What’s cooking? World recipes

Bigos often translated into English as hunter’s stew, is a Polish dish of chopped meat of various kinds stewed with sauerkraut and shredded fresh cabbage.

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

In the region of Greater Poland, bigos typically contains tomato paste and is seasoned with garlic and marjoram. Kuyavian bigos is often made from red cabbage as well as white. In Silesia, it is usually mixed with kopytka or kluski, that is, small plain boiled dumplings made from unleavened dough that contains flour and mashed potatoes.

In bigos myśliwski, or “hunter’s bigos“, at least part of the meat comes from game, such as wild boar, venison or hare. It is usually seasoned with juniper berries, which help neutralize off-flavours that may be found in the meat of wild animals.

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A fellow travel blogger, Agness of Etramping, shares her 10 favourite dishes you can’t miss when visiting Poland. Check out her blog post here.

If you’ve never tried it please make sure to ask for it when you travel to Poland.