Nothing better than skwarki!

One of the all-time favourite Polish agrnishes are skwarki -- crunchy golden-brown nuggets of frien pork fatback (słonina). It's bad for the heart (cholesterol!) if you make a steady diet of it, but nothing can beat their fragrant, salty, porky crunch on a plate of boiled potatoes, egg noodles, potato dumpligns or Sielsia dumplings, buckwehat grits (kasza hreczana) or savoury pierogi (not the fruit or sweet-cheese varieties). And frying eggs in the skwarki and their drippings is out of this world. Bacon can go fly a kite!

Yup----it really adds flavour to any kind of dish!!!

I would say bacon goes better with frayed eggs and skwarki goes better with potato dumplings:)

and skwarki:)



bacon and frayed eggs:)



:)

Stop it - you merciless torturer! :) I recently made shkwarki - big fat crunchy juicy seductively fluffy and so amorously delicious chunks of heaven that smell like ocean's breeze after a spring rain with aroma of paradise magnolia....

Nathan -- how true is this anecdote? A dirt-poor Ukrainian peasant once was day-dreaming and thought if he ever became rich he would be able to eat 'salo z salom' (sorry if my Urkainian ain't the best), or fatback with fatback. Usually it's eaten with bread.

I have to eat nothing for 2 months before going to Gazdówka and trying pierogi z skwarkami :) :) Even more so given that they serve bread with lard before the pierogi even come. I usually have 'soup of a rich shepherd' :) :) Oh, and a beer to wash it down with too. You can see now why I diet for ages before going there in winter.

you have to try back bacon on a bum----melts in your mouth

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Nice idea but instant turn off for me if the bum looked anything like the one in the pic ;)

So I can't spell---but there's nothing like a baconburger

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Well, dirt-poor peasants are lazy. The ones with dreams of this kind usually live the dream and have salo. You have, probably, heard a song about salo ;)

...
Of course, salo and shkwarki are popular in Ukraine since times unknown. There are even monuments to a pig in several cities :)
I read somewhere that pigs were the animals who saved people in Ukraine during the invasion of Mongol hordes who didn't approach the yards where pigs grew and considered people eating pigs unclean and repugnant and therefore, kept themselves away.


It depends on your taste preferences. I like it salted, peppered and slightly frozen with or without bread (100 grams is essential here ;). Smaletz, which is shared greatly in our nations as you know, is eaten usually with garlics rubbed-in rye bread and sprinkled with salt...Yummii!

So, Polonius, I agree with the title of your post 100% :)

Those are the most beautiful potato dumplings........are they home made? Got a recipe?

Here is one recepie:
•1 large potato, peeled and grated
•1 cup all-purpose flour
•1 cup whole milk
•Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation:
1.Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, mix all ingredients until a thick paste forms.
2.Dip a teaspoon in the boiling water, then dip teaspoon in the dumpling mixture, picking up half a teaspoon or so, and slide it into the gently boiling water. Continue until all the dumpling dough is gone.

3.Simmer about 20 minutes or until dumplings taste done. Drain in a colander

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I think adding an egg would improve the flavour, texture and colour. Ever add one?

Eggs are so versatile :) I look forward to eating pierogi with those nuggets again. I can't taste a darn thing now due to a cold but the taste is in my mind :)

Merged: Could someone define "Skwarki" for me

I was just reviewing some Polish recipes that called for "Pork Scratchings (Skwarki)" as a garnish. What exactly is Skwarki? Thanks

It's a bacon chopped into strips.

Dice salted fat back and fry up into gold-brown nuggets. The skwarki and pan driuppings are a typical Polish (peasant) garnish for potatoes, groats, noodles, dumpligns and other plain, lean foods.

Skwarki can also be made with bacon or fatty ham.

Correcting typo: dumplings

Little cubes of pork fat (the bit of the bacon without any meat on) fried slowly until transparent together with mostly with pierogi and served on top of them. They can also be used with kasza grzyczana etc..Out of fashion now for obvious reasons however some people still use them and they do add someting to otherwise bland food.

Traditional throughout Eastern European cuisine - still very common in Russia and the Ukraine - more so now than in Poland which tends to be more health conscious.

Reading this has made me very hungry. My mother used to make the Skwarki cooked down along with onion cut the same way then mix it in with cooked rotini pasta and cottage cheese the first time my wife saw it all she said was no way once she tried it she was hooked her first pregnancy we ate it two or three times a week. That pregnancy ended up as twins and to this day each of them will come running any time we make it. One last thing in the states it is called fat back and looked down upon because of the cholesterol level and bacon is almost always smoked.