Bigos

Bigos (),Template:Efn often translated into English as hunter's stew, is a Polish dish of chopped meat of various kinds stewed with sauerkraut, shredded fresh cabbage and spices. It is served hot and can be enriched with additional vegetables and wine. Originally from Poland, the dish also became traditional in the areas of the vast Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Etymology

The Polish word is probably of Italian or German origin, but its exact etymology is disputed. According to the Polish loanword dictionary edited by Elżbieta Sobol, it may derive from German , meaning "doused" or "basted".Template:Sfnp Jerzy Bralczyk similarly derives the word from archaic German , "sauce".Template:Sfnp Aleksander Brückner has proposed the German , "piece of lead",Template:Sfnp as a possible source, referring to a tradition of divining from strangely shaped flakes of molten lead dropped into water. Maria Dembińska rejects this etymology as "doubtlessly erroneous", suggesting instead either archaic German , "to chop", or old German ( in modern German), meaning "mugwort" (Artemisia vulgaris), a herb that was popular in medieval cuisine.Template:Sfnp Andrzej Bańkowski also points to the Italian , or "pot for cooking soup", as a possible derivation via German.Template:Sfnp

Ingredients and preparation

The principal ingredients of are assorted kinds of meat chopped into bite-sized chunks and a mixture of sauerkraut and shredded fresh white cabbage. The meats may include pork (such as ham, shoulder, bacon, ribs, and loin), beef and veal, poultry (chicken, duck, goose, turkey) and game, as well as charcuterie, especially various kinds of .Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The variety of meats is considered essential for good ; its preparation may be a good occasion to clean out one's freezer and use up leftovers from other meat dishes.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Some of the meats may be roasted before being diced together with other cuts of meat and braised in lard or vegetable oil.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

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Closeup of

The sauerkraut is often rinsed and drained before being chopped and mixed with shredded fresh cabbage. The proportion depends on the sauerkraut's maturity; the longer it has cured, the more sour it tastes, calling for more fresh cabbage to balance the flavor. Traditionally, cabbage was pickled in fall, so made at that time could be made with only half-cured sauerkraut, but by early spring, the sauerkraut had to be combined in equal parts with fresh cabbage.Template:Sfnp The mixture is precooked in a small amount of water before being mixed with the braised meat and left to simmer for several hours. Ideally, the stew should thicken through evaporation alone,Template:Sfnp but flour, roux, crumbled rye bread or a grated raw potato may be added to it to take up excess moisture.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Other ingredients often added to include onions, diced and browned in lard together with the meat, and dried forest mushroomsTemplate:Sfnp that are precooked separately in boiling water. The stew is usually seasoned with salt, black peppercorns, allspice, juniper berries and bay leaves.Template:Sfnp Some recipes also call for caraway, cloves, garlic, marjoram, mustard seeds, nutmeg, paprika and thyme.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp The tart flavor of sauerkraut may be enhanced by adding some dry red wineTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp or beet sour (fermented beetroot juice that is also a traditional ingredient of borscht), which may impart a reddish hue to the stew.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp is often slightly sweetened with sugar, honey, raisins, prunes or plum butter known in Polish as .Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

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A bowl of

Traditionally, is stewed in a cauldron over an open fire or in a large pot on a stove, but it may also be prepared in an electric slow cooker.Template:Sfnp The contents should be stirred from time to time, to prevent scorching, which may impart a bitter taste to the entire batch.Template:Sfnp is considered best after it has been repeatedly refrigerated and reheated to allow the flavors to fuse.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Varieties

The flexible and forgiving recipe for allows a great number of variants, often simply using what ingredients are at hand.Template:Sfnp It is often claimed that there are as many recipes as there are cooks in Poland.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

In the region of Greater Poland, typically contains tomato paste and is seasoned with garlic and marjoram.Template:Sfn Kuyavian is often made from red cabbage as well as white.Template:Sfnp In Silesia, it is usually mixed with or , that is, small plain boiled dumplings made from unleavened dough that contains flour and mashed potatoes.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfnp A variant which contains julienned apples, preferably with a winey tart taste, such as Antonovka, is known as Lithuanian and is typical for the territory of the erstwhile Grand Duchy of Lithuania (now Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Bigos in bowl

A serving of bigos

In , or "hunter's ", at least part of the meat comes from game, such as wild boar, venison or hare.Template:Sfnp It is usually seasoned with juniper berries, which help neutralize off-flavors that may be found in the meat of wild animals.Template:Sfnp

Serving

File:Bigos in Kraków.jpg

Bigos served in a bread bowl served with beer

As a dish that does not spoil quickly and is thought to improve with each reheating, has been traditionally used as a provision for travellersTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfnp and campers or consumed at outdoor events, such as a hunt or a carnival sleigh ride known in Polish as .Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It may be also eaten indoor, for breakfast, supper or as a hot starter served before soup at a dinner party.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It is commonly found on the menus of milk bars, pubs and bistros throughout Poland.Template:Sfnp is particularly associated with major Catholic holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, as it can be prepared in ample quantities beforehand and only reheated on the holiday itself and the following days.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Bigos can be stored for a long time and is often frozen for later consumption, which actually enhances its flavor.

The stew is typically dished up with rye bread or boiled potatoes.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp In a fancier setting, it may be served in stoneware bowls,Template:Sfnp puff pastry shellsTemplate:Sfnp or bread bowls. , especially when enjoyed outdoors, is traditionally paired with shots of chilled vodka, either clear or flavored.Template:Sfnp Varieties of flavored vodka that match well with include (bison grass), (juniper), (wormwood), (various herbs) and (oak-aged).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp If served at home or in a restaurant, the stew may be paired with beer, red wine or Riesling.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

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Traditional Polish Bigos with Kopytka as a side dish

History

According to Polish food historian Maria Dembińska, may derive from a medieval dish known in Latin as , or "mixture". It was made from various vegetables, such as cabbage, chard and onions, that were chopped or shredded, layered inside an earthenware three-legged Dutch oven and braised or baked.Template:Sfnp A remnant of this old procedure may be found in a recipe, in which bacon and cabbage are arranged in layers, from the 19th-century Russian cookbook A Gift to Young Housewives by Elena Molokhovets.Template:Sfnp It is believed this dish was introduced in the region by Sephardic Jews coming from the Portuguese region of Alentejo, replacing ingredients with regional produce. Similar layered dishes of medieval origin also exist in other European cuisines; they include the Italian (known in 16th-century Poland under the Polonized name ) and the Alsatian (also known as ), made from cabbage, leftover meats and fruits.Template:Sfnp They are reminiscent of a rustic Polish casserole, known in various regions as , and other names. It is traditionally made from sliced or diced potatoes, onions, carrots, sausages and bacon arranged in layers inside a cast-iron cauldron greased with lard and lined with cabbage leaves, which is placed in bonfire embers for baking.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

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baked in a cast-iron pot over a campfire

The word "" is not attested before the 17th century.Template:Sfnp At that time, it referred to any dish of finely chopped components, usually meat or fish – but no cabbage – doused generously with melted butter and heavily seasoned with sour, sweet and spicy ingredients.Template:Sfnp Stanisław Czerniecki, head chef to Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, who consistently used the diminutive form , included several recipes for it in his (A Collection of Dishes), the oldest surviving book imprinted and published originally in Polish, in 1682 (however, in ca. 2019, another old cook book has been found which included recipes from the earlier, e.i. the 16th century lost Polish cook book, the oldest one). They include prepared with chopped capon,Template:Sfnp hazel grouse,Template:Sfnp carp, pike,Template:Sfnp and crawfish with beef marrow.Template:Sfnp Seasonings that appear in most of these recipes include onions, wine vinegar, lemon or lime juice, verjuice, sorrel, sugar, raisins, black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and cumin. A manuscript recipe collection from the Radziwiłł family court, dating back to ca. 1686, contains instructions for cooking of roast beef,Template:Sfnp fried fishTemplate:Sfnp and even chopped (thin pancakes).Template:Sfnp (The Perfect Cook), a cookbook published by Wojciech Wielądko in 1783, contains recipes for beef, veal, wether mutton, oyster, as well as root vegetable (the latter was a mixture of carrots, parsnip, rutabaga and celeriac).Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

made entirely of meat and exotic spices was affordable only to the affluent Polish nobility. The 18th century saw the development of a poor man's version of the dish, known as , or "rascal's ", in which vinegar and lemon juice were replaced with cheaper sauerkraut as the source of tartness.Template:Sfnp Sauerkraut and cabbage also acted as a filler allowing to reduce the amount of meat in the dish. Rascal's became common during the reign of King Augustus III of Poland (r. 1734–1763).Template:Sfnp Over the course of the 19th century, its rise in popularity continued as the proportion of meat decreased in favor of sauerkraut, eventually superseding all other kinds of and losing the disparaging epithet in the process.Template:Sfnp

In culture

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 folksong and folk food,
You need health, live on 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.
Now the bigos is ready. With triple hurrah
Charge the huntsmen, spoon-armed, the hot vessel to raid,
Brass thunders and smoke belches, like camphor to fade,
Only in depths of cauldrons, there still writhes there later
Steam, as if from a dormant volcano's deep crater.

Adam Mickiewicz (translated by Marcel Weyland),
Pan Tadeusz (Book Four, Diplomacy and the Hunt)Template:Sfnp

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A plate of bigos

is considered a Polish national dish,Template:Sfnp which, according to American food historian William Woys Weaver, "has been romanticized in poetry, discussed in its most minute details in all sorts of literary contexts, and never made in small quantities."Template:Sfnp

The most famous literary monument to can be found in , a mock-heroic poem venerated as the Polish national epic, extolling the country life of Polish noblemen in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, written by Adam Mickiewicz in 1834. It describes a group of men out in the woods, enjoying the stew of "wondrous taste, colour and marvellous smell" after a successful bear hunt.

See also

• Cabbage stew
• List of cabbage dishes
• , a Lombard stew of Savoy cabbage with pork
• , an Alsatian dish of sauerkraut and large chunks of various meats and potatoes
• , braised sauerkraut usually served as a side dish in Polish cuisine
• and , Serbian dishes of sauerkraut or cabbage stewed with meat
• List of stews

External links

• Template:Cookbook-inline
• Template:Sister-inline
• Template:Sister-inline
• Note: the hosts mispronounce "bigos" as "bigosh".