Ekhm... bigos is not an Easter dish at all. :)

I don't think I ever had bigos with garlic, too. But there are so many modifications to the recipe that basically every family has it's own version. I love it with seared pork and chunky bacon (back fat is just too hard-core for me). Sausage is not my favorite, and I prefer the version without tomatoes or wine. Also, at least for me, the more sour the better, but you may tone it down with fresh cabbage.

You definitely need sourdough bread with it. And don't forget it'll send you running for the toilet if you're not used to eating boiled sauerkraut in large, or any, quantities.

I love bigos, but never knew they had a holiday connotation. I confess I've never made them myself -- they are a good, cheap dish at Ukranian Home, Annie's and other Polish/Ukranian/Slavic restaurants in New York.

I made bigos last November - a huge dutch oven full of it. I used sauerkraut, mushrooms, onions, 2 kinds of kielbasa and some pork shoulder for good measure.

Even after long cooking I found the individual flavors - the tartness from the kraut, the different spices of the sausage types, even the bay leaf - remained quite pronounced. This made the bigos very intensely flavored, which I loved during my first bowl and found a bit overpowering thereafter.

I dare you to post a recipe for the sour rye barszcz - now that's an Easter soup!

given that my parents are from poland, i grew up eating this, but it was never very garlicky, and def no tomatoes! (i gasped when i saw tomatoes) it goes to show how recipes morph over families and generations, very cool. however, i will only eat my mothers :)

A variation of bigos was a staple in my mother's German-American family's cuisine - sauerkraut, sausage and potatoes slowly baked for a couple of hours.

Yum! I think my grandmother has made something like this for me before. Sounds like a nice Sunday dinner with a big hunk of freshly made bread.

Looks and sounds delicious but it does seem to be an odd dish for Easter as it seems more appropriate for the dark days of winter.

Oh wow, there isn't a household in Poland that wouldn't have its own recipe for bigos. As a student I shared a house with 3 other girls and each time the parents would come to visit, we would be left with 4 different versions of bigos, with or without tomatoes and garlic, just sausage or a combination of smoked meats, with smoked prunes and red wine, I could go on for hours. The thing is, they were all definitely bigos and all delicious. I think that just as with other true classics, you just pick a recipe and twick it till you love it. Having said that, in my Polish neck of the woods, bigos was more of a winter / autumnal dish and I associate żurek ( also an awesome classic) with Easter more. Either way, both well worth doing.

My mom makes this all the time with turkey kielbasa. Its great :D

Yay Saveur!

I grew up with a Polish grandmother (she came to the US from Poland in the 40's and never spoke English well). We never had bigos for Easter, though. What we always had (and what I'll make this year) is a big special kielbasa (with big chunks of pork in it), ham with horseradish, dyed eggs, rye bread, babka, and maybe some pierogies because my sister and I loved them so much. We also always had a piece of butter molded into a lamb shape.

My background is Polish and this is NOT an Easter meal. In fact the traditional soup is zurek (thanks aniawl - where did you get the z with the dot? lol) Zurek is called Sour Rye Soup in english. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_rye_soup
This is what you want to make for Easter.
Back to Bigos - it's a hardy inexpensive stew to feed a whole family in the winter months - definitely served with rye bread). Smacznego!

Bigos with tomatoes? That's like pineapples in bolognese sauce. In my family we had a simpler version of bigos called kapusta (cabbage) almost every week, so it definitely wasn't holiday food. At Easter we always have special kielbasa, spicier, more heavily smoked, and made with bigger pieces of pork, as well as poppy seed cakes, cheese cakes, babka, horseradish, and paczki (prune filled doughnuts). My uncles also busted out the krupnik (Polish rocket fuel distilled from honey) and the weird foods like headcheese, jellied pigs feet, and (GAK!) blood sausage.

This just makes me think: VESELKA.

I've been eating bigos for over 60 years and never had it with tomatoes OR at Easter. But things change and the recipe from Saveur looks good to me.

Ham was what we had at Easter, especially right after midnight mass. With all the fasting and meatless meals during Lent, a slice of ham at 2:00 am on Eater morning was the best thing possible.

@melkozek & @rubenclamzo: YOU ARE MY PEOPLE! yea! for kapusta and yea! for ham after midnight mass!