Bigos (Polish Hunter's Stew) Recipe Builder | Hacker News Reader

Bigos (Polish Hunter's Stew) Recipe Builder

chefsbinge.com

104 pointsdoublepg2349 comments

It very slightly remember a traditional meal here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locro You mix white corn, beans, pumpkin and whatever piece of meat you can grab, with some extra vegetables, bones more meat, sausage and whatever that is edible, and cook it for a long time (but usually less than a day), but it's always better the next day.

Thinking about it, I'd add an option to double the amount of some ingredients. For example some people like no onion, but others like a lot of onion.

Edit: In case you are curious, recipe by "Paulina Cocina" that usually has easy and tasty recipes (in Spanish) https://www.paulinacocina.net/receta-de-locro-argentino/9829

There are several Polish dishes that boil down to throwing whatever is edible into a single pot and boiling for hours. Bigos is mostly cabbage, gulasz is like very thin gravy, leczo has lots of red pepper and zucchini, jarzynowa (literally "vegetable soup") has no set ingredients at all.

Only bigos and jerzynowa are Polish. The rest of dishes you mentioned are Hungarian. They're quite popular in Poland though

If hamburger can be American, then gulasz can be Polish. It's been hundreds of years, at what point am I allowed to call my great-great-great-great-grandma's recipe my culture?

"Jerzynowa" is a funny misspelling. It's Levenshtein distance 1 from two completely different soups.

Oh yeah right, it looks like I invented a new soup and immediately made an orthographic error in its name with this misspelling :p

As for the hamburger - its origin history is quite complicated with its name mainly attributed to its early marketing in USA, so I think that's a bad example for your good point. So skipping that I think there are many dishes that get adopted into the local dishes, getting more popular than in the origin culture, but I don't think gulasz is one of them, as it's one of the most known examples of Hungarian kitchen

Lickmyballs, or polishmyballs? Funny nickname.

I specifically picked an example that's super mega deeply ingrained in American cuisine, because this is the level of how super mega deeply ingrained gulasz is in Polish kitchen. About half of traditional Polish dishes - even the famous schabowy - are more recent inventions than gulasz. You're not going to argue schabowy is actually German and not Polish, are you?

And gulasz is also known as stoofvlees. A beef stew…

> If hamburger can be American, then gulasz can be Polish.

And hot dogs are... what exactly?

> “Ever eaten scubbo? No? Nothing like a bowl of scubbo when you’re hungry. You can put anything in scubbo. Pork, beef, mutton, rabbit, chicken, duck… anything. Even rats, if you’ve got ’em. It’s food for the marching man, scubbo. Got some on the boil out there right now. You can have some of that, if you like.”

> The squad brightened up.

> Thoundth good,” said Igor. “What’th in it?”

> “Boiling water,” said the corporal. “It’s what we call ‘blind scubbo’"

Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett (GNU)

> There are several Polish dishes that boil down to throwing whatever is edible into a single pot and boiling for hours.

Pretty much what my spouse calls "everything soup" or "refrigerator stew"

> gulasz is like very thin gravy

If you make thin gulasz, you're doing a goulash tasting soup. When properly done, you should be able to stand a spoon upright in it.

Yes. Goulash is a very thick soup. Not gravy.

Gravy is super thick. Goulash soup is thick by soup standards but very thin by gravy standards. Goulash is in between gravy and goulash soup.

Honestly, I really didn't expect HN of all places to argue about whether goulash soup counts as goulash.

The soup stone is missing. My grandpa was from Vilnius which was part of Poland when he left. They always had soup on the stove every day all day and one of the things in it was always a stone to hold something (herbs?) at the bottom. It was such a part of the family that they weren't sure who was going to inherit the stone - it went to the oldest son.

Maybe it was actually one of these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup

What kind of stone was it? In Oaxaca Mexico, there is caldo de piedra (literally stone soup) which involves heating up a riverstone really hot and dropping it into a bowl of your ingredients to get it to immediately boil

Of course you have to know which type of stone to use as many can explode when put into a fire.

These stones are also carefully selected and passed down through generations.

My brother-in-law had this daily for 6 months while being in custody. Now he cant even stand near food carts that serve it. Never really liked it myself, because if there is a choice available, there is most likely a better dish right next to bigos, but one time i had it at a rest stop after a long day of hiking and all i can think of is how amazing was the taste and how well i slept after eating that. I could've sworn the cook put something in it because i am not sure i've ever had a better night of sleep since. Just the most refreshing, warmest and regenerating night of sleep in less than optimal conditions.

> I could've sworn the cook put something in it because i am not sure i've ever had a better night of sleep since.

I think the calories combined with

> a long day of hiking

could have played a part.

Tradional bigos was made with venison. Decent sauerkraut really matters as do dried mushrooms which should include boletus.

Fun fact, it gets gradually better with each reheating

> venison

I actually have quite a bit in the freezer, I'll have to incorporate that next!

> Decent sauerkraut

Are you aware where you find that in the US?

> Fun fact, it gets gradually better with each reheating

That was a very common theme when researching. I froze my leftovers for the winter!

Home made sauerkraut maybe. In Spain it's impossible to buy anything decent either.

Edit: Low quality may be the result of adding vinegar instead of relying on natural fermentation. Also cabagge should be cut really fine, otherwise the copious amount of juice is not really there to keep it going

If you find some make sure its fermented and contains only cabbage, salt and optionally carrot. No vinegar, no citric acid, no preservatives or anything weird like that.

Traditional bigos was made with lemons, not sauerkraut. Lemons, meat and a lot of oriental spices to cover the scent of rancid meat (there were no refrigerators at the time) and show off the prestige of szlachta. Then peasants copied the meal using whatever was available to mimick the taste, and that's how we have bigos in modern/contemporary cuisine.

I just had one in Wisła, I also had żurek, rosól and pierogi.

Always nice to sample the neighbors cuisine :)

There is a quite a lot of Polish influence in Pittsburgh.

Pierogi are very common here (the best is always "however my [grand]mother made them") but I'm not familiar with the rest!

Sounds like I'll have plenty of ideas for the winter :)

I remember back in Siberia, USSR my parents were making bigos often enough when I was a kid. Had no idea it was polish food. We have no Poles in our ancestry

It’s a dish you cook when the only food that’s left is sauerkraut and some unlucky meat you found wandering around in the forest - not surprising in the least multiple cultures figured it out independently.

Or some people in Siberia simply learned it from Poles sent there to the prisons there in the 19th century.

You've earned your Bigos today.

Heh. No animosity meant towards Russian people in that comment. :)

Accept my apology then

What was living in Siberia like?

Nothing special. I was educated and lived in a satellite town where nearly everyone was a scientist working in USSR's academy of Science. Became scientist myself then was invited and moved to Canada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9UfY2oiKcU

Excellent presentation by Święty Mikołaj.

The best one is when you visit your grandmother and you have it in bread (bigos w chlebku) the same way as Żurek w chlebku

Whenever I've had it from a Ukrainian place (labeled with the same name) it's been too sweet.

Probably wrong proportions of the sourkraut and fresh cabbage. Good bigos is truly great.

Polska Gurom!!

Lewandowski!

Levandosky

Bigos is a staple food in Thea: the Awakening, where crafting cooked food gives your expeditions bonuses. Had never heard of it before that but it fits the Slavic setting.

My mom never made this, though she did make some other Polish dishes. I just might try making some of my own.

Delicious, but man does it make the house smell crazy when it's cooking :D

I had discovered this on Reddit and then made it the following night.

My wife was not pleased by the smells, as you say.

I think it'd be quite nice in the winter :)

"The Decisions That Actually Matter" is so AI, I guess Claude. Too AI didn't read.

that site came up on here a couple times, the code and long form descriptions is obviously written with claude but there is 100% a real chef behind it.

all photos look real and the actual recipe cards dont have signs of ai so he probably writes them himself. i would trust the calculators too.

Fair. Maybe just me trained to scan text if it looks AI written and immediately rejecting to read. Like, when you see this sentence with an em dash.

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