Today, right here and now you will learn how to cook a delicious bigus, or bigos, to whom, as it is more convenient, from fresh cabbage, what ingredients are needed in cooking and how to make it truly balanced and authentic.
How to cook a bigus from fresh cabbage - principles
Cooking bigus has four basic principles, without which the dish will be just stewed cabbage, but not what we need.
- The first principle is the need to mix fresh and sauerkraut. This combination helps to balance the tastes and add sour.
- A bigus is not bigus if there are no prunes in it. It is he who creates the balance between sour and sweet taste. And since there are meat ingredients in the dish, this combination of flavors is simply delicious.
- You have sorted out the prunes, but it will add only the basis of a sweet taste, but for a full balance you will have to add a huge amount of it. Well, or just add sugar, which adds sweetness and does not take up space.
- The last but very important point is Madera. Without Madeira, well, or at least sherry, the bigus will be empty, there will not be such a delicate taste note in it.
With the analysis of the principles is over, only the principles of preparation remain, which are not necessarily observed.
- There should be meat in the bigus. What exactly - you decide. It is preferable to use a large meat set containing both normal raw meat and smoked meat. An excellent choice would be hunting sausages or smoked pork ham. From the usual meat fit pork neck or brisket, as well as beef.
- Use tomato paste for a richer color and better taste. It is best to add it to the meat during frying.
- It is better to cut the ingredients with an average cube, cabbage with a short straw, this does not affect the taste, but it will be much more convenient to eat.
- Use only the lowest spice minimum. Namely, salt, black pepper, allspice and bay leaf. No thyme or rosemary, leave them for steaks and other such dishes.
Bigus is the dish for which it is necessary to use only the basic principles of cooking. By observing them, you can do everything else as you please. They wanted - they added potatoes, they wanted - mushrooms. Use this possibility of different variations, and you will never get tired of bigus!
Bigus with fresh cabbage, step by step recipe with a photo
We use:
- For three hundred grams of fresh and sauerkraut cabbage
- Three hundred grams young pork
- Two large onion heads
- A big spoonful of butter
- A quarter cup of brown sugar
- Freshly Ground Pepper
- Cook salt
- Chive
- Two half-smoked sausages
- Two hundred grams of hot smoked chicken meat
- One and a half glasses of tomato sauce or pasta
Cooking process:
Smear the bottom of the pan with butter, put the squeezed sour and chopped fresh cabbage into it, stew for about twenty minutes.
Pork cut into cubes.
Chop onions smaller.
In another saucepan, melt a piece of butter and sprinkle onions on it.
Add meat to onion. We keep it until half ready, sometimes stirring.
When cooking pork to a half-cooked state, pour sugar into a dish, pepper it and squeeze garlic.
Sausages and chicken breasts cut in the same way as pork and add straight to the pan.
Five minutes later, we lay the stewed cabbage to the meat. Add the sauce. Simmer on a gentle temperature, not covering the dish with the lid for about an hour.
Bigus from cabbage with meat
Required Products:
- Fresh cabbage - 0.5 kg
- Pickled Cabbage - 1/4 kg
- Pork neck - 0.3 kg
- Beef spatula - 0.3 kg
- Hunting sausages - 150 gr
- Onion - small onion
- Dried prunes - one hundred grams
- Madera wine - 150 ml
- Sugar - tablespoon
- Salt / pepper / spices - at discretion
Cut fresh and sauerkraut into thin straws, three to four centimeters long and send in a saucepan to the stove, adding water along the way.
Roast pork neck, beef shoulder with chopped onion. Cut the meat into pieces, one and a half to two centimeters per side. Roasted meat with onions, send to the cabbage and salt.
Separately, fry smoked sausages. After frying, dry them with oil on a paper napkin or towel and mix with the cabbage.
Add the washed seedless prunes, chopped quarters, sugar and mix.
Add half a glass of Madeira and simmer for about an hour and a half. As time passes, mix the bigus and pour in the remaining wine. Remove the pan from the stove and leave the dish to reach under the lid.
Bigus with pork
Pork allows you to make bigos fat, nazhoristym and fragrant. There is a great variety of various meat products from pork and its cuts, which will make it possible to assemble a rich meat set without using more expensive beef.
Ingredients:
- Pork neck - 0.3kg
- Half smoked bacon - 200 g
- Smoked breast - 0.2 kg
- Fresh cabbage and pickled cabbage - 400 grams
- Prunes - 100-120 grams
- Onion - one medium onion
- Tomato paste - a couple of tablespoons
- Madera - 150 ml
- Salt / spices / laurel leaf - to taste
Cut fresh cabbage with sauerkraut, lightly shake and send “steamed” to the pan, adding some water.
Leaving the cabbage to the mercy of the temperature of the water molecules, you can do the meat.
Cut the pork neck, smoked bacon and bacon into small pieces. In a pan, fry bacon and onions. Add any butter is not required, the bacon will give enough fat for frying.
To the fried onions and bacon add the pieces of the neck, and then the loin. Onions, fried in the first stage, release fat into substances that allow the meat to “close” more quickly and not produce juice. At the exit you get juicy inside pieces with a golden crust.
Reduce heat and place a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste to the meat. Stir and hold on the stove for a couple of minutes, letting the taste of meat and tomato unite. Do not forget to salt the meat and season with ground pepper.
Combine cabbage, meat and prunes, mix and pour water. Pour a couple of peas allspice, salt and mix. Put out half an hour, add dessert wine and again under the lid, now for an hour.
Ten minutes before the end of cooking, “refresh” the taste of the wine by adding the rest. Do not forget the leaf of laurel, ten minutes of its presence in the pan is enough to fill it with flavor.
Bigus recipe with potatoes
Someone will say that there is no place for potatoes or other similar products in the bigus. But let me. Bigus is essentially a combination of a properly prepared base and additional ingredients, limited only by the flight of the cook's imagination. Well, or common sense, no one will put a pineapple in bigus. Ingredients:
- Smoked brisket - 0.3 kg
- Beef - 0.4 kg
- Onions or shallots - small onion
- Prunes - one hundred grams
- Pickled and fresh cabbage - 350-400 grams of both
- Tomatpast - 2 tbsp. l
- Spices and salt - to taste
Season the onions and add the minced smoked pork and beef. Fry until the meat is covered with a golden crust. Before removing from heat, pour a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste.
Crumble both types of cabbage, put in a pan and stew with the addition of water. After 15-20 minutes of stewing, add meat, prunes, salt and pepper, add water as needed, and put the potatoes, cut into medium cubes. Simmer no more than 40-50 minutes. Over time, add Madeira or sherry, mix, add spices. Stew until cooked potatoes.
Delicious bigus from fresh cabbage in a slow cooker
Multivarka - a miracle of engineering genius in the field of cooking. How much of it can be cooked. And what about Bigus? Everything is just great, because stews can not be better obtained in a slow cooker.
Ingredients of bigus in the slow cooker:
- Cabbage, fresh and pickled - 350 grams
- Pork or veal - 0.3 kg
- Smoked bacon - 100 grams
- Dessert wine - three quarters of a glass
- Carrots - 70 grams
- Onions - 70 grams
- Prunes - one hundred grams
- Vegetable oil - 2 large spoons
- Spices and cooking salt - at discretion
- Parsley - small bunch
Prepare sauerkraut and fresh cabbage, cut meat, smoked meat, onions and carrots. Heat the crock-pot, fry the carrots, onions and meat in it.
Add cabbage to the meat, season, pour some water and simmer for forty minutes in the appropriate mode. Add prunes and wine, mix and leave to stew for another 40-50 minutes. Serve Bigus served with chopped parsley.
Bigus with chicken
Chicken bigos can be attributed to, more or less, dietary options, due to the lower fat content in chicken meat. The best option for cooking is a set for chakhokhbili. It combines the optimal amount of meat and fat, which will allow you to prepare a dish full of flavor.
Ingredients:
- Chicken set for chakhokhbili - 0.4 kg
- Fresh cabbage - 0.3 kg
- Sauerkraut - 0.2 kg
- Onions - Medium Onion
- Dried prunes - 80-100 grams
- Sherry or Madera - two thirds cup
- Spices, salt and lavrushka - optional
Fry the chopped pieces of chicken until golden brown on high heat. Put the browned chicken from the pan, and on the selected fat fry the onions and prepared cabbage. Salt it and add pepper.
Put the cabbage, heated in oil, into the pan, add warm water and simmer for half an hour. As time passes, put the chicken in the pan, season with pepper and salt, and add the prunes. After mixing everything, leave to stew for 20-25 minutes. Stir semi-finished bigus, pour in half a glass of wine. Simmer another fifteen minutes.
Bigus with rice
Bigus with rice is a rather unusual version of the main course. Rice creates some, unusual for bigus, texture, as well as able to remove excess sour taste.
We use:
- Fresh cabbage - 0.2 kg
- Pickled cabbage - 0.2 kg
- Long-grain rice - 150 grams
- Pork neck - 0.35 kg
- Smoked sausages - 150 grams
- Shallot onions or onions - medium onion
- Carrots - 70 grams
- Dried prunes - 80-100 grams
- Madera Wine - 100 ml
- Spices with salt at the discretion
Fry the sliced pork neck and smoked sausages until golden and place in a separate container. On the remaining fat, fry the onions and carrots. Throw in the washed rice and fry it, to the similarity with risotto.
Combine the meat, rice and fried in a saucepan, add a glass and a half of water, put chopped cabbage and simmer under a lid until semi-finished.
Pour half a glass of Madeira, chopped prunes, and season with pepper and laurel leaf, salt. Stew until fully cooked. Feeding sprinkle with chopped greens.
Cooking bigus with sausage
Bigus with sausage is saturated with the taste of spices and spices that make up the sausages, as well as quite fat, which is combined with the saltiness of meat products.
Ingredients:
- Sauerkraut - 150 grams
- Fresh cabbage - 0.3 kg
- Cooked sausage, structured - 150 grams
- Hot smoked sausage -150 grams
- Ham or meat nut - 100 grams
- Onions - 50 grams
- Prunes - 70-80 grams
- Sherry / Madera - 80 ml
- Sugar -1-1.5 large spoons with a hill
- Vegetable oil - a couple of tablespoons
- Spices and salt - at discretion
It is desirable to prepare such a bigus variant from several types of sausages having a different consistency, the main meat ingredient and different types of cooking. It is worth taking structural boiled sausage or sausages, as well as a couple of types of smoked sausages. Can be added nutmeat. You should be more careful with salt in such a bigus, because there is quite a lot of it in sausages.
Fry the diced sausages to a crust and fold them on paper towels. Warm the freshly chopped cabbage in the fat left in the pan and put it in a wide saucepan, mixed with the fermented. Add water and simmer for 40 minutes. Over time, add the fried sausage, browned onions and chopped prunes. Mix well in order to mix tastes. After another 20 minutes of quenching add wine.
Try the dish to taste. If the salt from the sausages is not enough, then add. Did the dish turn out to be rather salty or does the acid interrupt the rest of the ingredients? Sugar will help.
After draining the dish in general, about an hour and a half, add allspice and Lavrushka, then let it sit for about ten minutes, and you can serve for dinner.
Bigus with cabbage and minced meat
Well and properly made stuffing can turn your bigus into a work of culinary art. Perfect chopped pig meat, even the neck, even the shoulder blade. It will be desirable and the use of smoked bacon, which will add fat and juicy stuffing.
Ingredients:
- Pork shoulder - 400 grams
- Half-smoked bacon - 100 grams
- Fresh cabbage - 300 grams
- Pickled Cabbage - 150 grams
- Onion turnip - one head
- Celery stalk - 40-50 grams
- Tomato paste - tablespoon
- Dessert wine - 100 ml
- Dried prunes - 100 grams
- Vegetable oil - 40 ml
- Spices and salt - if desired
It is advisable to make mince yourself, and not in a meat grinder or in a blender, but with a knife. So you save the meat fibers and its texture, in fact, the stuffing will turn out juicier and tastier. Also chop the bacon together with the meat.
Preheat the pan at the highest temperature, add a little vegetable oil and spread a thin layer of minced meat. Fry it until crispy. Use a large frying pan, it will save space between the pieces of minced meat and better fry it.
To the roasted mince add salt, pepper. Throw the finished meat on a paper towel or sieve, let go of excess fat. Chop the cabbage, stew it for 40 minutes with the addition of browned onions, tomato paste and water. Then mix the minced meat with the cabbage, season as necessary, put the chopped prunes in the pan, mix and pour in the wine.
After collecting all the ingredients under one lid, extinguish them for about 20 minutes. Before the end of cooking, pour in a couple more large spoons of dessert wine, refresh its taste. It is worth adding chopped stalk of celery. It will serve as a crispy component of the dish and dilute its texture.
How to cook a biggus with beef and cabbage
For bigus with beef, a scapular hour, meat from a hip cut will be an excellent choice. It is not worth taking expensive cuts and portions, because stewing meat that is suitable for a great steak is impractical.
Take those pieces of meat, in which a lot of fat impregnations. Thanks to such impregnations meat will turn out soft and juicy. Pieces of fat on the surface is not desirable to take, it will have to cut and throw away.
To improve the taste of the dish will help the combination of beef with any smoked. Hunting sausages will be most welcome.
Ingredients:
- Beef spatula, or cut from the hip portion - 400 grams
- Sausages hunting - 200 grams
- Fresh cabbage - 400 grams
- Pickled Cabbage - 250 grams
- Dried prunes - 100 grams
- Onions - 50 grams
- Parsley fresh - medium bunch
- Madera - 150 ml
- Sunflower oil - a couple of large spoons
- Spices and salt - at your discretion
Cut the beef in a cube, one and a half to two centimeters per side. Sausages cut diagonally, segments of 3-4 centimeters in length.
Fry the onions, with the addition of butter, add to it the beef. Fry it before you get a golden color. Fry sausages to a crust in a separate frying pan and dry them with excess fat.
Put sliced and crumpled, fresh cabbage into the pan, and send sauerous to it. Pour water and simmer for about half an hour.
When time is up, combine the cabbage with meat and sausages. Put chopped prunes in a saucepan, season and salt the ingredients. Do not forget the wine. He will need 2/3 cup. It is necessary to use all the same Madeira or sherry, in extreme cases, red port.
After adding the wine, cover the pan with a lid and simmer for forty minutes. When this time has passed, pour in the remaining third of the wine, check the dish for taste. If necessary, add salt and season.
Serve prepared beef bigos exclusively hot. You can make chopped parsley. It will not only give a beautiful look, but will also be combined with other ingredients to taste.
Cooking bigus without meat
A meatless bigus is quite rarely found on someone else’s table. The dish was originally invented as a combination of meat, cabbage and spices. But with certain factors, some chefs have come up with the mind and to the non-meat version. And to be precise, to a few.
Then you and bigos with mushrooms, and with potatoes and beans and beans. Is it worth mentioning about the classic recipe, from which you simply “took out” the meat.
Bigus with mushrooms
Mushrooms are one of the products that may well replace meat in many recipes. They have their own distinct, distinct taste. The content of nutrients, nutrients and vitamins is only partially inferior to meat.
The choice of mushrooms can be stopped on budget, but delicious champignons. An alternative can be oyster mushrooms, aspen mushrooms, or porcini mushrooms.
Ingredients:
- Fresh cabbage - 400 grams
- Mushrooms (oyster mushrooms, white mushrooms, champignons) - 350 grams
- Prunes - 70 grams
- Onion - 100 grams
- Celery Stalk - 100 grams
- Carrots - 100 grams
- Tomato paste - 2 large spoons
- Madera -120 ml
- Seasonings and salt - at discretion
Rinse the mushrooms under running water, cut into thick slices and send to stew in a saucepan, pouring a little water. Stewing them separately should be no more than five minutes.
Chop the cabbage, remember it, so that it becomes softer, and send it to the mushrooms. Do the same with the celery stalk, after clearing and dicing it.
Spread flour in vegetable oil, mix straws of onion, carrot and tomato paste with it, fry and put them to mushrooms and cabbage.
Add a little sherry, chopped prunes and cover with a lid, leave to stew for 20 minutes.
Sprinkle the practically ready bigos with spices, salt and let later to readiness on the switched off hot burner.
Bigus without meat
Bigus meatless, in fact, is a stewed cabbage, at first glance. But the notes of dessert wine, the combination of fresh and sauerkraut, as well as the sweetness of prunes make it clear that everything is not so simple in this dish.
Ingredients:
- Fresh cabbage - 450 grams
- Sauerkraut - 200 grams
- Onions - one head
- Carrots - 70 grams
- Tomato paste - big spoon
- Dried prunes - 100 grams
- Dessert wine or red port - 100 ml
- Salt, spices - to your taste
- Sunflower oil - a couple of tablespoons
Throw chopped cabbage into a saucepan, cover with water and simmer for 10-15 minutes. During this time, chop the onions and carrots, fry in butter. When the onion is golden, add a spoonful of tomato paste, mix and send to cabbage.
Wash the prunes and check it for leftovers. Cut it into quarters or just chop it finely. Put it in the pan. After mixing the ingredients, pour in two thirds of the volume of wine and leave to stew for 20-25 minutes. Before the end of the preparation, pour in the rest of the wine, season it and let the dish “walk” on the furniture fire for 5-6 minutes.
A couple of tips
When cooking bigus, show imagination, use any ingredients you like. But do not forget to follow the basic rules, precisely because of which the bigos is himself.
It is worth noting that this Polish dish is kept quite well, due to its acidic environment. And in which case, bigos can easily be turned into good old soup by adding rich broth to the pan and warming up all the ingredients.
Cooking bigos with meat ingredients, do not save on them. It is from the combination of meat, smoked meats and fat that most of the flavor and aroma are made.
