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Bigos

Kielbasa, pork roast, chicken, sauerkraut and cabbage anchor bigos, a hearty stew and Poland’s national dish.
Course Stew
Cuisine Polish
Servings 8

Ingredients

  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
  • 2 teaspoons lard
  • 1 tablespoon neutral cooking oil
  • 1/2 pound kielbasa, cut into coins
  • 1 onion, coarsely chopped
  • 3 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 2 25- ounce jars of fermented sauerkraut—drain and reserve the juice (see Kitchen Notes)
  • 1 small green cabbage, cored and shredded (yielding 6 or 7 cups of cabbage)
  • 1 pound roasted pork, cut into cubes (see Kitchen Notes for a simple, delicious recipe)
  • meat from 2 roasted bone-in chicken thighs, cut into cubes and bits
  • 4 bay leaves
  • 4 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 ounce dried mushrooms, soaked in hot water for an hour, then drained and torn into uniform sized pieces (see Kitchen Notes)
  • 4 cups beef stock (you can substitute chicken stock or mushroom stock)
  • 2 tart cooking apples, peeled and grated (this time I used Granny Smiths)
  • 6 or 8 dried prunes, cut into bits
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1 teaspoon juniper berries, crushed (I folded them in a linen towel and hit them with a hammer)
  • 1 teaspoon ground caraway

Instructions

  • Roast the pork and the chicken—see Kitchen Notes.
  • In a big, heavy pot, heat the butter, lard and oil. Then put in the kielbasa coins and quickly brown on both sides. Set aside. If need be, add a bit more oil to the pot and scrape the bottom. Then add the onions and sauté for a minute or two, until translucent. Add the tomato paste and sauté some more, stirring, two or three minutes.
  • Then add the drained sauerkraut, the stock, the shredded cabbage, the spices and the bay leaves, and stir everything together. When it is all uniform, add the grated apple, the chopped prunes, and the fresh and dried mushrooms. Stir in the meat. Bring to a simmer, then cook gently over low heat for a couple of hours, uncovered, stirring now and then.
  • Taste part way through—if it tastes sour, then add more apple or prune. After about two hours, turn off the heat. You may serve it right away, as noted above, but for maximum awesomeness, put it away in the fridge overnight, then cook a bit more the next day.
  • We served this with a baguette and plenty of butter and, to drink, a terrific 2017 Averaen pinot noir from Oregon's Willamette Valley that our friends Chris and Julie brought. Its light style is perfect for bigos. Or, of course, a good Polish beer.

Kitchen Notes

Start with good sauerkraut. We prefer using fermented sauerkraut for this dish. It just tastes better. One brand we like a lot is Bubbies, available at Whole Foods, among other places. But if you cannot find it, or are in a hurry, or want to cut costs, by all means use canned sauerkraut. Just give it a rinse to cut down the vinegary aspect. I also recommend choosing a plain, straight-ahead sauerkraut—not something sweetened or with beets or radishes in it. Those would be fine and you would not be committing a gastronomic crime, but for this, the classic is best. And by the way, the reason you save the sauerkraut juice is to drink it later, mmmmmmmmm.
Easy, amazing roast pork. Here is a foolproof technique for a pork roast. Start with a bone-in pork shoulder or pork butt roast—we used a Boston blade roast, about 4 pounds. Preheat your oven to 425ºF. Rub the roast with olive oil and 3 cloves chopped garlic, then season generously with salt and pepper. Put on a rack in a rimmed baking pan and roast it for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325ºF and roast until the internal temperature is at least 185ºF. Figure about 30 minutes per pound. Tender, juicy, delicious. It yielded far more than the pound of meat we needed for the bigos—which was great because it gave us meat for sandwiches and dinners throughout the week.
Roasting chicken thighs. Season the thighs with salt, pepper and sweet paprika. Arrange on a hotel pan and add to the oven while the pork is roasting and bake for about 40 minutes. Done.
The mushrooms. For this dish, we chose dried borowik szlachetny—Boletus edulis, AKA porcini or cepes. Other good choices for the dried mushrooms are podgrzybki brunatne, Boletus badius, or shiitake mushrooms, Lentinula edodes. For the fresh mushrooms, simply use basic white mushrooms from the grocery store.