This Kielbasa and Cabbage Stew Is the Comfort Food You Need This Season
Main ingredients: “Various meats.”
That’s the snippet you get from Google when you’re searching for a bigos recipe—and that’s how you know you’re in business. What’s for dinner? Various meats, friends. Various. Meats.
In a stew! A “hunter’s stew” to keep you warm in the woods, as bigos is typically translated from Polish. There’s usually kielbasa, maybe some bacon, or pork shoulder, whatever hunks of stew meat you happen to have leftover. Cabbage, sauerkraut, potatoes, carrots, and onions make an appearance. It’s a hearty and humble stick-to-your-ribs dish that varies from home to home. Above all, there are meats. Various.
In our new recipe, Kat Boytsova starts with bacon, then cooks kielbasa in the bacon fat. Sounds like a good idea, no? Then you remove the kielbasa, which can turn crumbly when cooked too long in soup, but you’ll add it back later. Next, the supporting players drop in: Garlic, tomato paste, spices, onion, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, sauerkraut, and beef stock. A bit of white wine cuts through the pork fat, while other recipes can call for up to two bottle of beer for a particularly...celebratory hunt, I guess. Your call.
While researching variations on bigos, we learned that sauerkraut functions in place of lemons, which were hard to find in 18th century Poland. We loved the tang and funk it adds to the rich stew, especially if you use homemade (thanks, Brad) or something fresh from the farmers’ market. Kat’s recipe sneaks in a shredded apple to counteract the sauerkraut’s acidity.
In around two hours of stovetop bubblin’, everything melds together, the cabbage becomes silky, the carrots get smooth but not mushy, and the apple disappears into the broth. You’ll know the bigos is done when you can slice through a potato with a spoon. Then serve it straight from the Dutch oven with rye or pumpernickel bread, a slather of butter, some fresh dill, maybe a dollop of sour cream, whatever makes you happy.
When Kat was developing this recipe, she told us about her grandmother’s Uzbekistan bigos, which was completely vegetarian, with mushroom and eggplant—whatever was overflowing from their farm’s harvest. Then she layered the vegetables with rice, cabbage, and potatoes. If you’re not a kielbasa (or various meats) person, Kat recommends sturdy, earthy vegetables in their place. Anything delicate won’t hold up to the long cook time of the potatoes.
And we all could use some holding up. Let this meaty stew keep you warm this winter—I mean, a nice sweater and a scarf could also help—and even better if you get to share it with 6-14 of your closest friends. It really makes a lot.
Get the recipe:
Bigos (Hunter’s Stew)
