National Dishes of the World

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Bigos (hunter's stew)
Photo: Dr. Bernd Gross, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

main dish

Bigos (hunter's stew)

bigos

Sauerkraut and fresh cabbage slowly stewed with several meats, sausage, wild mushrooms and prunes.

Eaten in: Poland

Prep
40 min
Cooking
3 h
Total
3 h 40 min
Servings
8

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About the dish

Bigos is a thick dish of sauerkraut and fresh cabbage stewed for hours with pork, beef or game, sausage, dried mushrooms and prunes. It is also called hunter's stew, since it once used whatever the hunt had brought in. The rule is simple: the longer it cooks and the more often it is reheated, the better it gets, so it is made in a big pot to last several days. Bigos is eaten with bread, especially over the holidays and in winter, and every household has its own recipe – some add red wine, others tomato paste or honey.

Main ingredients

  • sauerkraut
  • white cabbage
  • pork
  • sausage
  • dried wild mushrooms
  • prunes

More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)

Recipe

Bigos (hunter's stew)

https://foodmap.ominuvo.com/dish/bigos

Ingredients

8 servings

8 servings

Method

  1. Soak the mushrooms in 300 ml hot water for half an hour, then chop them and keep the soaking liquid.

  2. Squeeze the sauerkraut (rinse it if very sour) and chop it. Pour over the mushroom liquid, add the spices and braise, covered, for 40 minutes.

  3. Shred the fresh cabbage and cook it separately in a little water for 20 minutes, then combine it with the sauerkraut.

  4. Cut the meat into cubes and brown it in batches with the bacon, add the chopped onions and finally the sliced sausage.

  5. Add the meat to the cabbage along with the mushrooms, chopped prunes and tomato paste. Braise over very low heat for 2 hours, stirring often.

  6. Season with salt, pepper and marjoram. Ideally leave the bigos overnight and reheat it once or twice more before serving.

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