Bigos

Bigos ( Polish bigos , lit. bigos , Ukrainian bigos , Belarusian bigas ), also bigus ( German Beiguss ) - traditional for Ukrainian , Belarusian , Polish , Latvian , Lithuanian cuisine; second course of sauerkraut and meat . Bigos is considered to be traditional Polish dish, but there is a legend that this dish was "imported" from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Poland by King Vladislav Jagailo , who loved to taste it at hunting huts.

Bigos in bread

There are many cooking options for bigos. Usually a mixture of fresh white cabbage and sauerkraut , pork or game as a meat, smoked sausage, podcherevina (pork fat with a large inclusion of meat) is used. Forest mushrooms , prunes , red wine , tomatoes , various spices (often cumin , black pepper , bay leaf ) are also added to the dish. First, the ingredients are prepared separately (stewed cabbage , meat and sausage are fried), then mixed and stewed together.

The finished dish has a thick consistency, slightly sour taste and smell of smoked meats. Bigos is served hot with bread, white or black, often with vodka ^[1] .

Since when warming bigos does not lose its taste, it is often prepared for future use in a large bowl, and then frozen.

In Mitskevich ’s poem “ Pan Tadeusz ” there is a famous passage dedicated to bigos (Chapter IV, “Diplomacy and Hunting”), it begins with the lines: “W kociołkach bigos grzano; w słowach wydać trudno bigosu smak przedziwny, kolor i woń cudną ”(“ In bigos pots they warmed; in words it is difficult to convey the bigos’s taste is delicious, the color and smell are wonderful ”).

But bigos is warming; hard to say
About how tasty it is, about how wonderful it smells!
Words, rhyme order, pass it on to another,
But the essence does not understand the stomach of the city!
A healthy hunter and a villager -
Lithuanian dishes are the only connoisseur!
But, even without those seasonings, the Lithuanian bigos is tasty,
There are many vegetables in it, and their choice is skillful;
Sauerkraut sprinkled slides
Thaw on the lips, according to the Polish proverb.
Cabbage stewed in boilers for at least an hour,
Chunks of the finest meat are stewed with it,
Until the juices pass through the heat,
As long as they do not spill over the edge with steam ... ^[2]