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The Polish word ''bigos'' is often rendered into English as "``hunter's stew", but in fact, hunter’s bigos, or ''bigos myśliwski'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|mish|leef|skee}}), is just one of its many varieties. Whether it’s a&nbsp;kind of bigos made from game meats or simply bigos eaten by hunters, but made from any kind of meat, is open to debate. As for me, I’ve never really understood why anyone would enjoy shooting terrified animals, but if Poland’s national bard himself (even if he admitted to be "``a wretched marksman"<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 43</ref>) wrote so much about hunting in his epic, then let’s at least quote a&nbsp;short excerpt, which is still quite up-to-date and may not be appreciated by the pro-hunting lobby in Poland.

Anyway, after the hunt was over, the hunters (who had left home early in the morning with empty stomachs) treated themselves to a&nbsp;feast in the midst of the forest. Fires were built, "``meats, vegetables, flour" and bread "``were brought from the wagons",<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verses 820–821</ref> Judge Soplica "``opened a box full of flagons" of Goldwasser<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 821</ref> (a&nbsp;herbal liqueur from Danzig, or Gdańsk, famous for the gold flakes added to every bottle), while "``in the pots warmed the bigos."<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 831</ref> ''Pan Tadeusz'' contains what is without a&nbsp;doubt the most beautiful literary monument to this Polish national dish. Or maybe bigos is considered a&nbsp;national dish because it is mentioned in ''Pan Tadeusz''? Whatever the case, Mickiewicz himself admitted that he didn’t quite know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.

It was called ''bigos hultajski'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|Hool|tie|skee}}), or "``poor man's bigos". Back then, the Polish word ''"``hultaj"'' ({{pron|Hool|tie}}) referred to an itinerant peasant who travelled from village to village or from town to town looking for various short-term jobs.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> ''Bigos hultajski'' was, then, something like real bigos, as it was made from chopped meat, but of the cheaper kinds, like sausages and fatback, and it took its sour tang not from expensive limes or lemons, nor even from vinegar, but from sauerkraut or pickled beetroot juice. The sauerkraut had the additional advantage of serving as both filler and preservative. It wouldn’t take long to discover that such sauerkraut bigos could be stored for a&nbsp;long time and reheated multiple times, which made it a&nbsp;perfect food not only for itinerant peasants and domestic servants, but also for soldiers, hunters and travellers. Zygmunt Gloger, who liked to share his personal experiences in his turn-of-the-20th-century ''Old Polish Encyclopedia'', reminisced that "``in the old way of travelling, it was a superbly practical invention of Polish cuisine, which I experienced myself in 1882, when Henryk Sienkiewicz and I travelled for a few days on horseback to the Białowieża Forest."<ref>{{Cyt

''Bigos hultajski'' also makes an appearance in the title of a&nbsp;four-decades-younger novel by Tytus Szczeniowski (published under the ''nom de plume'' Izasław Blepoński), ''Bigos Hultajski, or Social Poppycock'' (''Bigos hultajski: Bzdurstwa obyczajowe''). It’s not really a&nbsp;novel in the modern sense, but rather a&nbsp;loose collection of stories, drafts, digressions, polemics and sociological conjectures, arranged into a&nbsp;plot without a&nbsp;beginning or an ending. Apparently, the only thing the binds its four volumes together is a&nbsp;series of four forewords (and one "``hindword"), which are incidentally considered the most interesting parts of the entire work.<ref>{{Cyt

With time, the word ''"``hultaj"'' gained a&nbsp;negative connotation that it has today. In modern Polish, it’s roughly equivalent to the English "``rascal". The origin of the term ''"``bigos hultajski"'', now understood as "``rascal's bigos", was largely forgotten. Gloger hypothesised that "``because the best bigos contains the greatest amount of chopped meat, then there is a certain analogy with rascals, or brigands and highwaymen, who used to hack their victims to pieces with their sabres."<ref>Gloger, ''op. cit.''</ref> And so even today we can find explanations, as in [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=54979769 Polish Wikipedia,] that ''bigos hultajski'' is a&nbsp;kind of bigos that is particularly heavy on meat and not – as in its original sense – a&nbsp;dish in which the scarcity of meat was masked with sauerkraut.

Unfortunately, not everything that tastes good is good for your health. Bigos happens to have a&nbsp;reputation for being an excessively high-fat dish that tends to sit heavy on the stomach. What’s more, it is usually made from leftovers, which has often aroused suspicions as to the freshness of its ingredients. You can see it, for example, in ''The Good Soldier Švejk'' by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, where, on the one hand, one should be glad that "``''bikoš'' cooked in the Polish way" made a&nbsp;career as an important part of the Austro-Hungarian army’s diet on the Galician front, but, on the other hand, it was accused by Lieutenant Dub of giving him diarrhoea.

Mr. Ernest Bryll, a&nbsp;20th-century poet, gave an even more direct answer to the question of what to write of the national bigos. He thinks of it as a&nbsp;"``dangerous, heavy dish, {{…}}, a mixture of everything, but also hacking people to pieces".<ref>{{Cyt

And now it’s time for a&nbsp;little curiosity. Have you ever heard of ''bigos z wiwatem'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|zvee|vah|tem}}), or "``bigos with a cheer"?

However, I’ve been unable to find any mention of the "``bigos with a cheer" in pre-Internet sources. You could say, of course, that I could have asked some of those people who wrote or talked about it. Well, I tried, but to no avail. It would turn out that either the source has escaped that person’s memory or that it’s simply a&nbsp;fact so obvious that no citations are necessary. Besides, you can find information about bigos with a&nbsp;cheer everywhere, I’ve been told; just grab any 19th-century cookbook that comes to hand. Well, it is true that old recipës do mention a&nbsp;method of cooking where the pot is sealed with dough. Ćwierczakiewiczowa advises to cook the "``English meatloaf" in such a&nbsp;way,<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> while Maria Gruszecka uses this method to prepare a&nbsp;"``meat essence" for the sick.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> But still no sight of bigos cooked in a&nbsp;sealed pot, let alone a&nbsp;recipë where a&nbsp;lid blowing off the pot would be a&nbsp;desired effect rather than accident. Nor was I able to find the phrase ''"``bigos z wiwatem"'' anywhere I looked.

What I did discover was that this peculiar kind of bigos not only doesn’t seem to be mentioned in pre-Internet sources, but it’s also absent in online sources that are older than 26 November 2006. So what happened on the particular day? This is when Tomasz Steifer, a&nbsp;painter and heraldist, [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&diff=5477053&oldid=5246284 added the following information to the "``Bigos" article] in Polish Wikipedia:

The only recipë I’m aware of that could be described as "``bigos with a cheer" (although this appellation is not used in the source) is a&nbsp;hint, given by Castellan Adam Grodziecki in his 17th-century manuscript, for a&nbsp;rather bawdy and somewhat primitive prank. It’s bigos with a&nbsp;cheer that you can smell!

Whether it’s actual ant eggs or a&nbsp;folk name for the seeds of some carminative plant, is not certain. Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski suspects that "``ant eggs" may refer to common knotgrass.<ref>Dumanowski, ''op. cit.''</ref>

Finally, let’s return to ''Pan Tadeusz'' one more time, because I’ve also come across the argument that "``bigos with a cheer" is mentioned in this epic poem. Indeed, the words ''"``bigos"'' and ''"``wiwat"'' ("``cheer" or "``hurrah", from Latin ''"``vivat"'', "``long live") even appear in the same verse. But who’s doing the cheering here – and three times at that? Is it the lid (loudly blowing off) or the hunters raiding the pot (cheering out of joy that the bigos is ready)? I will let you read and decide for yourself.

As quoted above, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Zygmunt Gloger enjoyed bigos in 1882, while travelling to the vast primaeval Białowieża Forest in what is now eastern Poland. In 2015, two hairy Englishmen, David Myers and Simon King, relived this experience, except they rode motorbikes instead of horses. Here’s a&nbsp;video of them cooking bigos (which, for some reason, they pronounce "``bigosh") in the midst of the same forest.