Taste of food in Poland vs other countries

Well, over the last few days; a beef casserole (with red wine, shallots etc - more or less "French" I guess); pasta with pesto, mushrooms, peppers; Thai green curry; roast lamb with roast potatoes & veg; sirloin with garlic cream potatoes & veg, nut roast with home made potato salad, baked salmon with home made spiced wedges & hollandaise sauce... etc etc

This would be a typical enough sequence for us and many people I know.

The only thing about the above that is Irish or British arguably is the idea of roast potatoes maybe - I'm not sure that it is popular in Poland. Poles may see roast lamb as British or something but it's not - it's just that Poles tend not to eat it - a lot of Europe does however. The "roast dinner" in general is fairly popular I guess but it's not particularly Irish or British - many countries have more or less the same, just not Poland seemingly.

The pesto and Thai stuff aside as it is so obviously "ethnic", everything else will feature garlic and/or a variety of herbs & spices the point being, flavours will be quite strong - within reason. The flavours of lamb, salmon and matured beef/steak are quite strong as they are - or else shouldn't be messed with too much etc - but even they will often be complimented with some kinds of herb/spice etc.

Sure, some more traditional folk (farmers for example) will go for less elaborate or multi-national fare but their meat and two veg type dinners are still more robust and strongly flavoured than I have had in Poland.

Also, of course there are people who for whatever socio-economic reason have bad diets and buy a lot of processed food - but this happens in every country.


To be perfectly honest, this simple human foible is probably the culprit for a LOT of assumptions in many countries about the quality/flavour of food in other countries.

You can't judge by the top restaurants, you hav to judge by what the ordinary people eat.

Poland has the best food in the worldP:]

Certain youtuber tested a few dishes in a popular restaurant on top of the Tatra Mountains.

Some of his comments are interesting and plausible and might give you a general impression of what taste Poles/Polesses expect in their cuisine :

plejada.pl/newsy/ksiazulo-testowal-menu-na-kasprowym-wierchu-wbije-tutaj-kij-w-mrowisko/l3prkqc

Tomato soup
Then he came up with a controversial theory about tomato soup , and specifically what it should be served with.
I know I'm making a stir , because many people in Poland eat tomato soup with rice. This is downright terrifying
" For tomato soup only pasta, 'shells' or 'bows' . This is the perfect tomato soup for me," he explained.
How did he like the tomato soup?
The soup is cold , it's lukewarm, so if you come here cold, you won't warm yourself with this soup. It's served with cream, there's plenty of sourness and sweetness. It's not bad, but its temperature doesn't allow me to feel its full flavor. I 'd give it 6 out of 10. Totally plain, but satisfying. You eat it and that's it. There's no grimace, " he said.

Żurek
Then the influencer started eating żurek . The ingredients were potatoes and sausage. He liked the soup, although there were some comments.
The sour rye soup is super thick . (...) It is very sour, but also balanced , there is no strange aftertaste. However, you will find the taste of smoked meat here. I would just add a few more potatoes and add an egg. This is a sour soup that will be liked by 90 percent of the people visiting this restaurant. Correct sour soup ," he summed up, adding that he received "old bread.

Meat patty with potatoes and bigos

The biggest problem turned out to be the spices added to the dish. The cooks did not skimp on salt and pepper.
Very salty patty, oh Jesus! You have to eat it with a potato because it's too strong. I have the impression that someone got carried away with this salt

" There's also a lot of pepper . I don't complain about the pepper. I'll tell you, it's strong, " he added. However, the YouTuber positively assessed the consistency of the patty itself. " It's not loose, it's compact and you can feel, above all, that you're eating meat . I think it's a very good minced patty. Only the salt... Someone has spilled it here. It's really very tasty . The salt hits you, you feel thirsty after eating half. It's a pity," we hear from a man who adds:

• 
  
  

All 'youtubers' should be boiled in bleach and then buried inside a volcano. Same with 'instagrammers', 'tiktokkers' and anyone who believes TV adverts.


Normal for Poland and a few other countries in the region. I find food in PL to be too cold, and others find my cooking to be too hot. I prefer it piping hot (perhaps a cultural thing) and have never understood why people in PL don't warm the plates before serving hot food.


Looks like fairly nice home cooking rather than restaurant stuff. A bit like what you get on a Wars carriage.

Indeed, it isn`t a tradition in Poland and when I do it for myself, it happens very rarely.


To be more precise, the food is hot when it leaves the kitchen. It cools later on during delivery or when it is waiting for consumption or when you are eating slowly. Climate in Poland is cooler than in Hawaii or Florida.......


That youtuber complained and didn`t recommend the place for people who look for home made stuff. :):):) That`s what he wrote about bigos:

Bigos doesn't look good and the sausage in it doesn't look very good. It looks like a typical 'market food' . Well, no... There's a lot of pepper here , not too much sourness, especially I don't feel any plum in this bigos. It's a weak bigos, it lacks essence, no character, even though there's a lot of pepper . I'd skip eating bigos here,"

Hence heating the plates in the oven, on top of a pan, or just with boiling water. Tepid food is just nasty.


Home is the best place for that. In restaurants I generally look for something that's not easy or practical to do at home.

We always did that when I was a child. As you say, the methods varied, usually in the oven in our house. Food served on unheated plates was considered as an example of lazy/shoddy housekeeping. If you visited somebody's house and the dinner was served on a cold plate there would be raised eyebrows.

Amasing cultural difference!
But probably worth propagating in Poland where it is chilly most of the time.

Yes.

It's even quite important in Northern England and in Scotland where it's damp for a big chunk of the year. There's something psychologically warming about food that's so hot it almost burns you.

Plus, the working class always ate piping hot food in the kitchen next to the fire rather than got used to having food that had cooled after being carried along a corridor to a cold high ceilinged dining room that was used once a day and was depressingly cold. In a house like that, you'd need the plates heated and poorer people would have them hot anyway due to being next to the grate.

Jon, do you remember when you were a kid, having to wait for the food to cool, it was so hot - and being told to take it from around the edge of plate??

Always, annd I eat it piping hot now. Poles complain about food being too hot when I cook.

Be careful of your esophagus. I remember reading that, I think it was Turks, maybe Arabs in general, have a higher rate of cancer of the esophagus and there was a link to drinking very hot tea.

No, it was just a practical approach, there was nowhere to heat plates, we had a gas stove in the kitchen, there were no microwaves yet. Any attempt to heat the plate could result in its destruction.

They're the worst for eating clap cold food.

If there are chips on the menu they're made at 9am and left to congeal all day before reaching any plate.


I put boiling water on them sometimes.

No, it is just a cultural difference. People have been heating plates in the British Isles since long before microwaves. You have to be careful with bone china, but stuff like delft could go into the oven, gas or electric, on a low heat and come to no harm. Our everyday dinner service was made from something similar to bone china but not quite as fragile. That could be heated in the oven, no problem. It was pretty old too. Was probably made in the 1930s. You just warm them gently, you don't put them in on a blazing heat.

You should go to Korea or Japan where people pluck things right out of boiling hot pots and into their mouths... an American I knew who had lived in Japan was nicknamed nekojita (cat tongue) because she didn't enjoy scalding her mouth....

I wouldn't want that either. I also don't like Wasabi even though it's cold.

There can also be a psychological or physical barrier to eat too hot dishes. My wife cooks at home and serves hot dishes straight from the cooker. But kids procrastinate with eating and wait until the food cools. My wife was angry in the past but now we got used to it coz kids are majority in the house (even if some of them have already left it).

Poland has absolutely the best food, it's so comforting and delicious especially when I was in school, I hope I get to try it again in the near future

What is so good about Polish food? I would rather eat Italian anyday of the week instead of stinky fish or pierogis.

Poland has absolutely the best food, it's so comforting and delicious especially when I was in school, I hope I get to try it again in the near future


I think it smooth on stomach that what makes it better than Italian.

Seriously ?
Lets talk FLAVOR.
I find it very bland compared to a nice Mexican plate or spicy brown strew chicken plate in Jamaica.

the general cuisine of Europeans is much more diverse than any other nations, it's incredible.

Robin is very right. But this is what people raised on Polish food most often think. This usually doesn't apply to others.

Its more fattening than Italian that's for sure.


Poles in Chicago love mexican food, theyre are always at the restaurants when I go there.

How about a bowl of Jambalaya or gumbo?

We are lucky we live in the USA where we can get any type of international food.

I grew tired of the food in Poland after the second week and couldn't wait to get back home and have a real steak.

Not to mention Polish food makes you fart all day long as well! Its good once in awhile, but not everyday.

No, that was 1988's quote, not mine in post #175
I like Polish food but you have to smear a lot of butter, salt and pepper on it and add onions for any flavor whether it be spuds or cabbage.

That makes it doable.

Only if you eat baked beans in large quantities......oh wait, this is English food.

Not that common there. More of those horrid tins are sold around Europe.


It's not rich in flavour.


You'd be amazed at what is available in a typical northern English town.

I must have my eyesight checked then as most supermarkets have shelves full of them and I see beans on toast, baked potatoes with baked beans and so on and so on.