- The name for this cabbage dish translates as ‘scalds your chin’ or ‘burns your beard’ .
- I am not sure why – but if you serve it straight from the pan it is very hot.
- In some parts of Poland this is more like kapuśniak – cabbage soup – one that is made with fresh cabbage.
- Here it is dish that can be eaten on its own or as a side dish.
Ingredients
- 1 sweetheart or white cabbage
- 500g starchy potatoes
- 200g smoked streaky bacon
- 1 litre vegetable stock
- 1 tablespoon caraway seeds
- Salt and pepper to taste
Method
- Cut the cabbage into largish squares.
- Peel and chop the potatoes into medium sized chunks.
- Mix the two together in a large saucepan with the stock.
- Bring to the boil and then simmer gently until the stock is all absorbed and the cabbage and potatoes are cooked.
- In the meantime – chop the bacon into small squares and fry till all fat is cooked out and the bacon crisp.
- These are called skwarki.
- Add the caraway seeds to the cooked cabbage and potatoes – mix gently.
- Gently mix in the fried bacon and the fat.
- Season if necessary to taste.
- Serve straight away.
- Here served in a Royal Doulton – Burgundy dish
Journey From A Polish Kitchen 
Dear Jadzia, Actually, my understanding is that skwarki are made of small diced salt pork rendered until the skwarki are crisp and crunchy. They have a different taste than bacon, better, but bacon is easier to obtain. Or maybe it’s the memories of childhood when my mother made them. I have made them, too, and they taste wonderful with sauteed onion, poured sparingly over pierogi. Everything must be served hot or it tastes too greasy. In my childhood during WWII, in Scotland, my mother put the cooled smalec and hopefully with lots of skwarki on bread. I can’t quite imagine it now. When we went to Poland a few years ago, a friend said that they lived on smalec and skwarki on bread throughout the war. We ate it in Scotland and they ate it in Poland.
I’m also looking forward to making Belgian Buns.
Warm regards, Basia Weiss, cell 805-459-7154
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Mama here in England always used smoked bacon, rendered till all the fat came out and she chopped it onto small squares.
However bacon then tended to be a lot fatter than nowadays.
She would sometimes get Polish ‘boczek’ – fatty cured belly pork.
I do not always have fatty enough streaky bacon and certainly in this recipe the bacon was quite lean.
I agree that the ‘skwarki’ much be hot to avoid the dish being greasy.
Thank you for reading my posts and commenting.
I hope you like the Belgian Buns – they are a bit like English rock buns but much better.
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