Bigos (A Polish Hunter's Stew)

When I first moved to Evanston in 1985, I lived on the first floor of a two flat. A quiet Jewish family lived upstairs. One Saturday morning our neighbor knocked on the front door and asked if I had noticed the strange odor in the hallway. I told him I had not, sniffed, and reported that I didn’t notice anything unusual. He returned to the apartment upstairs, shaking his head. On Sunday afternoon he knocked on our door again. This time he insisted that I step out into the hall. “You don’t smell that?” he asked incredulously, “It smells like some animal died out here.” I sniffed, several times, but could not perceive anything unusual. On Monday evening, there was a knock on the back door. When I opened it, our neighbor marched in and went straight to the stove. He pointed at the large, bubbly pot and triumphantly declared (picture Ralph Kramdon of the Honeymooners), “Ah ha! That’s what I’ve been smelling!” I sheepishly offered him a bowl, but he declined.

Bigos, considered to be the national dish of Poland, is a stew that once upon a time aristocratic hunters prepared for their guests. Ordinary Poles couldn’t afford to put so much meat into a dish! Traditionally bigos included game such as wild boar, pheasant, and/or venison. Today, the ingredients, sourced at the grocery store, are less romantic, but make a quite tasty, if somewhat pungent, dish nonetheless. Any kind of leftover meats or sausage, and even fowl, can be added and it simply improves the flavor. The longer it is cooked, the deeper, more complex and satisfying is the flavor. Bogos is typically served with rye bread and is traditionally served the day after Christmas. Who knows why. Polish cooks sometimes refer to choucroute as "bigos alzacki", and Alsatian cooks sometimes refer to bigos as "choucroute à la polonaise.” I prepared and documented this version on January 2, 1999. --jrb

3 quarts of Polish or German style sauerkraut (i.e. fermented cabbage; not merely cabbage with vinegar)
4 large onions, diced
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 loin cut pork chops, meat trimmed from bone (see note 1)
1 lb. beef stew (beef chuck or sirloin), cut into ¾” pieces (see note 1)
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
3 Knorr's vegetable bullion
1 can (14-1/2 oz.) of chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2-3 dozen black peppercorns
2 carrots sliced into ¼” rounds
1/2 cup frozen blueberries (I also used two heaping tablespoons of Ligonberry preserves and/or apples)
8 oz. tomato sauce
12" of Polish sausage (Kielbasa Wiejska preferred, but any kind will do), sliced into ¼” thick medallions

Day 1: Saute onions in a 12” skillet in the olive oil on low-medium heat for one hour, turning often. Add a little water to keep it moist. Be careful not to burn. You want to caramelize the onions.

Drain and reserve liquid from 1 quart of kraut. Place all three quarts of kraut (including liquid from 2 quarts) into a large pot or Dutch oven. Cook for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

Add the onions and the next seven ingredients (see note 1 below). Mix well and cook, covered, over low heat for 2 hours. Stir occasionally and add water when needed to keep the bigos fairly wet. Remove from stove and allow to cool.

Day 2: Heat up the bigos and cook, covered, for another 2 hours. Remove from stove and allow to cool.

Day 3: Heat up the bigos and add the carrots, tomato sauce and blueberries. Cook for 90 minutes (or more). Serve with rye bread and butter.

Note 1: Although you can put raw meat into the bigos, I brown the meat and I think it adds considerable flavor: I season the pork chops with some salt, pepper and garlic powder and brown the chops in a cast iron skillet in about 2T of olive oil (both sides). At the end, I add more olive oil and brown the beef stew over a fairly high heat. This will nicely brown the meat. Then I add about cup or more of chicken broth and deglaze the pan. Add the chops (I include the bones and fish them out later), the beef and the pan juices.

Note 2: You can compress the instructions for Day 2 and Day 3 into one day.

The ingredients above are a general guide. The recipe varies from family to family. You can add ham, prunes, apples, whole or cut up tomatoes, caraway seeds, chicken leftoevers, bacon, etc., etc. Traditionally, Poles include diced “boczek” (Polish pork belly, like salt pork or slab bacon), but I think this simply adds unnecessary fat. A final note: Bigos can be frozen.

"Bigos is no ordinary dish,
For it is aptly framed to meet your wish.
Founded upon good cabbage, sliced and sour,
Which, as men say, by its own zest and power
Melts in one's mouth, it settles in a pot
And its dewy bosom folds a lot
Of the best portions of selected meats;
Scullions parboil it then, until heat
Draws from its substance all the living juices,
And from the pot's edge, boiling fluid sluices
And all the air is fragrant with its scent."

from
Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz (1834)