Bigos from young cabbage recipe

This is a recipe for a very 'soft' variant of bigos (Polish hunter's stew). Made of young cabbage and stewed for a short time, therefore really easy and quick to prepare. Keeps rather light brown color instead of dark brown (characteristic for a traditional Polish bigos stewed for many hours. Usually served as an addition to kotlet schabowy or other meat dish (e.g. sausages), but can also be eaten separately with bread/rolls.



Bigos from young cabbage (without sausages)


Ingredients in this recipe:

photo by UnorthodoxY

  • 4 young cabbages
  • 0.7 kg of lean pork
  • 0.25 kg of smoked bacon
  • 0.7 kg of thin sausages (kielbasa)
  • 1 carrot, 1 parsley, half of celery, 1 onion
  • 1 bunch of dill
  • 3 bay leaves, 4 grains of allspice, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of oil
  • sugar, salt & pepper


Recipe:

  1. Cut pork and onion into small pieces. Fry in oil.
  2. Put fried meat & onion into a pot, add small amount of water and simmer for 30 minutes.
  3. Cut cabbage into small pieces. To the boiling meat and onion add: cabbage, diced bacon, vegetables, whole bay leaves and allspice.
  4. Boil the whole mixture until cabbage is soft.
  5. Season your bigos with salt, pepper and a little sugar.
  6. Before serving add sausages (kielbasa) to the pot to make them warm. Chop dill and sprinkle bigos served on plates (or serve chopped dill on a separate saucer).

In Polish families it is quite usual to serve kotlet schabowy with an even more 'soft' version of bigos, which is made without meat at all. This is actually quite similar recipe to that one above, but there's no bacon nor pork. I usually add stock cubes to improve the taste although it's against rules :P However, what I wanted to tell you is that such meatless food is most often called 'duszona kapusta' (simply means 'stewed cabbage'), not bigos. So we eat 'kotlet schabowy z duszona kapusta' (Polish pork schnitzel with stewed cabbage) very often - these two taste really great together (plus some boiled potatoes as usually). And what we call bigos, both a traditional one and bigos from a young cabbage, is a Polish food that contains meat by definition. So… OK. It's already to much :) Good luck!

I hope that you find this bigos from young cabbage recipe useful. Enjoy your meal! Smacznego! :)


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