the virtuoso pianist Artur Rubinstein, wrote:

I must admit that I was never disappointed with it. It is a dish that is usually enjoyed by everybody and it is easy to make, even in large quantitiesies.

Nela Rubinstein’s perfect recipe?

The original cooking instruction for 10 portions of bigos served as a main dish or 15 portions for a party snack:

A kilo of roast meat: pork shoulder or beef or roe deer or mutton

500 grams of kielbasa (Polish-style) sausage

120 grams of dried porcini mushrooms

¾ l. of rich beef bouillon, homemade or from cubes

3 tablespoons margarine (as per original recipe!)

2 kg of sauerkraut

500 grams of bacon: smoked or salted

4 apples

A kilo of peeled tomatoes

12 juniper berries, crushed or a spoonful of fennel seeds

12 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

4 medium onions

500 grams cooked ham

2 spoonfuls of sugar (if needed)

A cup of dry wine, red or white

Thumbnail — Mushroom Picking in Bory Tucholskie Forest, photo: Michał Fludra / Getty Images

Margarine, salt and peppercorns are for roasting the meat, but you can also use some roast leftovers. Soak dried mushrooms in bouillon until they soften nicely and keep the mushroom-flavoured bouillon for later. Rinse sauerkraut in cold water and drain it well. Take a very large pot and put cubed bacon on the bottom and fry it. Then start putting the rest of the bigos ingredients in layers. Start with sauerkraut and put it on the bacon, then add the sliced mushrooms, tomatoes and grated apples on top. The spices: juniper, peppercorns, bay leaves and perhaps fennel seeds should be put between the layers.

After the first hour of simmering, add onions cut in quarters and a bit of salt. If needed, add some water to the stew. Then fry the sausage on a frying pan for 10 min. and cut the ham into cubes. You can also prepare caramel and mix it with some of the mushroom-flavoured bouillon. Then, after 1.5 hours of simmering, remove the pot from the burner and add caramel with bouillon, cubed roast, sausage and ham. You can also add some wine. Give it a good stir and take it back to the burner for another 30 minutes of additional simmering. Taste it while cooking as it may be necessary to add some more salt or a bouillon cube.

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