Traditional Polish bigus with meat and wine. Delicious bigos, or What can be found in cabbage? What is bigos in Poland

Content:

Bigos is considered to be a traditional Polish dish. However, there are legends that the recipe for this meat and cabbage dish came to Poland from Lithuania, and the Polish king, who is also the Lithuanian prince, Vladislav Jagiello, brought it there. Like it or not, now it's impossible to know. But the fact that bigos is very popular in Poland is a fact!

Real bigos is cooked for several days in large quantities: it is stewed and cooled, stewed and cooled. Then they clean it in a cold place (usually in the underground) and eat it for a week, or even longer.

But in modern urban conditions, this is not possible. Firstly, there is no underground floor, and secondly, there is no time for multi-day cooking of one dish. Therefore, the recipe for Polish bigos is simplified. But that doesn't mean it's tasteless.

We prepare products

To prepare real bigos, you will need a lot of ingredients, the amount is indicated for preparing 6 servings.

Let's start with the most important thing - meat. For bigos, you need several types of meat: 400 g of pork and beef, 300 g of smoked brisket and 200 g of smoked sausage. Many hostesses add sausages instead of smoked sausage. But this is wrong, since real bigos should have the smell of smoked meats.

The second important ingredient is cabbage. You will need 700 g of fresh cabbage and 500 g of sauerkraut. Some recipes call for sauerkraut alone, with no fresh cabbage added. If you do not have sauerkraut, then you need to cook it in advance.

You can, of course, use only fresh cabbage, but then it will no longer be bigos.

There are two recipes for sauerkraut: with and without brine. Sauerkraut without brine is very easy to prepare. Chop the cabbage, grate the carrots. Remember cabbage well with salt, add carrots, mix and leave under oppression. After a few days, transfer the finished cabbage to a jar. To enhance the taste, cranberries are often added to cabbage.

When cooking cabbage with brine, it is not necessary to crush the cabbage. You just need to cut the vegetables and pour the brine, which is prepared as follows: in 1.5 liters of warm water, add two tablespoons of salt, the same amount of sugar and mix.

In addition to meat and cabbage, bigos needs 2 cloves of garlic, 3 tbsp. spoons of tomato paste, one large carrot or two small ones, prunes - 6 pieces and 150 ml of dry white wine. Some recipes involve the use of not white wine, but red, also dry. Sometimes dried apricots or even an apple are added instead of prunes. Some recipes for bigos also contain onions, but in Poland they do not add onions to this dish. If you decide that it will be tastier with onions, then you need 2 small heads.

From seasonings according to the traditional recipe, prepare salt, ground pepper, peppercorns (allspice) - 6 pieces, 0.5 teaspoon of cumin and 1/4 teaspoon of coriander.

A classic bigos is being prepared in a cauldron.

Step-by-step preparation of bigos

When all the ingredients are ready, you can proceed.

Preheat the cauldron and put the smoked breast cut into small pieces on the bottom. While the fat is rendered from the breast, wash the meat, peel the vegetables and remove the bones from the prunes.

If you use onions, cut them into small cubes, grate the carrots, preferably coarse, and put the vegetables in a cauldron. While the vegetables are frying, cut the pork and beef into not very long slices. Put the meat in a cauldron, salt and pepper a little and leave to simmer over low heat.

Simmer the meat for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Mix the tomato paste with wine well, add the coriander, cumin and allspice crushed in a mortar and pour the resulting sauce over the meat. Some housewives, in the absence of wine, mix tomato paste with water, but then the resulting dish loses its flavor.

Finely chop fresh cabbage, salt, remember and put in a cauldron. Add sauerkraut immediately. If sauerkraut turned out sour, it can be washed. Leave to simmer over low heat.

After 30 minutes, add diced smoked sausage and prunes to the cauldron. If necessary, add a little water and simmer for another 40 minutes.

Bigos is ready! You can serve to the table!

A modern way of making bigos

Every housewife who cooks bigos, especially if she does not live in Poland, has her own recipe for this dish.

Modern chefs prepare bigos in a slow cooker. The ingredients used are the same as for classic bigos. Pour a little sunflower oil into the multicooker bowl, then lay meat, vegetables, cabbage, prunes in layers, pour everything with sauce and simmer for an hour and a half. After the specified time, turn on the “Baking” or “Roasting” mode for 7 minutes.

Bigos is often cooked in pots. To do this, pre-fry onions and carrots, in a separate pan - meat until a light crust appears and stew sauerkraut. Then all the ingredients are laid out in pots, covered with puff pastry and cooked in the oven for an hour at 200 degrees.

Those who don't like meat prepare bigos with fish. Pike perch goes well with cabbage. Since the cooking time of pike perch and cabbage is different, the cabbage is stewed separately with the rest of the ingredients, and the fish is fried in small pieces in flour. 15 minutes before turning off the cauldron, the fish is added to the cabbage.

Some hostesses add their favorite foods to bigos: raisins, bell peppers, mushrooms.

What else to cook for bigos

If you want to surprise and please your loved ones, prepare a whole dinner of Polish cuisine. Bigos is considered a main dish. You have to prepare the first, drink, salad and dessert.

Let's start with a salad - potato with beans. The recipe is very simple. While the bigos is stewing, boil 4 small potatoes in their skins and 300 g of green beans. Cut the potatoes into cubes, if the bean pods are long, then cut them in half, salt and season with mayonnaise. Salad ready!

Let's move on to the soup. Let's cook tomato soup with cucumber. To prepare it, you will need 1 kg of tomatoes, 2 tbsp. spoons of rice, 1 liter of meat broth and 100 g of sour cream. Cut the tomatoes into small pieces, boil and rub through a sieve. Add broth and rice to the resulting tomato mass. Simmer the soup over low heat for 20-30 minutes until the rice is cooked. A couple of minutes before turning off, add sour cream. Slice the cucumber into rings and pour over the chilled soup.

For dessert, you can make a cherry pie. His recipe may surprise you: a pie is made not from dough, but from wheat bread! Grease a baking dish with butter, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and put slices of wheat bread without crusts on it, after dipping them in a mixture of milk (half a cup), eggs and vanilla sugar (half a cup). Place pitted cherries on bread and sprinkle with sugar. Put a second layer of bread on the berries and pour everything with the remaining milk mixture. Bake the pie in the oven for 20 minutes.

Finally, we turn to the drink - pumpkin jelly. Grate 100 g of peeled pumpkin. Dilute 7 g of starch in water and pour it into 130 g of hot milk. Add 4 teaspoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Add pumpkin and cook for 10 minutes.

Recipes of Polish cuisine are different from our usual dishes. But this is an amazing way to diversify your table and get acquainted with a part of the culture of another, not so distant country.

Bigos is oneo one of the most famous and popular dishes of Polish cuisine. This is specialth dish, which is also present in Lithuanianand in Belarusian cuisines. The dish is so specialenoe, like borscht or forUkrainians, becausem grew almost every Pole.

In real Polish bigosthere are so many ingredients that in Polish eventhere is an expression "narobić bigosu", which means to make trouble or mess, and the word itself"bigos" in a figurative sense means actually "mess" "mess", because in bigosthere is so much mixed up! And all Poles know wellAnd, many of them often use, a phrase from the famous comedy, the classics of Polish cinema, "Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową" ("How I unleashed the Second World War"), the hero Frankand Dolas "O rany! Ale narobiłem bigosu!" (Context translation: "Oh God! NI made a mess!", And in the original "Bigosa"). Accordingly, the importance of this dish in Polish cuisine becomes clear.e and culture. And nothing surprising! Bigos is very fragrantoh, deliciousoh and satisfyingohthe dish thatoh it's hard not to love if heo well preparedO.

And as with every dish of such importance in the culinary culture, there are many recipes for making bigos. Each culinary specialist brings something of his own, but most of the ingredients remain unchanged, only everyone has their own order of their bookmarks and some secret element of the dish. But everyone will definitely tell you that a good Polish bigos should be rich in taste and have a pleasant aroma of smoked meats and dried mushrooms...

Sometimes bigos is cooked only on sauerkraut, but more often on sauerkraut with the addition of fresh, because itthe taste is then more balanced. It is also believed that the more types of meat, the better! And if it is possible to add game meat, then it cannot be better at all! But smoked meats and fresh meat should be a must.O. Like dried mushrooms. Sometimes modernth bigos is prepared without mushrooms, but believe me, the aroma and taste are completely different!

All ingredients for bigosbut in fact those that were used in the old Polish cuisinee. Prunes and wine add their expressive flavor note. And apples, which are completely boiled soft, give, as they say, "bodyo' dishesu!

Polish bigos is complexth dish and does not require a side dish, or vice versa, meatadditions. And my Polish husband cannot imagine the full enjoyment of a dish without light bread and butter. According to him, with suchaddition, the taste of bigos is betterrevealed :-).

And one more thing, if possible, cook bigos in advance, a day, and even better two, or even three, before the planned serving, heating it every day, at least once a day. Like , real Polish bigos gets better with each heating, and also, it is great for freezing.leftovers and even better from this. I prepare the dish one day before serving.

6-7 servings

Ingredients

• 30 grams dried mushrooms (preferably porcini)
• 300 ml boiling water
• 1 onion, cut into cubes
• 100g smoked lard, cut into cubes
• 1 kg meat (pork, chicken, beef), cut into large cubes
• 300 grams smoked pork ribs
• 500 grams smoked homemade sausage, cut into coarse slices
• 1 kg sauerkraut
• 500 grams fresh white cabbage, shredded
• 5 juniper berries
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp dried marjoram
• 3 allspice peas
• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
• 10 pieces. prunes
• 150 ml dry red wine
• 3 apples, peel, grate with large holes
• 1 tbsp honey
• Salt to taste

1) Place the mushrooms in a deep bowl and pour boiling water over it.

Leave for 20 minutes. Drain, reserving the liquid, and chop finely.

2) Sauerkraut and fresh cabbage, ribs, prunes, two types of pepper, marjoram, bay leaf, juniper and mushrooms, together with the drained liquid, place in a large saucepan or pot with a thick bottom.

Simmer on low heat for about an hour, covering loosely with a lid.

3) In a large frying pan, brown the lard, and when enough fat is rendered out of it, add the onion. Simmer until soft.

"... In the cauldrons, bigos is delusional. There is no such word, To describe it by taste and color. What is the word? The fruit of the mind. What is the rhyme? Only mist. Presena knows no food, and has not tasted songs Yes, bigos is a delicacy, a special composition, Where is the combination of all spices and seasonings. Underneath, a layer of meat languishes in the depths. But now the boiling juices fermented And with steam splashed along the edge of the drips, The strongest aroma crawled along the clearing. It's done! Three times everyone exclaimed "Vivat!" Where is the bigos? Poles and expressed it in his work - Adam Mickiewicz. But why does Mickiewicz write that bigos is a Lithuanian dish! Yes. Because bigos is popular in Lithuania, as well as in Belarus, in the Czech Republic, in Germany, but it has become a truly national dish only in Poland. Only in Poland are they treated with such love and recommended to taste the guests who want to comprehend the Polish spirit. It is no coincidence that this word has entered many Polish proverbs and sayings, and it does not always sound in them in a culinary sense: rąbać Tatarz na bigosy drobne (“chop the Tatars into small pieces, into small bigos” - a joke about someone’s militant mood ); narobić bigosu (“make bigos” - do things), takie bigosy (“such bigos” - such things). By the way, I recently rewatched the old Polish film "Anatomy of Love" by Roman Zaluzki. There is a scene when Adam (Jan Nowicki) and Eva (Barbara Brylska) find themselves in the kitchen. Adam stands and tries something. In Russian translation, he says to Eva: - You did it delicious! Although in the original it actually sounds like this: - Bardzo dobry jest bigos! (Very tasty bigos!) I think that it would be quite possible to translate Adam's words into Russian literally. So what is bigos? The "Dictionary of the Polish Language" gives several modern meanings of this word: - a dish of different varieties of chopped meat and cabbage; - dish revelers, revelers; - dish of hunters; - yesterday's food; - something stale; - everything that is cut is cut. The very word bigos, most likely, came into the Polish language even before all the main components of the dish itself were finally formed. On one Polish site, I read in an article by the Polish etymologist Andrzej Bankowski about the possible origin of the word "bigos". A. Bankowski suggests that, perhaps, this word is formed from the participle of the German verbs begießen ("water", pour" - begossen) and beigießen ("top up" - beigossen).This word is mentioned in the monuments of Polish writing already in the 16th century, but not in relation to a dish of cabbage and meat, but in the meanings of "fish broth", "ear of small fish" and "strong meat broth". That is why some researchers also suggest that the word comes from the Italian name for a pot for making broth, and also jellied from this broth and finely chopped meat or fish (a kind of jelly). This pot is called bigutta. What else can you say about bigos? Poles usually cook a lot of it. They say that the more often you heat bigos, the tastier it becomes, and the most delicious is done only on the third day. Exactly the same as they say about borscht! Probably, that is why the Poles sometimes jokingly call yesterday's dish bigos, and in relation to something stale, bad they pronounce this word condemningly, rudely. They ate bigos everywhere: in a poor peasant house, and in a rich gentry palace (palace), ate on a hunt, ate on a long campaign. Just as the Russians, setting out on a journey in winter, froze cabbage soup in special vessels, so the Poles took frozen bigos with them, and in the parking lot they simply chopped off the desired piece and warmed it up. There are many options for preparing this dish, like borscht, in Poland, more than one in different parts of the country. I've tried many variations, but the classic is definitely old Polish bigos. It is believed that in the correct Polish bigos, one and a half parts of cabbage should fall on one part of different types of meat. Cabbage can be used fresh and sauerkraut, both together and separately. In Warsaw, in one of the churches, I tried, for example, bigos only from sauerkraut, the so-called Kielce or Swietokrzyz variant. But mostly they put both sauerkraut and fresh cabbage in bigos.

Bigos is a traditional Polish dish based on meat and cabbage. At the same time, real bigus is as different from ordinary stewed cabbage with meat as imperial stout is not like Zhigulevskoe. This is an amazing, undoubtedly festive dish with an ancient, very interesting history, an unusual set of products and a complex recipe. Complex, but at the same time - quite reproducible at home. Well, let's learn!

Description

Far from being the easiest Polish national dish to prepare. However, all the effort that we spend on creating this dish is worth it.

The taste of meat prepared in this way with cabbage will seem literally cosmic to you. A huge number of various meat tones that will saturate our bigos will be fully felt in the mouth.

This step-by-step recipe for making traditional bigos with a photo will describe in detail the process of creating this dish at home.

Don't let the quantity of ingredients for bigos scare you: Poles often cook this dish in huge portions and freeze it for the winter.

In addition to the indicated spices and seasonings for our bigos, we allow the use of the following flavoring additives: E0123, E456, E789, E1011, E1213.

Bigos will be prepared in several stages and for several days, however, this is what will eventually allow us to enjoy the taste of the original real Polish bigos.

Let's start cooking such an unusual dish as Polish traditional bigos with sauerkraut.

Ingredients

• 
  (800 g)
• 
  (shovel, 400 g)
• 
  (neck, 400 g)
• 
  (100 g)
• 
  (1 PC.)
• 
  (1 st.)
• 
  (1 kg)
• 
  (500 g)
• 
  (50 g)
• 
  (green - 2 pcs., red - 1 pc.)
• 
  (20 pcs.)
• 
  (2 pcs.)
• 
  (1 handful)
• 
  (150 g)
• 
  Cooked-smoked sausage
  (6 pcs)
• 
  (6 pcs)
• 
  (150 g)
• 
  (taste)
• 
  (1 tablespoon)
• 
  (1 handful)
• 
  (1 handful)
• 
  (1 pinch)
• 
  (1 pinch)
• 
  (taste)

Cooking steps

Purchase a whole fresh duck for making bigus, rinse it thoroughly and divide it into breast, frame, wings and drumsticks. We won’t need the breast for this recipe, so you can safely cook whatever you want from it. Carefully cut off the dense fatty skin from the legs and grind it quite finely as shown in the photo.



We put the frame of the bird, as well as not too fleshy wings, into a deep and very voluminous saucepan, pour water there to the very top and put it on medium heat to cook. To prepare bigus, you need a lot of hearty and thick broth, so do not spare water.



We wash a piece of the same fresh beef and dry it with a paper towel, then cut it into fairly large cubes: it is better to take the meat from the shoulder blade.



We wash the indicated amount of pork neck in the same way as beef, dry it.



Cut the pork to match the beef.



We should get more than a kilogram of ready-made meat for making bigus.



It is easiest to cook such a dish in a special roaster, but any other cast-iron pot or a fairly deep frying pan will do. We spread the prepared duck fat and the previously chopped skin on the bottom of the dishes chosen for cooking. Fry the skin until it begins to acquire a golden color, and also until the fat is completely melted.



With a slotted spoon, we remove the pieces of fried skin from the frying pan or ducklings on a paper towel, and instead of it we send chopped onions to the bottom of the dish.



Fry the onion slices until soft and transparent over medium heat, then remove the dishes from the stove.



In an additional, similarly dense frying pan, heat a small amount of vegetable oil and put the chopped pork neck on it. Fry the pieces of meat until they get a delicious golden brown.



We spread the pork from the pan in the roaster to the fried onions.



In the same pan, now fry the slices of previously chopped beef. We cook the ingredient to the same tasty dense crust, send the beef slices to the ducklings. Repeat the manipulations with the remaining duck legs.



At the bottom of the pan, in which all the meat was fried before, pour half of the total indicated amount of dry red wine. With a wooden spatula, carefully scrape off everything that stuck to it during the frying of meat from the bottom of the pan, mix the fat with wine and cook until the structure of the sauce becomes a uniform color. Pour the resulting liquid to the meat and onions.



We return the chicken to a small fire, add the previously fried duck skin and half a glass of broth, bubbling on the adjacent burner. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.



Cover the chicken with a tight lid and simmer the ingredients for 30 minutes.



During all this time, the duck broth should have already cooked, so we filter it through a colander or sieve. We return the pure broth to the smallest fire in a clean saucepan so that it remains warm during the entire cooking.



We separate the meat from the bones from the wings and the frame of the duck, chop it with a sharp knife and add it to the ingredients stewed in the ducklings. We mix the cold cuts, add a little more broth if necessary and continue to simmer the dish under a closed lid for another 30 minutes.



Pour all the indicated amount of sauerkraut into a deep cast-iron cauldron or a dish that meets all the criteria, fill it half with duck broth and cook in stew mode over low heat for 60 minutes.



Pour finely chopped fresh cabbage into the remaining duck broth, add a little salt and cook until fully cooked.



Pour boiled cabbage without excess liquid into a cauldron with stewed sauerkraut, add all the previously cooked meat there, mix the ingredients thoroughly and continue to simmer them for another 30 minutes. We remove extra bones from the cauldron: the meat will fall behind them on its own. We send the cauldron with meat and cabbage to the refrigerator or to any other cold place for the whole night.



The next day we will devote to the preparation of additional ingredients that will dramatically change the taste of our dish. Soak porcini mushrooms in cold water from the evening.



In the morning, remove the cauldron and mushrooms from the refrigerator. Grind mushrooms and send to meat and cabbage.



Pour the water in which they were soaked there, mix the ingredients.



Rinse a couple of green apples, get rid of the stalks and seals, then cut into cubes and send to the cauldron.



Rinse dried fruits and soak in boiling water for 10 minutes, then chop and add to the rest of the ingredients in a cauldron.



Mix chopped dried fruits with meat and cabbage, add raisins there.



We cut 150 grams of sausage and the same number of sausages into rings or cubes.



We send sausage slices to bigus.



We turn on the smallest fire under the cauldron, add the remaining wine to the ingredients and simmer them under a closed lid for 3 hours.



Let's prepare the necessary ingredients for serving bigus.



In a mortar, pour a handful of black peppercorns, the indicated amount of cumin and a little juniper. Thoroughly knead and grind the spices.



Put a part of the bigos that you want to serve on the table in a fireproof dish, return the rest of the product to the refrigerator.



We separate the pork ribs from each other and, together with whole smoked sausages, put them in a form with bigus as shown in the photo.



We wash the remaining apple, cut off the base of it and lightly pierce the peel with the tip of a sharp knife.



We spread the apple with the base down in the center of the mold with bigos.



We heat the oven to 140-150 degrees and bake bigus in it under a closed lid for 4 hours.



We send the baked bigus to a cold place or cool it first, and then put it in the refrigerator for a day. After that, we return the bigus to the kitchen and let it brew to room temperature. Upon completion of this process, bake the dish for another 60 minutes in the oven, heated to 100 degrees, insist in a warm place for 30 minutes and serve. Traditional Polish bigos is ready.



Bon appetit!