This is a Polish "hunter's stew" with all sorts of meats, some very interesting spices, and sauerkraut. Serve it with vodka and buttered rye bread.
- 1 1/2 lb chicken thighs
- 1 lb stew beef
- oil
Chop the meats into bite-sized pieces. Brown them in oil in a dutch oven, then set them aside.
- 4 strips bacon
- 12 oz smoked Polish sausage
- red wine
Chop the bacon into small pieces. Fry it in the dutch oven. Cut the sausage into discs or semicircles; add it to the frying bacon. Deglaze with wine as needed.
- 2 onions
- 8 oz mushrooms
- 1/2 cabbage
- 10 prunes
- 1/2 tsp salt (optional)
Dice the onion and the mushrooms. Slice the cabbage thin. Quarter the prunes. Add all of these to the dutch oven. The water in the vegetables should come out, making a broth; add a little salt to encourage this if necessary.
- 1 T tomato paste
- 2 tsp black peppercorns
- 2 tsp allspice berries
- 2 tsp juniper berries
- 6 bay leaves
Add all the seasonings.
- 1 jar sauerkraut (25 oz / 750 mL)
- vegetable broth
Add the sauerkraut and return the meat chunks to the dutch oven. Add just enough broth to cover the other ingredients. Cover and simmer for at least one hour.
This is a fusion recipe based on a bunch of bigos recipes I found online; the quantities here are what I used the first time I made it. Some of the recipes also seasoned with caraway and marjoram, but I chose to leave those out and keep the focus on the core (and more unusual) seasonings.
It doesn't really matter what meat you use, as long as it's dark meat. Likewise with the sausages: any smoked Polish-style sausage is good. Most of the recipes explicitly called for porcini mushrooms, but I used what I had on hand.
Don't preemptively salt this! The processed meats and the sauerkraut are both already salty, so this should need very little extra salt, if any.
I'm told this makes excellent leftovers.