Are Polish girls better cooks?

I keep hearing Americans, of Polish extraction or otherwise, complaining about the poor culinary skills of American women. If it's not fast food than it's junk like instant Cup o' Soup and micfowave dinners. Some believe ( hope?) Polish women are a better alternative in that area. In your experience, have the Polish women you have known been better cooks than their peers in the US or the West in general? Is this a generaitonal thing? If so, do cooking skills diminish as one goes down the age scale?

That would probably be because those women were trying to follow a cookbook (rather than using their own intuition and knowledge) and the author of the cookbook hadn't bothered to actually kitchen test the recipe before shoving it in the book without noticing that the recipe is incomplete or inaccurate. Show that same recipe to the average Polish woman: she'll just laugh at it and observe that the author must be a moron.

As a child, about 30 years ago, I was shocked to see a scene in Three Women by Altman in which the mentioned women go shopping and buy a packet of dried onion to save themselves the labour of peeling and chopping the fresh one.

All the women in my family, starting from granny, have been able to cook excellent Polish dishes without a cookery book. The same with other women I know.

Being unable to cook makes a woman a bit lame in Poland :):):) Yes, it is still much cheaper to cook for family at home than go out.

PS. Not only cheaper but healthier too.

all the Polish women/girls (of alI ages) I have known have been great home cooks - in fact I learnt a lot from them, especially in how to make a perfect chicken soup or a nice sauce to go with meat.

and no, not a recipe book in sight!

Well...the problem with Polish women (and men) is that many of them don't know how to cook anything outside of Polish food. The Polish diet has way too much red meat and sodium.

People, we as humans need to finally understand that red meat and too much sodium are very bad for you. (For the smart asses, you only need about 500 mg of sodium per day. It's a necessary electrolyte but it's not needed in large amounts).

Don`t be silly and spare yourself this cheap wisdom that everybody has known of for years.


So, what is Polish food in your opinion?

Same as German food, Ukrainian food, Czech food and so on...

Because of its low price Poles are eating much more chicken these days -- a white meat. BTW do you regard pork as a whtie or red meat? Pork producers in the US have for years tried to convince folks that it's defintiely a white meat. Beef is the only readily available red meat in Poland and it is pretty poor -- oftne tough as shoe leatherand none-too-flavourful. One gets the imptression that the beef on thePolish market comes from cows that were butchered after they stopped giving milk.

Yes, that is why I asked him this question. :):):)

PS. Your so on means Italian, Russian, Austrian, and a few other.......

Pork is definitely red meat as defined by many agricultural organizations.

Ham, bacon, and Polish sausage are widely consumed by Poles. These are not healthy at all.

Also, in my experience, Polish food does seem more salty than other homemade food I've tried.


So now all of a sudden countries no longer have cuisines that have distinctive traits? This site is interesting.

What is "Polish sausage"?

I don't remember ever seeing it in the shops in Poland...

A certain way Poles make sausage. German sausages do taste different from Polish ones me thinks.

I think it's an American invention, not Polish.


They taste the same from where I'm sitting, 100 miles from the border.

Yeah, German bratwursts taste the same as Polish-style sausages. :-\

Italian pasta salads taste the same as ham-filled pierogi too.

Unglaublich!

The thing is that there's no such thing as 'Polish-style' sausages. You can get such a wide range in Poland and Germany that trying to define them as "Polish-style" simply doesn't work.


No, but German and Polish potato salads taste pretty much the same.

In North America it is a generic term for a sausage roughly similar to Podwawelska in Poland.
Basic ingredients are: chopped and minced pork butts, garlic, salt and pepper; it is sometiems seasoned with a sprinkl eof marjoram and a bit of minced veal or beef is occasionally added.

But in Poland there are numerous varieties: śląska, krakowska, toruńska, etc. In large Polonian centres in the US and Canada the very same varieties are4offered, but in mainstream America in the big chain supermarkets, sausage labelled as'Polish sausgae' or *Polska Kiełbasa' (sometimes wtih a white eagle thereon) is, like I said, close to Podwawelska in taste and texture.

But these are unique to Poland, no?

the germans have the edge as it is a staple.

i always buy a tub of Kartoffel Salat mit creme fraiche.... for my train journey home from Berlin.

Polish potato salad is not as common as Poles prefer sałatka jarzynowa (veggie salad) containing some potatoes but also peas, carrots, beans, pickled cucumbers, radishes, apples*, even pickled mushrooms at times.

* Diced apple is the mystery ingredient in many Polish sałatki -- no-one can taste the apple which blends with the other ingredients to give the salad a bit of zing and a fuller bouquet.

I think many Polish women may customize recipes, to their own particular taste. This is especially true when certain ingredients are scarce or simply disliked. I find myself using a substitute for raisins. I can't stand the taste or texture of raisins.

Immortalised in the cult film Miś:

Wasn't there a regular character on the Howard Stern show called "the kielbasa queen"? Was she Polish American or was she called that for another reason, and if so, what?

Well you have to understand the Howard Stern show isn't appropriate for family audiences. The reason she was called that was because she loved big penis. She could not be satisfied by tiny schmeckles or even average ones. She deep throated a huge sausage during the Howard Stern show. I don't think she was Polish American but she did love kielbasa.

"Are Polish girls better cooks?"

In my experience: no. But their mothers usually are. At least as for Polish cuisine. Anything else than that is usually regarded with suspicion :))

Odd as it may sound, some of the Polish girls I met (I live in PL nearly 6 years) don't know how and/or don't like to cook at all. If they do cook, it is usually soups/salads kind of stuff. Not something that fills my stomach. So I usually do the cooking, especially as I like good Italian/Asian food. Polish girls I met have no idea how to cook this ;)

I am under the impression that they prefer to study, and have a career and not necessarily to be a cooking/caring housewife (anymore?). At least, that's what they told me :P

Obviously, some girls may love to cook and will be good at it also. Depends whom you meet. I guess chances are higher in smaller countryside towns and cities than Krakow and Warsaw, where I've lived so far.

Also, I am not so sure if cooking at home is so much cheaper than eating out. Getting all the ingredients and so on, adding the shopping/preparation time, cleaning up, etc., it seems to be too much of a hassle when you can get a pretty decent meal at the company kitchen/cafetaria or neighbourhood restaurant for 15-20 zl.

I cooked once a real zurek with a Polish girlfriend of mine. Adding up all the ingredients, I think we spent around 60 zl (good bottled soup base, veggies, eggs, good sausage, etc.) and it took some 2-3 hours for the soup to cook. In a restaurant on a 5 minutes walk from the place where I lived then, I have ordered and enjoyed many times a delicious zurek for I think some 6-7 zl, which was served instantly...no math skills needed there :)

I totally agree here man. I could never live without Italian or Asian food.

That is certainly true, but many people mistakenly regard Oriental cookery as a healthier alternative to the high-sodim diets of Central Europe. That may well be just another urban legend. As a result of extensive use of MSG and soy sauce Chinese and Japanese dishes tend to be high in sodium. Rice-reating nations are also deficient in Vitamin A and some of the B vitamins that promote growth, and avoiding potatoes can mean inadequate potassium intake. The link below explains high-sodium nature of curry dishes.

A bought curry with all the extras could include almost three-and-a-half times the maximum recommended daily intake of salt, according to a study.
The nation's favourite dish accompanied by rice, naan, sag aloo, poppadom and chutney can contain a "dangerous" 20.5g of salt, Consensus Action on Salt and Health (Cash) said.

On the plus side, the extensive use of vegetables and seafood and smaller red meat intake are defintiely among the beneficial aspects of Oriental cookery.

I would say that there systems are geared of their diet,If you notice they are very healthy people,Much more so than the average person it the west.

But small. Lack of Vit. A (cheese, butter) in the traditonal Japanese diet is believed to account for their slight build. Of coruse, this is a complicated and multi-faceted process. For instance, the heatlhy consumption of lots of veggies and seafood plus ltitle red meat may offset the harmful effects of high sodium intake and the nutritionally deficiency of rice. Probably disease statistics and longevity could at least partially explain whether that is indeed the case. Other factors affecting general health and longevity include geography, climate, soil conditions and environmental pollution as well as genetic predisposition.

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Are Polish girls better cooks?

I got the short straw and mine definitely fails in the culinary department. Then her mother can make wildly varying dishes taste identical. Salty cardboard springs to mind.


My favourite served in a hollowed out crusty loaf. TBH its the only food I can say that I have found interesting in Poland.

Well, that's a talent as well and deserves credit. At least I wouldn't know how I would go about making something taste like salty cardboard :))


I found a few more, though. Especially in the soup division: barszcz czerwony is quite unique, grochowka and fasolka po bretonsku in winter. Not sure tho that asking for the latter in Britanny would result in understanding faces ;)

I recommend flaki with a decent amount of pepper or tabasco for hangovers. Mushroom soup is also good. Pierogi in all its different varieties is interesting as well. That sums it up, I guess, for my taste.

I could actually imagine missing these dishes, would I leave Poland.