Birbla

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  • Hacker News
  • Delicious, but man does it make the house smell crazy when it's cooking :D
    by 27183
  • 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 :)

    by doublepg23
  • My mom never made this, though she did make some other Polish dishes. I just might try making some of my own.
    by TomMasz
  • 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.
    by Noumenon72
  • Polska Gurom!!
    by Pieczasz
  • Lewandowski!
    by avgDev
  • Whenever I've had it from a Ukrainian place (labeled with the same name) it's been too sweet.
    by thisisauserid
  • Probably wrong proportions of the sourkraut and fresh cabbage. Good bigos is truly great.
    by abraxas
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9UfY2oiKcU
    by theyknowitsxmas
  • Excellent presentation by Święty Mikołaj.
    by yakshaving_jgt
  • 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
    by Pieczasz
  • 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
    by FpUser
  • What was living in Siberia like?
    by doublepg23
  • 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.
    by baq
  • I just had one in Wisła, I also had żurek, rosól and pierogi.

    Always nice to sample the neighbors cuisine :)

    by inglor_cz
  • 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 :)

    by doublepg23
  • 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

    by alkyon
  • 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.
    by dzidol
  • > 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!

    by doublepg23
  • 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.
    by proxysna
  • > 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.

    by WesolyKubeczek
  • 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.
    by comrade1234
  • Maybe it was actually one of these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup
    by Leszek
  • 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.

    by culi
  • 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

    by gus_massa
  • 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.
    by Xirdus