🍲 Bigos
Bigos is a slow-cooked Polish stew of sauerkraut and fresh cabbage with chunks of pork, smoked sausage, dried mushrooms and prunes. Long simmering turns it dark, soft and deeply savoury, with a sour-smoky taste and a hint of sweetness from the prunes. It is served hot in a bowl, and many cooks say it tastes best reheated on the second or third day.
Diets
Allergens
None of the 14 major allergens in a typical recipe.
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 800 g sauerkraut, drained and chopped
- 500 g fresh white cabbage, shredded
- 500 g pork shoulder, cut into 3 cm cubes
- 300 g smoked sausage, sliced
- 20 g dried mushrooms, soaked in 300 ml hot water
- 8 prunes, chopped
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 bay leaves, 5 allspice berries, 1 tsp black pepper
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil, salt
Method
- Put the sauerkraut in a large pot with 300 ml water and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile brown the pork in the oil, then add the onion and sausage and fry for 5 minutes more.
- Add the fresh cabbage, the browned meat, the mushrooms with their strained soaking water, the bay leaves and allspice to the sauerkraut.
- Cover and simmer on low heat for 1.5–2 hours, stirring now and then and adding a splash of water if it gets dry.
- Stir in the prunes and tomato paste, season with salt and pepper and cook for 20 minutes more.
- Rest overnight if possible and reheat gently before serving.
How to make it lighter
- Use lean pork shoulder trimmed of visible fat and skim the fat that rises to the top after resting.
- Raise the share of cabbage and sauerkraut and cut the sausage by half — the stew stays full-flavoured.
- Serve one generous bowl without extra sides; the cabbage is filling on its own.
History
Bigos is often called Poland's national dish and has been cooked in the region for centuries, traditionally as a way to use up meat and preserved cabbage through the winter. It is famously praised in Adam Mickiewicz's 19th-century epic poem Pan Tadeusz. Today it is a fixture of Christmas, Easter and winter family tables in Poland and Lithuania.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →