Bigos recipe – a pearl of Polish cuisine

Bigos is one of the most famous Polish dishes. It’s not to be eaten on its own – you need either bread or a full lunch to fully enjoy it. In this article, we’ll show you a bigos recipe. Also – we’ll offer you our Polish language course in Wroclaw. Part of its curriculum is familiarizing our students with Polish cuisine. 

Is Bigos even Polish?

For centuries, Poland has been constantly interacting with other cultures. Either because of being occupied or multicultural, but it doesn’t matter here. What matters is that many of the Polish dishes can be encountered in other cuisines. So is with bigos – while Poland is known for it, also Lithuanians and Belarussians are familiar with the bigos recipe.

But we can be 100% sure that its name is not Polish, but German. It’s derived from the German word “Beiguss”. It means “the sauce”, so something different than in the Polish language. Therefore we can view this word as a false friend. 

Bigos recipe – ingredients

If you want to make bigos, you don’t need a ton of fancy ingredients. Most likely you already have them in your house. And even if not – you can buy them for a very cheap price in the closest store. So, you need:

1.5 kg of sauerkraut

3 sausages

2 onions

100 g of bacon

200 g of beef steak

4 tablespoons of tomato sauce

3 bay leaves

1 tablespoon of marjoram

allspice

salt

black pepper

Once you collect those items, you can easily proceed to make Bigos recipe an edible dish. You don’t need anything fancier than basic kitchen equipment.

Bigos recipe – preparation

The first step to enjoying the bigos is to rinse the sauerkraut with water and drain it. Once you complete it, you should proceed to shred the sauerkraut and place it in a large pot with bay leaves and allspice.

As you see, the Bigo’s recipe is very easy. If you’re a complete novice, you can begin your cooking adventure. Anyways, the next step is to add hot water and simmer until it becomes soft.

Then your task is to sauté the onions and then add the chopped sausages, frying them until browned. Immediately proceed to add the beef and bacon (cut into cubes) and cook for 20 minutes in a pot of boiling water.

Then add the cooked meat, onions, and sausages to the sauerkraut, and pour in marjoram, salt, pepper, and tomato sauce. Once you do it, all that remains is to mix the ingredients and cook on low heat for an hour.

And now let us teach you the Polish word smacznego, which means “bon appetit”!

Summary

We provided you with a basic Bigos recipe. Of course, many of the Polish cooks have their own version, so be ready to eat other variants. Also, during our Polish language course in Wroclaw, we’ll gladly teach you about cooking many Polish dishes. We’re starting our group classes on 9th October 2023. E-mail us at: polishdream.wroclaw@gmail.com. 

Whatever your needs are, we’ve got you covered! Are you a busy person? Then check our 1:1 classes. Or maybe you prefer having a few helpful classmates. If so – feel free to enroll in our group classes. 

Our Polish language course in Wroclaw can be paid for in installments. For a moderate price of 4×400 PLN, you’ll get 15 weeks of intense Polish learning. Of course, it’s but one semester, so if you want to advance in your Polish learning, please stay longer with us.