POLISH CUISINE

Stereotypes about polish cuisine1) Polish cuisine is fattening and unhealthy

Traditional cuisine – yes. The recipes contain a lot of butter and fat, greasy meat, eggs, flour, cream.

2) Polish products are tasty and healthy as they are prepared in traditional way

Fruit and vegetables are healthy too as they are grown without using chemical fertilizers.

3) The Poles consume the most of strong alcohols in Europe

It is a common stereotype, but is it true?

Statistic of drinking alcohols

Polish cuisine

Our cuisine has a lot of fat and caloric dishes. Many of them contain carbs.

We add a lot of spices such as pepper, cumin, fennel, vinegar, horseradish, garlic or onions.

Pickling is typical for our cuisine – the process of preserving food like cabbage or cucumbers.

We also have a lot of different soups.

What is our cuisine famous for?Typical for our cuisine are:

• Groats• Bakery

• Dumplings• Soups

Groats are especially typical for our cuisine. It is for us the same thing as pasta is for Italians and

we have a wide variety of groats („kasha”).

What else?

We also eat a lot of:

• Souerkraut

• Pickled cucumbers

• Cabbage stew („Bigos”)

• Sausages

• Mushrooms

Our cuisine is reach in meat,winter vegetables and spices. We also use a lot of flour products

(dumplings, noodles, „pierogi”), cream and eggs.

Dishes from other countries influence our national cuisine. There are some Turkish, German, Russian, French, Jewish and Italian dishes.

Some examples:

Thanks to Italian cuisine our dishes became lighter and we started to use more fruit, vegetables and spices. Bona Sforza, Polish queen, who came to us from Italy, had brought most of vegetables we use nowadays.

Russia gave us “kutia” – dessert made of poppy seeds, honey and wheat.

Thanks to Turkish cuisine we drink coffee nowadays.

French cuisine left for us aspic.

STARTERS

Herring

Aspic

It’s a kind of jelly (not sweet) with chicken and vegetables.

Eggs in mayonnaise dressing

TYPICAL SOUPS

Chicken soup

Tomato soup

Borsch with ravioli

Potato soup

Cabbage soup

Sour flour-based soup

Soup made of soured rye flour and meat.

Tripe soup

Beef or pork tripe stew with marjoram. Common ingredients include beef tripe, beef, bay leaf, parsley, carrot, beef broth, and spices to taste, including salt, black pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, and marjoram.

Mushroom soup

TYPICALMAIN COURSES

Dumplings

Pork chops

Cabbage stew

Stew of sauerkraut and meat, sausages and mushrooms.

Meat rolls

We eat them with...

Pickled/preserved cucumbers

Mushrooms

Groats

Kinds of groats

Buckwheat groats Barley groats Millet groats

Semolina Grits Couscous

Sauerkraut pan-fried with fried onions

Boiled potatoes

Sausages

Sausages are very popular in polish cuisine. There are many kinds of sausages.

TYPICAL DESSERTS

Poppy-seed cake

Cheescake

Modern polish cuisine

Modern polish cuisine is healthier and less fattening than it used to be. The Poles follow the experts advice and according to it “the Mediterranean diet” is more and more popular. We consume more fruit, vegetables, fish and oil, cutting down on butter, cream and meat.