An authentic Polish bigos recipe, this bigos stew is used not only in Poland but all over the world. The popular hunter’s stew made of sauerkraut and meat is not only delicious but also satiating. Perfect for a winter meal!
The popular Polish bigos stew is traditionally made with game meat such as venison from elk or deer, or wild boar. Nowadays, people usually add pork and kielbasa to bigos. The dish is quite heavy, that’s why you can be sure you won’t be hungry after eating a bowl.
Traditionally popular at Christmas celebrations and weddings, bigos stew is cooked and eaten during wintertime.
Bigos is definitely not a Polish summer dish. Why?
Sauerkraut, onion, and meat are ingredients that are easily available in the winter. And a few hundred years ago, when there were no fridges, people’s diets were quite limited as they adjusted to their surroundings and circumstances. So they made the best of what they had, which in the cold winter was meat, onions, and sauerkraut, and turned it into a delicious feast of a meal. Because it takes days to cook it, it would usually be made in big portions and stewed in a big pot. So when the bigos was made at home there was enough food to share between the family.
The other reason why bigos was so popular in Poland during wintertime is that this dish is greasy and very satiating. It keeps you internally warm and feeling full for a long time. It is also very comforting food, the best to have after a long day in the cold weather.
When Was Polish Bigos Stew Invented?
Bigos can be traced back to medieval times, says Polish food historian Maria Dembińska. At that time, of course, it was called ‘compositum’ and made using a mix of onions, chard and cabbage without meat.
Over time the dish was assimilated by different European cultures, from the Italian mescolanza to the Alsatian potée boulangère.
In the 17th century, bigos appeared on the scene in Poland. At that time, it was made of finely chopped meat cooked with lard or butter and seasonings that were spicy, sweet, and sour.
In 1682, different recipes for ‘bigosek’ were recorded by Prince Lubomirski’s head chef Stanisław Czerniecki in his book Compendium ferculorum (A Collection of Dishes). The recipes used different meats or seafood with onions, vinegar, and spices.
Bigos of roast beef is recorded in recipes from 1686 and 1783, but was often the food of the nobles and used various vegetables.
In the 18th century, the poor man started making his version of bigos by replacing costly vinegar with cheaper sauerkraut, and the rest is history! Adding sauerkraut to the dish also allowed them to reduce the amount of meat used making it more economical.
This version of bigos became more common and popular than every other version of bigos in Poland!
In fact, the Polish bigos stew is so popular that it was mentioned in the Polish national epic, Pan Tadeusz.
How To Make Bigos Stew – Polish Hunter’s Stew
Start by soaking the dried mushrooms in water overnight, or at least for a few hours. Once soaked, cook the mushrooms until they are soft.
Next, rinse the sauerkraut with water to get rid of the sour taste and cook it for a while before draining it again.
Chop the onions and smoked bacon into fine cubes.
Fry the bacon for a while and add to the sauerkraut. Fry the onions in the bacon fat that’s left in the pan, and then add to the sauerkraut and bacon.
Next, chop the mixed meat and fry it with lard or oil and add to the bigos pot.
Add the other ingredients as well as chopped mushrooms and mix well. And the authentic Polish bigos stew is ready!
Bonus Advice:
Once the bigos is ready, fry it in a pan. This is my mom-in-law’s secret to making the best-tasting authentic bigos stew. The more you fry the bigos, the better it tastes!
Authentic Polish Bigos Recipe Tips
Fry, fry, fry!
The secret of getting the perfect taste of Polish bigos stew is frying it. The more you do it, the better.
My mom-in-law, who is a bigos MasterChef says that bigos tastes best after a few days. You need to fry it each day, allow it to cool, and repeat the next day.
This means, if you’re having a dinner party on Saturday night, it’s best to make the authentic Polish bigos stew on Thursday or Friday.
Use sauerkraut, not fresh cabbage!
Although you can make Polish bigos from fresh cabbage, the taste won’t be as authentic as when you use sauerkraut.
You can also mix fresh and fermented cabbage to get a less sour different taste.
See my homemade Polish sauerkraut recipe.
Opt for a good quality sauerkraut. Ideally use the simple brined kraut, but if you only find the kraut, use it too, but make sure to rinse it a couple of times, to get rid of the sourness.
Be careful with salt!
Avoid adding salt throughout the cooking. Cauerkraut and sausage contain a lot of salt, and it sometimes is enough for the whole dish. Leave the salt till the very end, after all the frying, cooking, and stewing is done.
If you want more veggies, double the amount of sauerkraut!
You can increase the amount of sauerkraut to suit your tastebuds. Of course, if you’re like some friends of mine, you might also increase the amount of meat to make the bigos richer and heavier.
Add juniper berries to make traditional Hunter’s Stew that reminds you of the forest!
Although bigos can be made with different varieties of meats, there are a few popular traditional varieties. Use venison meat in the stew and add juniper berries, and it will be called Hunter’s Stew or bigos myśliwski!
You might not get wild mushrooms in the city. Use others instead!
The traditional recipe for bigos stew uses wild mushrooms. That will be difficult to find in a city. You can use dried porcini mushrooms or any other mushrooms instead.
Serve it in a bread bowl for more authenticity!
Some people serve bigos in aPolish bread bowl. It looks really amazing! Plus you can eat the bread afterward. It’s really perfect with a sourdough bread!
More Tips:
- Rinse the sauerkraut to get rid of the excess sourness or vinegar!
- Use a big flat cast iron pan for even cooking this authentic Polish bigos recipe.
- If you serve it without the bread, this recipe is keto and gluten-free!
- Add salt at the end. The bacon, sausages, and sauerkraut are naturally salty. So to prevent the recipe from getting too salty, it’s best to add salt at the end!
Different Types Of Authentic Polish Bigos Recipe
The basic ingredients of an authentic Polish bigos recipe are sauerkraut and meat. However, there are some local variations available including:
- bigos litewski (Polish Lithuanian bigos) with the addition of apples
- bigos myśliwski (Polish hunter’s stew bigos) with the addition of venison meat
- bigos hultajski with the addition of lard and a large amount of meat
- bigos węgierski (Polish Hungarian bigos) with the addition of red pepper and sour cream
- bigos galicyjski (Galician bigos) with the addition of potatoes and white beans
- bigos wegetariański (vegetarian bigos) with soya instead of meat
FAQs About Authentic Polish Bigos Recipe
What Does Bigos Mean?
Bigos literally means stew. In this case, it’s a stew of meat and cabbage.
How To Pronounce Bigos?
The Polish word bigos is pronounced ‘bee-gawhs’ or ‘bee-gohs‘.
Which Sausage Should I Add To The Stew?
You can add any smoked sausages to the stew, but the Polish kielbasa sausages taste the best. That’s what we add!
How To Store Bigos?
Once the bigos stew is ready, you can keep it in the fridge for up to a week. Or you can freeze it and store it for up to 6 months.
If you decide to pasteurize bigos, you can keep it like that for up to 3 months (in the fridge).
Reheat before serving.
What To Serve Bigos With?
Although authentic Polish bigos tastes great just as it is, here are the most popular add-ons:
- bread with butter
- mashed or boiled potatoes
- prazoki mashed potatoes
- proziaki
- red wine or vodka
- kopytka
- dill pickles
- kluski śląskie
Authentic Polish Bigos Recipe
Bigos Recipe
Thia authentic Polish bigos stew recipe is made of sauerkraut and meat. Also called Polish hunter's stew, it's not only delicious but also satiating. Perfect for a winter meal!
Ingredients
- 2.5 lbs (1.2 kg) of sauerkraut (kapusta kiszona)
- 1 pound (450-500g) of smoked bacon
- 2-3.5 pounds (1 - 1.5kg) of different kind of meats (sausage, ham, etc.)
- 2-3 average onions
- 16 oz (400-450g) of tomato paste (przecier pomidorowy)
- handful of dry mushrooms
- 3.5 oz (5 tbsps) of plum jam (powidło śliwkowe)
- salt
- pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon of ground caraway seeds
- 1 teaspoon of dried marjoram
Instructions
- Cover the dried mushrooms with cold water and leave for at least 2 hours (if possible, leave overnight). After that, cook the mushrooms until they are soft.
- If your sauerkraut is too sour, you may rinse it (it's not necessary). Cover the sauerkraut with water and cook for 15 minutes.
- Drain the sauerkraut when it's cooked.
- Finely chop the onions and the smoked bacon.
- Fry the bacon for 10 minutes. Add it to the sauerkraut.
- Using the same pan, fry the onions. The pan is already covered with bacon fat, so the onion will be easily fried.
- Add fried onion to the sauerkraut and bacon.
- Chop the mixed meat and fry it in the pan. (Use some oil if necessary.)
- Add the fried mixed meat to the pot. Add tomato puree, powidło (plum butter), salt, pepper, dried marjoram, and cumin.
- Chop the mushrooms and add them to the pot.
- Mix everything together.
- Finally, fry the bigos in the pan. If you have a small pan, fry it partially. Don't skip this bit! Frying the bigos at the end is the secret to getting the best flavor. It's believed that the more you fry it, the better bigos you will get.
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Nutrition Information:
Yield:
10Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 416Total Fat: 22gSaturated Fat: 8gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 13gCholesterol: 87mgSodium: 1635mgCarbohydrates: 24gFiber: 6gSugar: 14gProtein: 31g
These data are indicative and calculated by Nutritionix
Did you enjoy this authentic Polish bigos recipe? Let us know in the comments below!
10 Responses
Cześć! Szukałam informacji o tym, jak gotuje się polski bigos poza polską i znalazłam twój blog. Chętnie ugotuję potrawę z twojego przepisu, żeby sprawdzić czy smakuje tak samo jak mój ulubiony. Oczywiście na smak ma wielki wpływ rodzaj kiełbasy i kapusty, ale to też fajne, bo za każdym razem bigos może smakować nieco inaczej. Pozdrawiam Cię serdecznie!
Dziękuję za Twój komentarz, Róża! To miłe 🙂
Without doubt, the best bigos recipe that I have tried.
I am so happy to read that!
Can you tell me how I should fry it at the end? It’s not in the video, Like a pancake or scrambled egg?
Like scrambled egg 🙂
I am confused. Your list of ingredients lists caraway seeds but in the recipe itself it says to add cumin. Which is it.
Caraway seeds 🙂
Karolina,
I just found your website and watched the video, I’m in Frisco, TEXAS, USA……it’s sooo hot here right now but I used to live in NEW YORK STATE and the winters were long and cold…I saw a few different recipes for Bigos or Polish Hunter’s Stew but you have a video and I truly enjoyed watching you and your English is fabulous!!!! I’m an Italian-American but I love other cuisines and Polish food is very interesting to me. I know about sauerkraut, perogies, stuffed cabbage (I love fresh cabbage and most cabbage meals, I’m not so used to sauerkraut, it’s like dill pickles I am not a fan of that much sourness, but I’m really trying to expand that taste so I’ll eat more of it because all the dieticians are talking about eating fermented sauerkraut to help you gut/digestion.) I’m now looking forward to trying mant of your recipes. I’m a disabled person and standing is difficult but somehow I’m going to find a way to get cooking again because as an Italian you know we love to cook and to cook for others!
I’m confused about it being called a stew because here in the USA a stew has a thick gravy kind of like what you’d see in a POT ROAST that is made in the pan with the stew. When you made yours it looked more on the dry, no that’s not the right word to use, but it didn’t have a liquid base to it. But in the pictures you have here there seems to be some liquid, actually quite a bit that does make it look more like a stew, but then you say to fry the leftovers so then that makes me think of a drier dish again.
One of the recipes I saw on the internet was more like a stew or soup and there was a note to not let the Bigos sink to the bottom and then I got really confused so I’m glad I found your recipe and website!
The Plum Butter is a new butter for me, I know Apple Butter because that is what a lot of Grandmas and Grandpas used to put on their toast or bread instead of just butter or they’d add both…my father liked it too, he wasn’t Italian he was an English-Mutt as we called him…English, Scottish, American Indian (very little though)….I liked it as well but not over just using butter. Anyway, why is it in the recipe? I know it’s probably tradition but is there a reason, like for a sweetness that you can’t get with say just regular sugar? One recipe I read said to use the Plum Butter and Dates and I thought why, for a sweetness to take away some of the sour from the sauerkraut???
I know I’m talking too much and asking a lot of questions. I’m just happy I found your page and I’ve added you to my Pinterest Feed so you’ll pop up a lot now!!!
Again, you were a joy to watch!!!
Hi Lisa,
I enjoyed reading all your comments today! We Poles love cooking and eating as much as you Italians 🙂
Speaking about bigos- well.. some people make it thick, some more liquid.
Plum butter is made of plums however it’s not very sweet. If it’s made traditionally. It’s basically slow-cooked plums. You cook it for 12 hours or even more until they turn into solid jam.
It just adds another layer of taste to bigos, I’d say it made the taste “deeper” and more sophisticated.