Bigos

Bigos – A hunter’s stew which comes in about a million different variants.  This is a story of mine. It’s not difficult, but it takes time. Luckily, the longer you cook it the better it comes out, so you can’t stuff it up.

What you'll need ...

200g beef (lean cut)

100g smoked bacon

1x white onion

1x sausage (ideally with garlic)

500g sauerkraut

500g fresh white cabbage

1/2 cup red wine

1 tablespoon tomato puree

30g dried forest mushrooms

1 tablespoon majoram

1/2 tablespoon sweet paprika

1/4 tablespoon red chili powder / smoked paprika

1/4 tablespoon Caraway Seeds (kmin)

1/4 tablespoon Cayan pepper

4x Juniper berries (Jalovec)

10x black pepper corns

6x allspice

4x prunes

2x bayleafs

1 cup stock (beef / vegetable)

Steps

  1. Add a cube of beef stock to a cup of boiling water and set aside
  2. Add enough water to cover the 30g of dried mushrooms with at least a cm spare and set aside. Note: don’t use fresh mushrooms because the water from the dried mushrooms helps a lot with the color and taste.
  3. Add 1/4 cup of water to a large pot, set on medium-low and start adding diced cabbage. Dice into thin strips or go for a variety of thicknesses. Add the caraway seeds. Boiling the cabbage will take about 30-45 minutes. Stir every so often to make sure it’s not sticking or burning. If all the water evaporates just pour in a little bit more.
  4. Dice all the meats and start with the bacon on high heat in a frying pan. This is so that we render out the fat from it and use it for all the other meats.  If the piece of bacon is quite fatty just cut of the blobs of fat and use them if the fat in the pan runs out.  Don’t add the fatty parts to the dish.
  5. Coat the beef in a little bit of salt and pepper.
  6. Once the bacon starts forming a crispy layer, take it out and add it to the slow cooker.
  7. Chuck the beef on the pan. This will take around 10 minutes. All the water should render out and the meat should darken. Once ready, add it to the pot.
  8. Repeat with the sausage and once again add it to the pot once done.
  9. Reduce heat and add 1 diced onion to the frying pan. Stir till lightly golden and add the stock to help deglazing the juices from the pan. Once the pan is smooth pour the mixture into the slow cooker. Note if you can’t get the garlic sausage then you’d add a chopped clove of garlic with the onions.
  10. Add the sauerkraut to the pot in which all the cabbage has been sweating, along with all the water and spices in the package. Mix it and let it cook for a few minutes. Note: you can add the sauerkraut straight to the slow cooker if you want a stronger taste or wash, drain and add it to the sweet cabbage early on if you are going for a lighter taste.
  11. Once the cabbage has come up to temperature and there is little water left, add the contents of the pot to the slow cooker. Note that if you have too much water left just drain it out. If you have just a bit you can add it to the slow cooker.
  12. Throw in the diced prunes, spices and pour in the remaining liquids which should be the red wine and the soaked mushroom.

Don’t mix it at this point. Just close the lid and let it go for about an hour and half on low. After this time open the lid and give it a good
mix. Close the lid and let it go for another 5-6 hours without
interrupting it. Obviously if you are worried about the liquid level then
give it mix every few hours to check and adjust if needed.

After 7-8 hours cooking time add a tablespoon of tomato paste if you prefer a darker finish. Don’t add the paste if you want the golden look.  Enjoy straight away or let it cool down, refrigerate over night. It’s always better after a few days

Variations

  • Cook for about 5 hours stop let it cool and then put it outside or in the fridge over night. In winter it should freeze if you let it sit outside. The next day cook it again for about 4 hours. Now your bigos is ready. You can repeat this one more time, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it more than that.  Normally, after the second cook, I store half in the fridge which I can reheat in small batches in a pot and I freeze the other half for later.
  • Add all the spices to the cabbage when initially cooking it.  That can work when you have your quantities dialed in as in case you end up with too much liquid you will loose some spices.  Alternatively if you end up running out liquid you may end up burning a bit of the spices which can ruin the cabbage.  You can also dump the cabbage into the slow cooker without sweating it. The slow cooker will look very full, but after a while it will settle down.
  • If you don’t have a slow-cooker or can’t wait that long, throw the lot in the oven in an oven-safe dish for about 3 hours on 160 degrees. Check it at the half way point. You might need to adjust liquids if you are doing it in the oven. Adding some water will always work.
  • For a very strong bigos use only sauerkraut. It comes out interesting but you will need more of the herbs and spices to offset the vinegar. The texture of the dish becomes interesting.
  • Add pork. I normally only use lean beef but you can add pork or even better, wild bore. Don’t add chicken.
  • Add lots of Cayan pepper and/or spicy red chili powder to give it a kick. Bigos can handle some spice.
  • Add apples for sweetness. Later in the cooing process when using a slower cooker or at the start when use the oven.
  • Add whole spices in a spice net to remove them easily once the cooking is done. After cooking for so long most of the whole spices, apart from the bayleafs, are soft enough to bite through or at least big enough to pick out. If don’t want to have them on the plate then stick them in a spice net for easy removal once the cooking is done.