Polish Cuisine: Dishes You Must Try

Poles love and know how to cook. Even sandwiches - canapes - for breakfast they turn out incredibly tasty: with the most delicate ham, sweet tomato, crispy lettuce, cottage cheese cream and a fresh bun.

Poles love and know how to cook. Even sandwiches - canapes - for breakfast they turn out incredibly tasty: with the most delicate ham, sweet tomato, crispy lettuce, cottage cheese cream and a fresh bun. It sounds simple, but for some reason it is impossible to repeat outside of Poland.

Dishes of national cuisine partly echo the neighbors - Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, German. But there are some that you won't find anywhere else. For example, flaki is a soup made from beef offal. We have selected a small selection of the most popular Polish recipes that we recommend for acquaintance. Try!

Bigos

 

Sauerkraut stew with intense flavor and aroma. A good bigos should contain sauerkraut, a lot of meat, forest mushrooms, prunes, and spices. Bigos is a trademark of Polish cuisine. Serve bigos with black bread and sour cream. Overeating!

Ingredients:

500 g pork (preferably pork neck); 200 g cold smoked sausages; 1 kg of sour cabbage; 30 g dried mushrooms; sour apple; 3-4 prunes; bulb; 1 st. l. tomato paste; 1 st. l. flour; 30 g butter; 2 tbsp. l. vegetable oil; 3 glasses of water; Bay leaf; salt, black pepper to taste; 1 tsp cumin; 2 tsp dried marjoram; a couple of peas of allspice.

Fry the diced onion in vegetable oil in a large saucepan. Then add the meat cut into large pieces, fry on all sides until the color changes. Pour in two cups of hot water, salt, pepper, add dried mushrooms broken into pieces and simmer for 45 minutes after boiling.

After 45 minutes, add lavrushka, peppercorns, cumin, marjoram, prunes cut into three parts, diced peeled apple. Stir and add sauerkraut without juice, pour in a glass of water. Simmer the cabbage over medium-slow heat for 20 minutes, then throw in the sausage slices. Simmer for another 20 minutes and add the tomato paste. 

While the bigos is simmering, fry the flour in a dry frying pan until golden brown, then add the butter and stir until the butter is melted. Add a couple of tablespoons of cabbage from the pan to the oil, mix and return to the bigos again. Stir all the contents of a large saucepan, bring to a boil. Ready!

Vareniki (Pierogi)

 

Vareniki are stuffed with minced meat, sauerkraut, mushrooms, vegetables, cheese, and berries. Serve boiled or fried with cracklings and onions or sour cream. Familiar, tasty, good for freezing.

We prepare the dough for dumplings like this. Ingredients:

300 g wheat flour; a pinch of salt; 125 ml of boiling water; chicken egg; 25 g butter.

Pour flour into a bowl with salt. Dissolve the butter in boiling water and add in portions to the flour, stirring with a spoon. Somewhere in the middle of the process, add a beaten egg with a whisk to a bowl of flour. Knead a smooth dough on a floured surface. Remember well for 7 minutes, then wrap with cling film and send for half an hour in the cold.

During this time, prepare the filling, such as meat and vegetables cooked in broth (use the broth for soup or stew).

For the filling you will need:

300 g of meat boiled in broth (any); 300 g of vegetables boiled in broth (carrot, celery, parsley root, leek); 2-3 tbsp. l. broth; salt, black pepper to taste.

All the ingredients for the filling must be ground in a meat grinder or punched with a blender. If the filling is too dry, add a couple more tablespoons of broth.

We continue to cook dumplings. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and divide into 4 parts. Roll out with a rolling pin on a floured table (thickness - 3-4 mm). Cut out circles with a glass and place a spoonful of the filling in the center of each. Pinch and drop into a pot of boiling salted water. Dumplings are boiled for 2 minutes after they float to the surface. Serve with fried onions, cracklings, sour cream. Or freeze on a pallet for future use (then transfer to freezer bags).

Pickle with cucumbers (Zupa ogórkowa)

 

Rassolnik can be cooked on ribs, add any vegetables and cereals to your taste. Pickled cucumbers are a must. We offer an express version of pickle on ready-made broth for a quick lunch.

Ingredients:

1.5 liters of ready-made broth (any); 3 potatoes; 4 medium pickles; carrot; bulb; 20 g butter; 1 st. l. vegetable oil; 150 ml sour cream (20 percent); bunch of chives.

Peel onions and carrots, cut into small cubes and fry in a mixture of vegetable and butter for 3-4 minutes in a large saucepan. Pour in the hot broth and cook for 5 minutes. Add peeled and diced potatoes, cook for another 10 minutes. Then add peeled pickled cucumbers, grated. If available, add half a cup of cucumber pickle. Cook for 10 minutes, then remove from heat. Mix a few tablespoons of soup with sour cream, then pour into soup. Pour chopped chives into the pan. Mix and serve.

Flaki - offal, tripe soup (Flaki)

 

Soup in broth with beef tripes, roots, spices. A super budget dish that takes at least 4 hours to prepare and is served in national cuisine restaurants.

Ingredients:

1 kg chopped beef tripes; a piece of root celery; 3 carrots; bulb; 1 st. l. wheat flour; 1.5 l of broth; 2 bay leaves; 3 peas of allspice; 9 black peppercorns; a spoonful of marjoram; salt to taste; 1 st. l. vegetable oil; 1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg, ground ginger, sweet and hot red pepper.

Rinse the scars, fill with water (so that the water covers the scars for two fingers) and cook for 25 minutes after boiling. Drain the water, throw the scars on a sieve, rinse. Pour again with plenty of clean water and simmer for two hours over low heat.

Drain the water, wash the scars and now pour the broth. Add bay leaf, black and allspice, cook for 30 minutes.

After half an hour, add grated peeled carrots and celery. Salt and cook for another 25 minutes.

Cut the onion into small cubes, fry in oil in a pan, then add flour and fry until golden brown. Pour in a couple of tablespoons of broth from the saucepan for frying, mix and pour into the saucepan to the scars. 

At the end of cooking, add nutmeg, ginger, sweet and bitter peppers to the tripe, mix and bring to a boil. Flasks are ready! Serve in a deep bowl with fresh herbs.

Żurek - oatmeal soup (Żurek)

 

The traditional zhurek is made with rye flour sourdough, soup with mushrooms and potatoes, and served with smoked ribs and a hard-boiled egg. You can buy sourdough in Poland at any store, but we offer a recipe for homemade sourdough based on rye flour (note that it takes 4-5 days to prepare the sourdough).

Ingredients:

500 ml sourdough based on rye flour; 2 liters of broth (any); 4 Polish white veal sausages; 200 g bacon; large bulb; clove of garlic; 2 tsp horseradish; 3 art. l. fat sour cream; salt, black pepper, dried marjoram to taste; boiled egg for serving.

Pour the broth into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

While the broth is heating, cut the bacon and onion into cubes. In a skillet, fry the bacon until the fat is rendered, add the onion and fry until golden brown. Turn the contents of the pan into a saucepan, add whole sausages and cook for 30-40 minutes until the expressive meat taste and aroma.

Then add half of the well-mixed sourdough, taste, pour in more to taste.

In the pan, also send chopped or passed through a press garlic, marjoram, rubbed with your fingers, horseradish. Stir. Cook for a few more minutes and remove from heat.

Mix a little soup with sour cream, then pour it into a saucepan, salt and pepper. Before serving, cut the sausage into rings and add a couple of quarters of a boiled egg to the plate. Enjoy!

A starter based on rye flour is prepared like this.

In a 2-3-liter jar, pour 7-8 tbsp. spoons of rye flour. Pour in 1/5 of water, mix and leave under several layers of gauze for 4-5 days in a warm place. Stir the starter once or twice daily. The finished sourdough will have a pleasant smell, and you can store it in the refrigerator for a week.

Red borscht with dumplings (Barszcz czerwony z uszkami)

 

Bright beetroot soup with delicious dumplings stuffed with mushrooms! Poles serve such lean borscht on Christmas Eve.

Ingredients for dumplings with mushrooms (cooking for the future):

1 kg of wheat flour; 1 tsp salt; 120 g vegetable oil + a spoon for frying onions; 400 ml of hot water (cool boiling water for 3 minutes); 100 g dried forest mushrooms; 2 onions; salt, pepper to taste.

Pour boiling water over the mushrooms for several hours, and preferably at night. Then boil them in the same water in which they were soaked for 50-60 minutes. Select the mushrooms with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Peel the onion, cut into cubes and fry in a frying pan with a spoonful of oil until soft.

Grind mushrooms with onions in a meat grinder, salt and pepper. The filling for the ears is ready.

For the dough, mix flour, salt, oil and, kneading in a food processor or by hand, add water. You should get a smooth, elastic dough that does not stick to your hands. Put the finished dough for 10 minutes under a towel.

Roll out the dough into a thin layer on a floured table, cut out circles with a glass or a small round cookie cutter. Put half a spoonful of filling in the center and fasten the edges by moistening your fingers with water. Connect the ends of the crescent. Before cooking, store dumplings on a floured plate under a towel. Cook in boiling salted water for a few minutes, ready-made dumplings will float to the surface and become soft. Serve with borscht. 

Set aside the required number of dumplings for borscht, and freeze the rest. To do this, first put them on a pallet in one layer, and then, when they are frozen, put them in a special bag or box for freezing.

Ingredients for red borscht:

3 kg of beets; 100 g dried mushrooms; 3 large onions; clove of garlic; 1 liter of apple juice; 3-4 prunes; lemon; salt to taste; 4 peppercorns; marjoram; boiled dumplings with mushrooms for serving.

Pour dried mushrooms with boiling water overnight. 

Rinse half of the beet roots and put to boil in a saucepan with water for 40 minutes. The beets should become soft, but not boiled. Cool the cooked beets.

Rinse the remaining half of the beet roots, peel, cut into slices and put in a large saucepan. Send the mushrooms there along with the water in which they were soaked, onion fried in a dry frying pan, diced, peeled and cut into several pieces of garlic, prunes, salt, peppercorns, pour in 3 liters of water and cook for 1.5 hours.

Then strain the borscht through a sieve. Return the broth to the saucepan, put on fire. We will no longer need the rest of the borscht ingredients (mushrooms, sliced ​​beets). Peel the boiled whole beetroot, grate it and add it to the borscht. Bring to a boil, then turn off the heat and leave for an hour. We carry out these and subsequent manipulations in order to preserve the bright color of the soup.

After an hour, we heat the borscht again, pour in the juice of one lemon and apple juice, bring to a boil and turn off the heat. We leave for another half an hour.

Before serving, strain the borscht, heat it up (but do not boil it!!!). Boil dumplings, put a dozen on a plate and pour borsch. Ready!

Kashanka, sausage, saltison (Kaszanka, kiełbasa, salceson)

 

If you want to please your family and friends with gifts from Poland, bring Polish sausage. You can't make this at home! The variety is simply amazing!

Of the interesting sausages, we suggest trying kashanka and saltison.

Kashanka sausage is made from buckwheat, spices and blood. The Poles make it at home, but more often they buy it ready-made in the store, then fry it on the grill or in a pan with onions. 

Saltison is boiled from a pork or beef head with the addition of offal, seasonings and blood. Reminiscent of cooking jelly, but in the Polish version, the finished meat is ground, seasoned, wrapped in cling film, tied and boiled again, then put under oppression.

Savory!