Old-style Polish oven-baked bigos — vegan (meat-free)

There’s a great cooking channel on YouTube called Oddasz Fartucha. I don’t know whether the name comes from this likeable chap once being eliminated from some TV cooking competition. I don’t know, because I haven’t watched that sort of thing for ages. But he’s quite something, and he usually makes wonderfully fatty food.

Once I even followed his recipe for pork neck in a jar, cooked very slowly in lard. Slightly modified, of course: this is me, Prymitywna Kuchnia, so I always have to change something and add or subtract a bit of my own. It turned out quite well. I’ve been a fan of the channel ever since.

What I like most is the host’s obvious sincerity, and above all how much joy the man handing over his apron gets from cooking — or perhaps even more from eating afterwards.

I’m telling you this because, when I think about the bigos recipe below, it seems like a perfect fit for that channel. Admittedly, I’ve no idea whether there’s an oven-baked bigos recipe there, and mine is entirely my own — I didn’t use any recipe — but I think the host would really like it.

First, this is bigos from the oven: baked, rather than fried and then stewed the way Grandma taught us. Second, and I can understand the disappointment this will cause some people — feel free to point accusing fingers — this is bigos… without meat. WITHOUT MEAT.

Caught your breath? Despite that, it’s incredibly rich in flavour, very thick, even a little sticky, rather like a chutney. It’s also remarkably versatile, because you can serve it in lots of ways, more on that below. And it seems to me that this is the sort of bigos our great-grandfathers and their great-great-grandfathers might have made, though they probably added plenty of game. Highly recommended.

PS

The ingredients are listed in an old-fashioned Polish way, but don’t worry: I give approximate quantities in the method itself.

At a glance:

Preparation time: 15–20 minutes

Baking time: 6–7 hours (but you need to stir and top up the liquid every 20 minutes)

Baking temperature: 145 degrees Celsius (top and bottom heat only, no fan or anything like that)

Serves: oh, easily several people

Calories: it’s vegan bigos; you’ll have to ask the vegans 😉

Ingredients for old-style Polish oven-baked bigos without meat:

• a small potful of sauerkraut (it can have a little carrot in it)
• a generous handful of dried porcini
• a shovelful (about the size of half a loaf of bread) of brown button mushrooms (ordinary white ones will do too)
• good tomato purée
• a handful of prunes
• two handfuls of dried cranberries
• a bottle of red (preferably dry, but semi-sweet or sweet will do too) wine
• two big spoonfuls of honey (any dark honey)
• a small cup of olive oil (or another oil, such as rapeseed or sunflower)
• a big spoonful of smoked paprika
• a big spoonful of ground black pepper
• a big spoonful of salt
• a few bay leaves

Recipe for old-style Polish bigos:

It’s a very simple recipe, but you have to put in the standing and stirring time. Still, this oven-baked bigos, meat-free, slightly sweet and a little like chutney in texture, really is worth it. I’m sure you can experiment with it. As you can see, the quantities are a little old-fashioned and a little by eye. If these proportions leave you confused, do it your own way. I made mine with a little under a kilogram of sauerkraut, about 80–90 dag. You can taste it during baking, after 2–3 hours or so, and adjust the seasoning. You can definitely play with it, and that’s another nice thing about this recipe. Right, from the beginning…

I put the sauerkraut in a colander and rinsed it thoroughly under running water for a good quarter of an hour or so. I poured boiling water over the dried mushrooms and set them aside. I did the same with the cranberries and prunes, in another container. I squeezed the water out of the sauerkraut: there mustn’t be water sloshing around the ovenproof dish in which the bigos will bake.

I chopped the prepared sauerkraut and put half into an ovenproof dish. Then I drained the mushrooms, cranberries and prunes, cut them into smaller pieces and spread them evenly over the sauerkraut. Obviously, you don’t need to cut up the cranberries, just the prunes and mushrooms. I seasoned it with half the pepper, the smoked paprika and salt, added a tablespoon of honey and laid the bay leaves on top. I covered it with the remaining sauerkraut. More seasoning on top, then honey, olive oil and red wine — not all the wine, just about 100 ml. Over the entire baking time, the bigos uses about half to three-quarters of a bottle of wine.

I didn’t stir it. I put it into an oven preheated to 180 degrees and immediately lowered the temperature to 145 degrees Celsius. I baked it like that, without stirring, for about an hour, perhaps as long as an hour and a half. Only then did I stir it for the first time and add the tomato purée. I poured in more wine.

Now begins the part of the baking process that needs checking roughly every 20–30 minutes. So every 20–30 minutes, we look to make sure nothing is going wrong, such as bits burning around the edges because a stray strand of cabbage has stuck there. Keep scraping everything back into the middle with a spoon. Stir, always adding a little wine and, if the bigos is too dry, some oil or olive oil — vegetable oil, obviously.

About 4 hours after the start of baking, add the button mushrooms. I finely grated half the mushrooms from a 300-gram pack and cut the other half into very thin slices. I added them to the bigos, mixed thoroughly and, of course, poured in more wine.

We’re nearly there now. Again, stir every 20–30 minutes and add wine. After roughly 6, perhaps even 7 hours — keep tasting and adjusting the seasoning — I switched the oven to a very hot overhead grill and lightly browned the top of the bigos for about 4–6 minutes. I stirred it. Bigos ready. You can serve and eat it immediately, transfer it to jars and serve it the next day, or even leave it in the oven overnight and gently reheat it in the morning at 120 degrees Celsius for an hour. It’ll be even better.

Of course, it can be a main course or a side dish. You can put something on top of it, such as cepelinai dumplings with a meat or vegetarian filling, and you can even eat it cold from a jar.

A nice way to serve it is on bread with butter and a thin, even layer of pâté or liver sausage, topped with this bigos, whose texture is more like chutney than classic bigos. Delicious, although it’s no longer veggie then, unless the pâté is made from lentils.

I really recommend making bigos this way. Until now, I’ve made classic bigos, fried and then simmered, but now I’m switching to the baked version. I’ll definitely try an oven-baked version with meat too, although, honestly, I don’t miss the meat here. It’s simply good. Enjoy!