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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: ''{{small|BEE}}-gawss mish-{{small|LEEF}}-skee''), is just one of its many varieties. Whether it's a 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 at 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 short excerpt, which is still quite up-to-date and may not be appreciated by the pro-hunting lobby in Poland.

{{Cytat

| <poem>The Count is well versed in the lore of the chase,

Anyway, after the hunt was over, the hunters (who had left home early in the morning with empty stomachs) treated themselves to a 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 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 doubt the most beautiful literary monument to this Polish national dish. Or maybe bigos is considered a national dish because it is mentioned in ''Pan Tadeusz''? Whatever the case, Mickiewicz himself admitted that he didn't quote know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.

{{Cytat

| <poem>Mere words cannot tell

== Rascal's Bigos ==

So when, how and why did sauerkraut become part of bigos? For example, to Henryk Sienkiewicz, a turn-of-the-20th-century writer and Nobel-Prize winner, sauerkraut in bigos was so obvious that he assumed it must have been just as obvious to Lord John Humphrey Zagloba, a character from his trilogy of historical novels.

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It was called ''bigos hultajski'' (pronounced: ''{{small|BEE}}-gawss hool-{{small|TIE}}-skee''), or "poor man's bigos". Back then, the Polish word ''hultaj'' (''{{small|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

| nazwisko = Doroszewski

The good thing is that, as the Poles discovered long ago, Polish vodka not only pairs ideally with the stew, but is also an indispensable antidote to bigos-induced indigestion.

{{Cytat

| <poem>Jeden ze szlachty miał jaszczyk bigosu.

Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a great poet of the second half of the 19th century, was able, in just one short poem, to mock both the national stew and the parochial mindset of Polish gentry, whose minds -- like bigos -- were just messy mixtures of diced-up thoughts.

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| <poem>What you write of bigos, the national stew,

A teraz pora na ciekawostkę. Słyszeliście o czymś takim jak bigos z wiwatem?

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| Na polowaniach podawano bigos myśliwski, a także bigos z wiwatem (ugotowany wcześniej podgrzewano w naczyniu z pokrywą oblepioną ciastem; "wystrzelenie" pokrywki pod wpływem ciśnienia oznaczało, że trzeba już jeść).