Are Polish girls better cooks?

I think Polish Girls, like the world over, are becoming less accomplished cooks these days. I think this is down to a lot of factors but mainly having better incomes than in the past, the huge amount of new restaurants driving up competition and down prices and people not having as much time as everyone is working. It's not common to see a woman at home all day doing the housework and cooking. Most people are favouring convenience over quality.

However I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel as cooking programmes on TV are encouraging people to get back into the kitchen and cooking fresh ingredients in healthy and quick ways. People are seeing that they can get great quality food at home in under an hour for less than you would pay in a restaurant. Plus people are open to new ingredients and cuisines which is also building interest in cooking.

Personally I do almost all the cooking in my house, but that is a mix of my love of cooking and my working hours being slightly different so I would need to come home and wait 3-4 hours before having any dinner as opposed to having dinner ready for the wife walking in and I am fed in 2.

You do realise that in the past, like 20-30 years ago and earlier, Polish people used to cook a lot less at home because almost every workplace and school had a cafeteria and people were only too happy to use them? Even in the nineties, when I was a young self-employed housewife, both my husband and my two children would "eat out" at work / school and I was the only person who didn't have the choice. I could either cook for one or go to a restaurant, so I usually went to the restaurant, which - incidentally - offered low-price meals every day if you bought a monthly coupon. Those were the days! ;-)

I once asked someone why chips in Poland invariably mean frozen chips. The lady told me that before 1990 they had to cut potatoes and deep fry them but now they have nice modern frozen food. Sad. A young waitress in a restaurant told me she thought all chips were frozen. Very sad.

I can't even begin to express my deepest sympathy... Nevertheless, it seems your rant on chips has nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote?

I think it was just an anecdote as to how cooking skills have been lost in Poland since 1990.

(a question : was it difficult to be self employed in those days?)

It was actually agreeing with you, to a point. Not a rant either, and I know you read English very well so it isn't as if you've missed a nuance.

It's still sad though, that for so many people in Poland, chips mean frozen chips. have you seen how many are sold here?

Re. your canteen comments, a friend recently said they fell out of favour because (she was talking about school canteens) the cooks sometimes took the best ingredients home and served the worst. I don't know how true that is however the person who said this is generally very reliable.

But I was pretty much saying the opposite, as cooking skills have probably improved - people could easily afford canteens then, but can't afford restaurants on a daily basis now. Hence, they have to cook.


I became self-employed sometime around 1994 and it was very easy to set up and enjoyable to run :-)


I should have stuck an emoticon in there. I was just teasing you, sorry it didn't come out right ;-(


I wouldn't say it's any different than in the UK. There are mound of different types of frozen chips in the shops, and I've never seen fresh potatoes being used in fish and chip shops either. They just open a plastic bag of the stuff and throw it in the fryer. Of course, some people in Poland, when they have the time and inclination, make their own chips from scratch; but I wouldn't say this was proof of any special culinary skills, as homemade chips and crepes were the first things I learnt to cook as a child. It's much more a question of being willing to sacrifice an hour or so of your time and fool around with boiling oil ;-)


This probably happened in some canteens, but I wouldn't say that canteens "fell out of favour" at all. Canteens were heavily subsidised by the State; you can probably guess what the happened after 1989. Some of the bigger companies, like FSO, kept their canteens for a bit longer, but AFAIK they just disappeared due to lack of funding. Schools and unis still tend to have them though. Some of the tastiest meals I have eaten were canteen meals. Unfortunately, so were some of the vilest. ;-)

That comment smells of the south of England up where I'm from, if a chippie used frozen ones we'd put a brick through their window ;-)


This much I agree with - but they do taste a thousand times nicer than frozen.

I think the improvement of city kitchens and the availability of exotic ingredients has a lot to do with it. Making your own sushi is apparently quite popular now. I know a few people in PL who pride themselves at their skills in traditional cooking - oddly enough they are all older married men.

Almost bang on target, my experience is based on the London and Essex area ;-)


And are a right pain to make, too - you have to get the oil to be just hot enough, peel a bunch of spuds, drain the excess oil off of them... Usually sooner or later you either spill the oil, burn yourself, or burn a batch of chips. Or all of the above. That's the reason most people, including myself, usually stick to frozen, esp. that chips are not part of "traditional" polish cuisine anyway. They're seen as a fast food type of meal, and if it takes so much trouble to make, it ain't a fast food anymore, am I right?


Again, lots of people know how to cook, but can't be bothered to cook on a daily basis because they're tired and / or don't have the time. Heck, I can cook quite well but I actually cook about once a week, otherwise I just throw some stuff together and use convenience foods. Life is too short to spend it in the kitchen.

But such a good way to wind down after a hard day.

I got a sushi set from the in-laws at Christmas and, to be honest, I just use the plates and chopsticks. I had never heard anyone in the UK mention making sushi. It's a pain to get the rice just right and you need to trust your fishmonger and it seems like a huge amount of hassle and expense for not very much. But, even after explaining all that is involved, every time I am there it's, "so did you make sushi?". Yes, I could just make normal rice and a bit of cucumber or smoked salmon and wrap it in seaweed like, I'm sure, many do. But that doesn't seem worth all the pomp of "I made sushi".

After veering off topic, I would agree that I know many married men who are getting very keen on cooking traditional Polish food. Most of the women in my work are more swayed by exotic foreign cooking, or at least a Polish approximation of it.

I rarely cook Polish food myself, just because it's not really in my comfort zone of flavours that I know how to work with. I really should experiment more though.

Yeah, so the topic...
*looks back*
It would appear I left it behind me...


I love spending a Saturday making up batches of various sauces and meals that I can heat up quickly. Then I will have a few new, quick (not taking more than an hour or so to prepare) dinners I will make during the week. The rest of the time we are re-heating from the freezer, then I know exactly what's in it and it's unprocessed.

I imagine I will be less keen on that if kids come along or something.

Hell no way. I live right at the seaside and after work it's beach time for me, come rain or shine, winter and summer :-)

Ooooh. Now that's understandable. I live at work alternate months and have every other month free to potter about at home (starts tomorrow, yipee). So plenty of time to cook. I think the way work/life balance has changed has affected people's cooking habits - it must have been very tempting to eat at a works' canteen if you had a long bus journey home and had to make things from scratch after you got back.

Sounds great :-) If it were me, under such circs I might even cook every day ;-)


Plus you'd have to do the shopping first, remember. And shopping for food was never terrible fun in those days.

I work from home, so I try to spend as much time outside every day as possible. Cooking just seems like a boring chore most of the time, esp. that after 20+ years of coming up with interesting dinner ideas, I feel ready to throw in the towel ;-)

There are some very good ready made things now - in warsaw the bigger supermarkets have a good selection. Also, cooking in Poland is especially easy in summer.