Poles Love to Eat Cabbage

Cabbage is a vegetable that plays a very large part in Polish cookery.  It can be eaten raw  in a variety of salads or cooked in many different ways.

Cabbages grow well in Poland and they can be stored for part of the winter so giving a supply for most of the year.

Cabbages For Sale in a Polish Market

Cabbages can also be preserved by allowing them to ferment using brine. This fermented cabbage is called sauerkraut in German which means sour cabbage.

My parents used to tell me about how their parents made barrels and barrels of fermented cabbage, shredding the cabbage finely, adding salt and packing it firmly into the barrels. This was standard work after harvesting cabbages and would provide a basic ingredient for many dishes throughout the coming year.

One of my aunties in Poland who lives in a block of flats makes her own sauerkraut in a bucket which stands on her balcony. She is not alone in this.

On a recent trip to Poland I bought a little book on cabbage cookery.  The title, translates as “Falling in Love with Cabbage”; I think most Poles do this at a very early age as cabbage features, fresh or sour, in so many meals.

Falling In Love With Cabbage

In my next posts I am going to cover some classic Polish recipes for cabbage including bigos and gołąbki (cabbage rolls)- as seen on the book cover.

Bigos