Polish and not only Polish cuisine :-) or What Polish People Traditionally Eat June 4, 2008

Polish cuisine is substantial. It is rich in meat and winter vegetables (cabbage in the dish bigos), and spices, as well as different kinds of noodles.
Traditional and still extremely popular foods in Poland include:

• kielbasa (sausage)



• flaczki (tripe)



• pierogi (stuffed dumplings of unleavened dough and varying ingredients). Their specific origins are unknown.



• pyzy (meat-filled dough balls, potato dumplings)



• kopytka (in Polish: small hooves), dumplings made of mashed potatoes, eggs and flour



• kołduny (meat dumplings)



• gołąbki (pronounced Go-waunm-b-ki) or small doves, pigeons in Polish, stuffed cabbage



• śledzie (sh-ledje-eh) – herrings



• bigos (typical of Polish and Lithuanian cuisine), stewed dish made of sauerkraut and/or fresh cabbage, meat and mushrooms



• kotlety (schabowy – breaded pork cutlet, and mielony – a rissole)




• golonka (pork knuckles cooked with vegetables)



• surowka – shredded root vegetabes with lemon and sugar (carrot, celeriac, beetroot) or fermented cabbage (kapusta kwaszona)



• Kasha, porridge commonly eaten in Eastern Europe, it can be made from any cereal, especially buckwheat, wheat, oats, and rye. It is one of the oldest known dishes in Eastern European cuisine, at least a thousand years old



• fish in aspic (gelatine)



• Borscht or borshch, a vegetable soup from Eastern Europe, which is traditionally cooked including beetroot as its main ingredient.



• chłodnik, a chilled beet or fruit soup for hot days traditional to the Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian cuisines



• Żurek (English: sour rye soup, sour soup),a soup made from soured rye flour and meat (usually boiled pork sausage or pieces of smoked sausage, bacon or ham), specific to Poland and other northern Slavic nations such as Slovakia and the Czech Republic.



• makowiec (poppy seed cake), typically Polish delicious cake baked around Christmas and Easter



• drożdżówka, a type of yeast cake

Today the foods are considered by most Polish people to be of Polish origin but actually they are a mixture of Jewish and Slavic and even other foreign cuisines.

In our next posts we will try to present the best recipes for some of the dishes.

Gimnazjum nr 18, Gdańsk, Poland