Food is a multi-sensory thing. Sometimes the reason why we love a dish is just as much about the way our eyes or our noses are stimulated by it, as it is about the way it affects our taste buds. There are some things that look so beautiful and appetising that you just have to put them into your mouth, and some things that have such an enticing aroma that you need to find out if the taste can come close to the smell.

Bigos isn’t either of those, it looks like an unappetising mess with lumps of fatty meat swimming in a strange brown water, and it smells like something you might run a mile from (especially while it is cooking), but the taste, oh the taste, more than makes up for it.

This is not something that you are likely to find on any fine dining menu, and it is tricky to imagine how you could present it to look like Michelin star food, but when it tastes like this, who cares.

Bigos and the bleak midwinter

The Polish winter isn’t the most hospitable climate in the world. Fields carpeted with snow and ice covered trees glistening in the crisp wintry air can be breathtakingly beautiful, but they aren’t the best conditions for growing anything very much.

The solution to the lack of fresh produce has always been to pickle, smoke, salt, and otherwise preserve fruit, vegetables, meats and fish.

Apart from the fact that you can’t find anything much fresh, there is also the fact that when it is 28 degrees below zero outside, you really want some meaty warming food inside you.

Which leads us neatly into bigos, a mixture of pickled cabbage, dried mushrooms, and smoked meats, which is very meaty and hearty and warms you right up right away.

A million variations

Like traditional food the world over, every grandmother and aunt in Poland will give you a different recipe (or two) for bigos, and everyone will staunchly defend the one that they ate in childhood as the best in the land.

I haven’t tried every variation of bigos in the whole of Poland, but since I love the stuff, I have tried quite a few. Of all those that I have sampled, my favourite comes from ciocia (aunt) Karolina, and the recipe that follows comes from her.

Some parts of the recipe may seem quite vague. This is due to the fact that the ingredients are so variable, and will take different lengths of time to cook every time you make the dish. After you have prepared it a few times you will learn to judge when it is and isn’t the right moment to add the next ingredient, or how long to simmer something for.

Notes on ingredients

Polish kapusta kiszona is very simply cabbage preserved in salt. In most of the rest of the world, what you will be buying is German sauerkraut. The sauerkraut is pretty much the same thing, but you should be careful to buy one without the anything added to it, i.e. carrots or white wine.

Both the pork and the beef should be tougher cuts of meat with a good amount of fat in them. If you have anything too delicate or too lean then it will disintegrate during the long cooking time of the dish.

You can use either smoked or unsmoked bacon, but smoked is better as it adds an extra dimension of flavour to the whole dish. Like the other meats the bacon should have a decent proportion of fat in it. Note that you need a joint of bacon, not slices.

The best ham to use is a pack of offcuts from your local butcher or supermarket, then you don’t even really need to chop it up later.

Ideally, the sausage should be lightly smoked, but if you can’t find one then any decent pork sausage will do.

In Poland, you would use grzyby leśne, which you’ll find in any supermarket and are a mixture of dried forest mushrooms. You can probably find something similar just about anywhere, but make sure that they are wild forest mushrooms and not something like champignon as they simply don’t have enough flavour.

Let’s do it then

1. Put the dried mushrooms in a bowl with enough warm water to cover them completely, and leave them to soak.

2. Fry the pork and beef in half of the fat until it is browned. Add the sliced onions, cover and braise until the meat is half cooked.

3. Squeeze the excess liquid out of the sauerkraut, either using your hands, or put it in a colander and press it down with a wooden spoon.

4. Put the sauerkraut and bacon together in a large pan with a little water, some allspice and the bay leaves. Bring it to the boil, and then turn it down and let it simmer.
   There are a couple of important things to note at this point. Firstly that the finished dish should be quite thick and not swimming in liquid, and that you will be adding wine as well as liquids from the mushrooms and the meat a bit later, so you should add just enough water now to prevent the cabbage from burning and allow the bacon to boil.
   Secondly, it is important not to add any salt to the dish at all until the cabbage is completely cooked, otherwise it will prevent the cabbage from softening.

5. When the bacon is half cooked, remove it, and leave the cabbage on the heat.

6. Strain the mushrooms, and cut them into slivers, then add both the mushrooms and the water they were soaked in to the cabbage.

7. Cut the cooked pork and beef, together with the bacon into medium sized chunks, and add them all together with the onions and any juices from the meat to the cabbage.

8. Cook over a medium heat till the cabbage and the meat are cooked through and soft. Sauerkraut has a tendency to stick, so it is very important not to use too high a heat, and to remember to give it a good stir from time to time.

9. While it is cooking, cut the sausage into half moon slices, and the ham into cubes, and fry them in the rest of the fat. When they are cooked, add them to the cabbage, together with the remaining spices and red wine.

10. Bring the whole thing to the boil, and then lower the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.

At this point your bigos is finished and ready to eat, and it should taste wonderful. If you want to be really traditional and really get the very most flavour into the dish though, you have a lot more work to do.

(optional)

Traditionally bigos was cooked, cooled down and then reheated and recooled for seven days in a row in order to ensure the perfect mingling of all flavours.

11. After cooking allow your bigos to cool completely and then refrigerate it overnight.

12. The following day slowly and gently bring the whole thing up to the boil and then turn the heat down and simmer it for 10 minutes. Take it off the heat and let it cool completely before putting it back into the fridge for the night.

13. Repeat for another 5 days.

(end optional)

14. Drink either with shots of good quality frozen vodka or a bottle of the same red wine that you put into the bigos itself.