Polish food > everything else

that looks pretty good, what is it?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapiekanka

First polish "fast food".

Back in the 70's, when burgers and hot dogs were a thing in the west, our government decided to create something for the Polish people that will resemble those.

Sometimes bad times create a good invention.

Thanks very much. Looking forward to making and trying bigos, and eventually the rest.

I would argue that they know how to make sausage. The meat stick, kabonassy, is arguably the best in the world. Easy to make at home too.

Kielbasa

how close to slovak food is polish? all the traditional slovak foods i tried were unbelievably good (bryndzove halusky, bryndze pierohi, many kinds of gulash, duck, bread dumplings, pork leg, etc). I'm a burger and didn't get a chance to visit Poland yet

Actual Polish person here who has lived most of his life outside of Poland so I got to eat cuisines from all over the world.

Polish cuisine is one of the worst I've got to try. It's bland, boring, unimaginative, and the average person in Poland eats the same 5 or so dishes all the fucking time. There are some dishes like perogies where if you eat them once in a while they're amazing but if I had to eat them all the time I would get bored so quickly.

I think Polish cuisine could benefit from some fusion with other cuisines, maybe if cabbage rolls had an Asian twist to them they would become amazing...

kys cabbage rolls are fine the way they are

Ill list everything I know about Polish food:

Sausage (of course)
Perogies
Rye bread
Distilled spirits
Pączki Day (I'm from Chicago, its a thing here)
Kolache

The Polish bakery is pretty good. Are these things even Polish? Whatever they are, I like them.

You mean the bland as fuck meat and rice that's just seasoned with salt and pepper is enough? At least adding some oregano or some chili would make it amazing.

none of those things are eaten together, and coleslaw isn't even polish.

>Pączki Day
it's called fat thursday, faggot.

Also actual Polish person here,
Polish food is amazing, if you have well cooked stuff.
The thing is, peasants eat peasant shit, and they do this because it is sustenance and not meant to be delicious.
When you have food for nobility, who were allowed to indulge, you have good food.
Modern technology and access to food makes food for nobility accessible.
So french cuisine would be utter trash if you based it on what the poor frenchies ate.
And if you base polish cuisine on what poor polaks ate, then you are gonna get a lot of bland potatoes and cabbage.
Luckily, we base our critiques on cuisine on the best food the culture has to offer, which is often the food of nobility.

And to OP,
Barszcz (borscht) with uszka is a christmas favorite.
its a beet soup with mushroom filled dumplings.
It is my childhood. I can eat it for weeks on end without ever getting tired.
Be careful though, there are good and bad kinds of this soup.
If you get a good kind, prepare to be forever disappointed by any other kind.

they don't have to have a mushroom filling. meat is also common but i always thought it tastes pretty bad.

Uszka (meaning "little ears" in Polish) are small dumplings[1] (a very small and twisted version of pierogi) usually filled with flavoursome wild forest mushrooms and/or minced meat.

Please Mr. Superior Burger, educate me on what I have lived through for decades.

Sorry, i misread the "have to have" part.
I thought you were saying that they dont have mushrooms. Not great at english, my dude.

Any good recipe books in english? Would I be better off with a russian/Ukrainian cookbook?

Looks like something a peasant would eat back in the day

Żurek (pretty much white borscht) is really fine.
Schabowy is alright, but it's a bit of a meme.
Kabanosy are great, like a better sausage.

That being said, Polish cuisine is from what I've seen overhyped by foreigners. It's not the worst, not the best either. If you ask what's the favourite dish (especially among young people) the answer will probably be kebab, pizza and other stuff you can find anywhere else in the world.

I forgot to add you can drink barszcz czerwony (beetroot) by itself. It's bretty gud. My dad likes to add pepper to it if you're interested

> he's a shit cook

thanks for exposing yourself

Lived in Poland for two years.

Wouldn't cook Polish food myself as a lot of it is very laborious and time consuming unless you make it a few times and learn more with each attempt.

Pierogi: stuffed dumplings, similar to tortellini or gyoza but usually with a thicker pasta shell

Uszka: smaller stuffed dumplings with a thinner shell. Usually had it in barszcz / soup

Gołąbki: cabbage leaves stuffed and rolled / folded with meat and rice, usually served with a tomato based sauce. Delicious!

Krokiety: stuffed and rolled pancakes, then breaded and pan fried. Delicious, usually served with soup

Barszcz czerwony: beetroot soup, a bit on the tangy side. Like it very much

Żurek: soup made with meat and a fermented rye flour base. Never had it in a wah that blew my socks off, tangy but bland and usually greasy, not my fave

Barszcz biały: soup based on a fermented wheat flour base. Similar to żurek

Schabowy: porkchop tenderised with a mallet, breaded and pan fried. Other cuisines have the same or similar foods (Schnitzel)

Bigos: sort of hunter's stew with sauerkraut / fermented cabbage. Never been a fan of sauerkraut so not something I like very much

Łazanki: pasta with cabbage (usually sauerkraut but I prefer it with regular), mushrooms and sausage or bacon. Easy to make and very delicious

Things the poles do right are soups - they are usually very chunky and more stew-like. Fermented pickles and cabbage are good too, though I'm not a fan of the latter.

Also, foraging for mushrooms is rather popular. The shrooms are dried and used in a variety of dishes (eg. Mushroom soup).

Desserts and sweets are rather good too. They have jaffa cakes in different flavours with a jelly rather than marmalade filling. Baked cheesecake is lovely too, as is makowiec, a poppyseed filled stollen like cake. Drożdżówki, brioche-like danishes are also nom

Also, very important, boiled, steamed or mashed potatoes + fresh, chopped dill is god tier. Honestly, try it.

>it's not real polish food if it's not made in Poland

You Italian or something? Nothing worse than 'no-true-scotsman' bullshit in food and shit like 'it's not real bolognese if it wasn't made by some grandma in Bologna, Italy'.

You'd think the Poles would be less insufferable about their peasant food, and judging by the replies in the rest of the thread, that seems to be the case. First post worst post.

Anyways, although it technically comes from a Ukrainian restaurant, Veselka's short rib pierogis are pretty dank, I just wish they weren't so small. My wife is Ukrainian and she likes making that kind of thing a lot, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite type of food.

Can anyone give me an authentic bigos recipe? I see conflicting recipes online so I'm not sure what I should add or take away. I was thinking of doing rabbit, pork belly, and kielbasa. But what about the addition of apples, prunes, and madeira wine? Also rye or potatoes on the side?

I think your best bet would be a couple of Polish websites plus help from Google translate to get a general feel for it.

First time I'm hearing about madeira wine in the dish though. My advice is to keep it simple for your first attempt. And make plenty since this is a dish that improves over a few days, so it is always made so that there are plenty of leftovers.

Polish food is pretty good, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Russian food is the best of all time. German (Bavarian) is a close second.

polish cuisine is hearty. it's going to taste good because it has lots of carbs and fat, but it won't be overloaded with flavor, hence why you have chucklefucks calling it bland.

The problem with polish cuisine is that the amount of herbs and spices used is really minimal. Salt, pepper, maggi liquid seasoning / 'Kucharek' style seasoning and stock cubes are pretty much the only stuff consistently used.

Apart from that, majoram, paprika, bay leaf and allspice are added sometimes, but they're not exactly flavour-bombs.

This works fine for a lot of people, but I myself prefer more aromatic, spicy cuisines.