Pork stew I made today – let’s cook the Polish way!

In Poland, pork is our favorite kind of meat, I think. Most of the people here can’t imagine their lives without it. We make hundreds, or even thousands, of dishes using it. One of the most popular polish dishes you can make using pork is pork stew.

In fact, there are many variations of it, and there’s no one universal recipe for this dish. It may be prepared using various vegetables and spices, and sometimes mushrooms can be used.

For this pork stew (for 2 persons) I used:

• 400 g of pork – I bought it already cut into cubes (2 cm x 2 cm x 2 cm, more or less);
• 1 bigger carrot;
• 1 medium red bell pepper;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• 1,5 medium onions;
• some frying oil to fry both the meat and vegetables (use about 30ml of oil to fry the meat and about 100ml to fry the vegetables);
• 1,5 tablespoons of the tomato concentrate;
• some powdered bell pepper;
• some powdered black pepper;
• some salt;
• 250-300 ml of vegetable broth.

For this recipe, You also need to prepare a broth – some of us use vegetable broth, and other people prefer more traditional meat broth. I’m more into healthy eating and I don’t want to eat the excess of animal fats, and meat is now very expensive because of the inflation, so I decided to make some vegetable broth. You can buy broth in a jar in some store, if it is available in your area. Some people use bouillon cubes, too, but I don’t like using them. I prefer more natural and healthy meat broth or vegetable broth. Here are the ingredients I used for my vegetable broth:

• 2 medium carrots;
• 2 medium parsley roots;
• 0,5 of medium onion;
• some piece of celeriac;
• spices: bay leafs and some allspice (pimento);
• some piece of leek – I used about 10 cm.

I put the meat in a glass bowl and I added spices: powdered bell pepper, and powdered black pepper. I added some salt. After this, I crushed garlic using a garlic press.

I placed a bowl in a refrigerator – I like to give the meat some time to catch all those aromas, although it is not obligatory. You can just add the spices and start frying the meat immediately after doing this.

After I put the meat in my refrigerator, I started to make my vegetable broth. I sliced all the vegetables (except the half of the onion) and I placed them in a pot, together with spices and one teaspoon of salt. I added about 1 l of water. When it started to boil, I reduced the heat. I boiled the vegetables for 1 hour. In the meantime, I had to add some water, because it almost evaporated. Remember that you need 300 ml of both only.

You don’t need the vegetables you use to make the broth. I just eat them, because I like vegetables. You can make some salad etc.

Before I started to fry the meat, I sliced 1 carrot, 1 bell pepper and chopped 1,5 onions so that the vegetables were ready to fry them. You fry meat and vegetables in separate pans or in heavy-bottomed pots.

When my broth was ready, I strained it through a sieve, so I had only the liquid. I used one cup (250-300 ml) for my stew.

I heated the oil (about 30ml) in the pan and I started to fry the meat. I fried it for about 25 minutes on the medium heat.

In the meantime, I also heated the oil in the second pan and I started to fry the vegetables. First, I fried onions for 5 minutes, and then I added carrots. From this moment I fried the vegetables for 15 minutes. Then, I added the bell pepper and I fried the vegetables for another 10 minutes.

As you can count it, you need 30 minutes to fry all the vegetables. Stir them from time to time – otherwise you’ll burn them.

In the end, place vegetables in the pan where meat is, add the broth, and add 2 tablespoons of tomato concentrate. If you like, you can add more than that. After this, keep the stew on the small heat for 15 minutes. Taste it – maybe you want to add more salt.

You can serve the stew with rice, potatoes (I always prefer them mashed), or with groats of various kinds. Polish people usually eat it with mashed potatoes and groats.

It is also served with various salads. Raw salads are the most popular, you can use cabbage salad (grated cabbage). Grated beet salad is also popular. For my today’s stew, I used sauerkraut.

I chopped half a kilo of sauerkraut, and then I grated 1 apple and 1 small onion. I combined those ingredients in a bowl. I also added some salt, sugar, pepper, and oil. In the end, I added some lemon juice. It’s a traditional raw salad which is very popular in Poland.

Enjoy!!!!