Kapusniak Or Bust

 


So last December just before New Year's, I pretty-much successfully reverse-engineered my mother's recipe, passed down to her from her Polish side of the family, for what she had called kapusta, which, as I explained in this post, is really kapusniak. What I failed to do, is record the recipe for it. So having a hankering for it this week, I bought the ingredients that I assembled last time, relied on some similar recipes I found online, and got to it. I thought for history though, I might as well log the process here in this post so if I ever need to cook this again I'll have it at the ready rather than having to reinvent the wheel.

Already with that explanation, this feels like one of those recipe blogs that tell you all about the history of their dearly departed mawmaw with her love of God and family and her cherished ethnic traditions, the wholesome ingredients used and how they were grown not only in the present but also by their ancient ancestors in medieval times and all that shit that nobody fucking gives a fuck about. So without further ado, here's the fucking recipe:

About 2 lbs. Bone-in Country Style Pork Ribs
10 cups water
One medium head of green cabbage
(1) 27 oz. can of sauerkraut
1/2 cup dry Quick Barley
2 whole bay leaves
salt and black pepper

I used an Instant Pot because, really, it's all I have for stuff like this, but I'd recommend a large stew or soup pot on a controlled heat cooktop so you can adjust the heat accordingly. Maybe you can adjust the heat on an Instant Pot when using it to boil/simmer/sauté but if so, I haven't figured out how so I just have on/off as my controls so it's basically boiling or not.

Use 8 of the 10 cups of water and place the ribs into the pot with the water and the bay leaves.* (I'd season with a bit of salt as well here since I didn't this time and though it came out ok in the end, the meat was a bit bland compared to the broth overall.) 

Bring to a boil. Continue until meat is fully cooked and very tender, almost falling off the bones. You can lower the heat a bit to avoid over cooking if you like (or in my case, if I could...I just had to be very wary). 

Pull the meat out of the pot and place on a cutting board or plate to separate the meat from the bones. Set meat aside and replace the bones back into the pot. 

Continue boiling for a good 45 minutes or so. This should create a good pork bone broth. Bones should visibly be kinda cleared of fat and cartilage etc. and may be breaking up a bit. There may be a bit of scum on the surface of the broth you can skim off. 

Strain the whole thing to remove the bones, bay leaves and solid bits. Return broth to pot and continue to boil. Now add the cabbage which you should have chopped into roughly 5 inch cubed chunks (what were you doing while all this was boiling?) and boil that shit down. Now you can add salt and pepper, I'd go with about 2 tsp. each at first then add later when tasting if need be. Don't go crazy with seasoning -- this is old school Polish, really low-key in spices. Some families put garlic and other stuff, not ours, this was it, salt and pepper! (Well, and the bay leaves.) 

Once the cabbage has softened up and reduced enough to where you can add the can of sauerkraut, go ahead and do that. Now, I put the entire can with the juice in, but, after my first sampling, I'm wondering if I should have drained the juice. I kinda think my mom did since it's a tad too sour. But then again, I kinda like the sour flavor of sauerkraut (and frankly, if you don't like sauerkraut, you may not like this recipe at all since it's a lot of sauerkraut) but you do you. We'll see how it is on re-heats. I think the sour quality fades with time. 

Anyway, once the very thick soup (almost a stew) is mixed well and cooking down a bit more, add back your meat which should have been hand-shredded into bite-sized chunks (really, what the fuck were you doing all this time?) and add as much of the leftover 2 cups of water as needed, while spoon tasting, to get the broth flavor right. 

Remember to add in your barley, continue boiling for about ten more minutes or so and it's done. 

If, like me, you're making this with the intent that the majority will be leftover for subsequent re-heated meals and most of it will be frozen until then, the first "batch" may be strongly flavored so that adding a bit more water as you may need to do when reheating future batches won't dilute the flavor too greatly. 

The pic above shows the end result (minus the 2-cup sampling bowl I ate) which equals, oh, I guess about 8 or 9 quarts. 

*Take my liquid measurements lightly since, to be honest, I forgot to accurately measure so I'm just guessing. But while in the final stages, this very thick soup was just a couple inches from the top of the rim of the cooking pot of a standard 8 quart Instant Pot.

Playing polka music while cooking is entirely optional.