Bigos - Polish Hunter Stew
I started the pandemic lockdown with sauerkraut in my fridge. Didn't you? (haha) Specifically, it was a sour cabbage head from Kissel Cabbage of Lumsden. Look for it in the produce section of your grocery store ~ it's shrink wrapped, not in a jar. Et voila, I entered lockdown with all the ingredients for bigos.
Bigos is an old old Polish stew. It's a "hunter's stew" because it includes ingredients gathered on the fall hunt ~ meat, mushrooms, juniper berries and herbs, plus ripe garden tomatoes. I pick juniper berries off the shrubs in my neighbourhood in Saskatoon, so it's not such an exotic ingredient as it sounds. Pick them when the berries are a pretty blue and crumble when crushed.
Like most stews, bigos gets better with time. I rarely eat it the day it's made, preferring to cool it down overnight and warm it up again the next day. In Poland, it's traditional to keep a pot of bigos going for several days or a week, warming it up as needed and adding leftover meat from other meals. When guests arrive on a cold winter's day, sit them down to a steaming bowl of bigos and a wedge of dark bread.
I especially love bigos for having both fresh and sour cabbage, a terrific source of vitamin C. And we can all use more of that in a covid winter.
Bigos
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp smokey paprika or 2 juniper berries, crushed
A big pinch of crushed dry thyme
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 lb bacon, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 pound mushrooms, quartered
1 lb smoked sausage, sliced
(or other meat, such as roast beef)
6–8 ripe tomatoes, chopped
(or 1 can of chopped tomatoes)
1/2 medium cabbage head, chopped
1/2 lb sauerkraut, chopped
2 tbsp plum jam or honey
1. Heat oil in a stew pot. Cook onion until soft. Stir in paprika or juniper berries, salt, pepper and thyme. Add garlic and bacon.
2. When the bacon and onions are cooked, add mushrooms. Stir and cook until the mushrooms start to wilt.
3. Stir in the meat, tomatoes, cabbage and sauerkraut. Add enough water to not quite cover the ingredients in the pot. Bring to a boil.
4. Cover the pot and simmer for several hours, until the cabbage is meltingly soft. Add more water if it cooks down and gets too thick. Finally, stir in the plum jam or honey.
* This recipe is included in my historical old-time-y cookbook Out of Old Saskatchewan Kitchens.
I started the pandemic lockdown with sauerkraut in my fridge. Didn't you? (haha) Specifically, it was a sour cabbage head from Kissel Cabbage of Lumsden. Look for it in the produce section of your grocery store ~ it's shrink wrapped, not in a jar. Et voila, I entered lockdown with all the ingredients for bigos.
Bigos is an old old Polish stew. It's a "hunter's stew" because it includes ingredients gathered on the fall hunt ~ meat, mushrooms, juniper berries and herbs, plus ripe garden tomatoes. I pick juniper berries off the shrubs in my neighbourhood in Saskatoon, so it's not such an exotic ingredient as it sounds. Pick them when the berries are a pretty blue and crumble when crushed.
Like most stews, bigos gets better with time. I rarely eat it the day it's made, preferring to cool it down overnight and warm it up again the next day. In Poland, it's traditional to keep a pot of bigos going for several days or a week, warming it up as needed and adding leftover meat from other meals. When guests arrive on a cold winter's day, sit them down to a steaming bowl of bigos and a wedge of dark bread.
I especially love bigos for having both fresh and sour cabbage, a terrific source of vitamin C. And we can all use more of that in a covid winter.
Bigos
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp smokey paprika or 2 juniper berries, crushed
A big pinch of crushed dry thyme
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 lb bacon, roughly diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 pound mushrooms, quartered
1 lb smoked sausage, sliced
(or other meat, such as roast beef)
6–8 ripe tomatoes, chopped
(or 1 can of chopped tomatoes)
1/2 medium cabbage head, chopped
1/2 lb sauerkraut, chopped
2 tbsp plum jam or honey
1. Heat oil in a stew pot. Cook onion until soft. Stir in paprika or juniper berries, salt, pepper and thyme. Add garlic and bacon.
2. When the bacon and onions are cooked, add mushrooms. Stir and cook until the mushrooms start to wilt.
3. Stir in the meat, tomatoes, cabbage and sauerkraut. Add enough water to not quite cover the ingredients in the pot. Bring to a boil.
4. Cover the pot and simmer for several hours, until the cabbage is meltingly soft. Add more water if it cooks down and gets too thick. Finally, stir in the plum jam or honey.
* This recipe is included in my historical old-time-y cookbook Out of Old Saskatchewan Kitchens.
