Kuchnia Polska · The Polish Home Table

Polish Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Step into the warm kitchens of Poland, where everything begins with churned butter, slow rendered smalec, and golden ghee. Honest ingredients and deep, comforting flavor, the way the countryside has always cooked.

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Real Butter✦ Smalec✦ Ghee
A hearty home cooked plate of meat and vegetables on a rustic table
✦ Obiad Niedzielny
From the recipe collection
Masło

Butter First

Poland is a land of dairies and meadows, and every dish in this kitchen starts with real butter from the churn, never with a refined seed oil.

Smalec

Slow Rendered Smalec

Smalec, the gently rendered lard of the Polish larder, gives potato pancakes and hunter's stew a depth no bottled oil can imitate.

Nigdy

Never Vegetable Oil

No seed oils, no shortcuts. Only the traditional fats that the farmhouses and village kitchens of Poland have trusted for generations.

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✦
From Our Kitchen

Polish Home Recipes

Six beloved dishes from the tables of Poland, each cooked with the honest fats that bring out the best in every ingredient.

Myśliwski Bigos, a dark hunter's stew of cabbage, pork, and smoked sausage

Bigos

Hunter's stew

3 hr·8 servings·Medium

The great pot of the Polish forest table. Sauerkraut and fresh cabbage simmered for hours with pork, smoked kielbasa, dried mushrooms, and prunes, all begun in a spoonful of smalec.

Ingredients

  • 800 g sauerkraut, lightly rinsed
  • 400 g fresh white cabbage, shredded
  • 500 g pork shoulder, cubed
  • 300 g smoked kielbasa, sliced thick
  • 150 g smoked bacon, diced
  • 2 tbsp smalec (lard)
  • 30 g dried forest mushrooms, soaked
  • 8 prunes, halved
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 2 bay leaves, 4 allspice berries, 4 juniper berries
  • 250 ml dry red wine or mushroom soaking water

Instructions

  1. Melt the smalec in a heavy pot and brown the pork cubes deeply on all sides. Set aside.
  2. In the same fat, render the bacon, then soften the onions until golden.
  3. Return the pork and add the sauerkraut, fresh cabbage, mushrooms with their strained soaking water, and the spices.
  4. Pour in the wine, cover, and simmer very gently for 2 hours, stirring now and then.
  5. Add the kielbasa and prunes and simmer 45 minutes more, uncovered, until thick and dark.
  6. Season with salt and pepper. Rest overnight if you can, bigos is always better the next day.
  7. Reheat slowly and serve with rye bread.
Mazury Pan fried trout with herbs and lemon, cooked in butter

Pstrąg w Maśle

Trout in brown butter

25 min·2 servings·Easy

The pride of the Masurian lake country. Whole trout dusted in flour, fried crisp in real butter, and finished with lemon, parsley, and the nutty brown butter from the pan.

Ingredients

  • 2 whole trout, cleaned
  • 90 g butter
  • 4 tbsp flour, for dusting
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
  • 1 lemon, half juiced, half in wedges
  • 3 tbsp parsley, chopped
  • 1 sprig fresh thyme
  • Boiled potatoes, to serve

Instructions

  1. Pat the trout very dry, season inside and out, and dust lightly with flour.
  2. Melt two thirds of the butter in a wide pan over medium heat until it foams.
  3. Lay in the trout with the garlic and thyme and fry 4 to 5 minutes per side until the skin is golden and crisp.
  4. Lift the fish onto warm plates and add the remaining butter to the pan.
  5. Let it turn nut brown, then pull the pan off the heat and add the lemon juice and parsley.
  6. Spoon the foaming butter over the trout and serve at once with potatoes and lemon wedges.
Domowe Placki Ziemniaczane, golden potato pancakes served with sour cream

Placki Ziemniaczane

Potato pancakes

40 min·4 servings·Easy

Crisp lace edged potato pancakes, the weekday treasure of every Polish home. Grated potato and onion fried golden in smalec or ghee and served with cold sour cream.

Ingredients

  • 1 kg starchy potatoes, peeled
  • 1 onion
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • ½ tsp dried marjoram
  • 4 tbsp smalec or ghee, for frying
  • 200 ml sour cream, to serve
  • Chives, snipped, to finish

Instructions

  1. Grate the potatoes and onion finely, then squeeze the mixture hard in a clean cloth to remove the liquid.
  2. Let the liquid settle, pour off the water, and scrape the potato starch from the bowl back into the mixture.
  3. Stir in the eggs, flour, salt, pepper, and marjoram to make a thick batter.
  4. Heat a generous layer of smalec or ghee in a wide pan until shimmering.
  5. Drop in spoonfuls of batter, flatten thin, and fry 3 to 4 minutes per side until deeply golden and crisp.
  6. Drain on a rack, never on paper, so the edges stay crisp.
  7. Serve hot with cold sour cream and chives.
Staropolski Żurek, a creamy sour rye soup with sausage and egg

Żurek

Sour rye soup

1 hr·6 servings·Medium

The old soup of Poland, tangy with fermented rye and rich with white sausage, smoked bacon, and a swirl of cream. Finished the proper way, with a halved boiled egg in every bowl.

Ingredients

  • 500 ml żur (sour rye starter)
  • 4 white sausages (biała kiełbasa)
  • 120 g smoked bacon, diced
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 potatoes, cubed
  • 1.2 L vegetable or meat stock
  • 1 tsp dried marjoram and 1 tsp grated horseradish
  • 150 ml heavy cream
  • 4 hard boiled eggs, halved

Instructions

  1. Melt the butter in a soup pot, render the bacon, and soften the onion and garlic.
  2. Add the stock, potatoes, and whole white sausages and simmer 20 minutes.
  3. Lift out the sausages, slice them thick, and return them to the pot.
  4. Shake the żur well and pour it in, stirring, then simmer 10 minutes more.
  5. Season with marjoram, horseradish, salt, and pepper.
  6. Temper the cream with a ladle of hot soup, then stir it back in without boiling.
  7. Serve each bowl with a halved egg and rye bread alongside.
Piekarnia Chałka, a golden braided loaf dusted with flour on a wooden board

Chałka

Braided butter bread

3 hr 30 min·1 large loaf·Medium

The golden braided loaf of the Polish bakery window. A soft, gently sweet dough enriched with real butter and eggs, crowned with a buttery crumble before baking.

Ingredients

  • 500 g bread flour
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 220 ml warm whole milk
  • 80 g butter, melted, plus 30 g cold for the crumble
  • 2 eggs, plus 1 for the wash
  • 70 g sugar, plus 2 tbsp for the crumble
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 tbsp flour, for the crumble

Instructions

  1. Stir the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt together, then add the milk, eggs, vanilla, and melted butter and knead 10 minutes to a soft, glossy dough.
  2. Cover and rise about 1 hour 30 minutes until doubled.
  3. Divide into 4 ropes and braid them snugly, tucking the ends under, on a lined tray.
  4. Rise another 45 minutes, then brush with beaten egg.
  5. Rub the cold butter, crumble sugar, and crumble flour together and scatter over the loaf.
  6. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 30 to 35 minutes until deep gold and hollow sounding.
  7. Cool on a rack before slicing thick, with butter of course.
Niedziela Szarlotka, a rustic Polish apple cake dusted with powdered sugar

Szarlotka

Polish apple cake

1 hr 30 min·8 servings·Medium

The Sunday apple cake of every Polish grandmother's table. Cinnamon scented apples tucked between two layers of tender butter pastry and dusted with powdered sugar.

Ingredients

  • 1.2 kg tart apples, peeled and sliced
  • 350 g flour
  • 200 g cold butter, cubed
  • 120 g sugar, plus 3 tbsp for the apples
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tbsp sour cream
  • 1½ tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • Powdered sugar, to dust

Instructions

  1. Rub the flour, butter, sugar, and baking powder together, then bind with the yolks and sour cream into a smooth pastry. Chill 30 minutes.
  2. Cook the apples gently with the extra sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice until just tender, then cool.
  3. Press slightly more than half the pastry into a buttered 24 cm pan and up the sides.
  4. Spread the apple filling evenly over the base.
  5. Coarsely grate the remaining chilled pastry over the top so it bakes into a golden crumble.
  6. Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 45 to 50 minutes until golden brown.
  7. Cool in the pan, dust generously with powdered sugar, and slice into squares.
Fresh bread and butter on a rustic wooden kitchen table
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Brulau Kuchnia

Brulau Kuchnia is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of Poland, a country where dinner is an act of care and no guest ever leaves the table hungry. We write these recipes down the way they are still cooked in farmhouse kitchens from the Baltic to the Tatras, patiently, generously, and always with a proper knob of butter.

Our only house rule is an old one: butter from the churn, smalec rendered gently on a low flame, ghee and good olive oil when the dish asks for them, and nothing else. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never sat on the tables we learned from.

Smacznego, may it feed you well.

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Starter
Nexburn 2 Bottles
2 Bottles
Was $358
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Total: $158
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Nexburn 3 Bottles
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Was $537
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Total: $207
You Save $330!
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Best Seller
Nexburn 6 Bottles
6 Bottles
Was $1074
$49/bottle
Total: $294
You Save $780!
🚚 Free Shipping
Order Now
Secure Checkout Natural Ingredients Money Back Guarantee Made in USA
60-Day Money Back Guarantee

60-Day Money-Back Guarantee. Try Nexburn completely risk free.