What Polish foods and brands do you miss when you go to other countries?

Hi,

I was just wondering what foods people miss when they leave Poland and if there are any brands in particular that are the best and you cant get anything similar in the UK?

I dont know if you have failed to notice but 'the UK' is stuffed with Polski Skleps

ok so what foods do people look to buy from these places that they would be for familiarity or reminds them of home?

in my limited experience, bread and sausage and soft drinks.

Kabo brand kiełbasa biebrzańska. This is a high quality dry sausage. I can't think of anything like it in the UK. One thing I would never look for is kisiel. I bought a takeaway Christmas lunch package from a restaurant to save my mother-in-law work, and it included this traditional Polish fermented oat dessert. It was the most revolting thing I've ever put in my mouth. Even the dog wouldn't touch it.

Polish beer sells very well in the. Zywiec, Tyskie and Lech. I have no idea why; it costs more than British beer and is worse quality than British beer which costs less.

Compared to equivalent mass-produced UK brands (Carling, Fosters, etc), I'd say all the Polish beers you mentioned are considerably better quality.

Polish beer is loads better than British beer Harry u know it. lol.

I see you haven't drunk much Zywiec recently, these days it is truly evil stuff. It's also a lot more expensive than Fosters and Carling: last time I was in the UK you could buy 20 cans of Carling or Fosters for £13, but Zywiec/Tyskie were £2 a bottle. Compare Zywiec/Tyskie/Lech with the likes of Bath Ales Wild Hare or Greene King IPA or Butcombe Brewery bitter or Badger Blandford Flyer, all four for £6, and the Polish stuff is exposed as the chemical swill for morons which it is.

Fair enough, I must admit that it is a few years now since I last supped beer

Poland has some amazing breweries at the moment: Podgórz, Doctor Brew, Pinta, Pracownia Piwa, Artezan, AleBrowar and more! I find new beers every time I visit, which is quite often! When I am at home in England I usually buy Żubr, Kasztelan, Dębowe from my local Polish shop.

I know all of those well (and more). However, none of them are available in the UK (half of those breweries you list don't even sell bottled beer). I'd rank their offering up there with the likes of Bath Ales Wild Hare.


Those aren't as bad as Zywiec/Tyskie/Lech, but I still wouldn't have more than one (or at the absolute most two) of them. When it first came out Kasztelan was a decent drop but the last time I ordered one (after a couple of years of not trying it) I wished I'd ordered water instead. The Polish beer market has moved on massively in the past couple of years but the big beers have either not moved on or have gone backwards.

I'm from the North East, so generally the pubs up here usually get local or northern-brewed beers. There's certainly plenty of good ale around now, in England and Poland.

Polish favorite food it's not only beer and liquors? Besides, here are other threads exactly about it...

All Polish cold meats and sausages, FULL FAT dairy products, chocolate,coffee Jacobs ! Can't live without it,soft drinks (like TYMBARK: APPLE AND MINT)

I found most of it on Amazon,they can deliver it for free or sensible price.Alcohol, hmm lets just say Jack Daniels is good everywhere: )

bread. the "Polish bread" you can buy in the UK is a distant echo of the real thing...

Exactly, if I wanted something similar to Polish bread that you buy in Poland then I would be more likely to go to a decent baker and get a nice sourdough rye. No point spending more money going to a Polish shop and buying mass produced Polish bread that's been stuffed in the back of a van for the better part of a couple of days.

And what are the brands of BRITISH lager? Carling is. Fosters is Australian, Stella is Belgique, Heineken Denmark, Holsten German, Kronenburg German. What is british beer besides Carling?

Here in the UK we are in for a right treat as it's Polish week in Lidl :)

lidl.co.uk/en/7492.htm

agreed


If I drink even 1 Zywiec, it gives me an instant headache an hour later. It's horrible stuff. You can easily buy good beer in British shops - pale ales etc. A lively, young pale ale in my opinion is an easy substitute for a lager drinker. Carling is bad also but doesn't give me a headache.


You need to buy good local beer. It will depend where you live. check this out:
independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/food-drink/the-50-best-beers-8026040.html

My current favourite is Innis & Gunn.

well i went into Lidl all excited about Polish week, esp hoping for some nice big bag of paluszki, but all that was there was some kind of fake Kubus,

some weird thin sausages, and meat peirogi. Came away empty handed....
Perhaps a swarm of all the Polish people in the area had descended and carried off all the nice stuff.....


British beer is not lager, the clue is in the German name.
Traditional British would be ale, eg Newcastle Brown to name the most famous., or 'stout' ale the most famous being Guinness, yes I know that is Irish but still. There is a wonderful range of good ales available these days with amusing names such as Bishops Finger or Fursty Ferret.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_England

Thanks for reply and linka. Appreciated although i really disslike ale.


Link and dislike. Fixed ;)

Heineken is Dutch.

is French :)

Dawny yeast-free rye bread from Askroba, Donner beer, Sahara coffee, kabanosy, Polish-produced Russian-style mustard, chałka, zsiadłe mleko, Ptasie Mleczko, Delicje biscuits, and fruit-flavoured kisiel (say: KEY-shell). Some of these are available in Polish shops in major metropolitan areas but not throughout the US mainstream.

Merged: British male wants to know Polish food

I visit Polish stores in the UK and I like certain foods but as I do not know the language I dont know what to buy.

I once bought chocolate which had orange gel inside similar to Turkish Delight, anyone know what that is? I also like gingerbread that comes out at christmas that has fruit and chocolate, and biscuits that have artificial cherry, can I get the names of these?

What meat is good to buy for a beginner? and spices?

the chocolate with the orange gel... don't know the specific name. It seems like the brand could Wedel. There are things called Ptiase Mleczka ("Bird's Milk"), but that's more like a marshmallowy filling covered in chocolate. They also make cookies that are similar to lady fingers with a fruit-flavored gel and covered in chocolate called Delicje.

The gingerbread with fruit filling and chocolate is called piernicki (plural diminutive of piernik, which basically means gingerbread). Don't know about the biscuits.

Kabanosy are thin smoked/jerk sausages.

Polish spices... dill? Koperek in Polish.

For my taste, £omża Brewery has probably the most interesting and tasty brews of the all commercial breweries in Poland... not sure if you could buy it in the UK, I have not seen it around me in Birmingham thus far... but the selection of local brews is massive in the UK - why would anyone resort to the nasty mass produced stuff is beyond me...

In terms of food, there is actually nothing that I miss that is for sale and could not get it from a local shop. In terms of quality, British massed produced food is overall significantly better quality... I especially cringe when I see all those crappy, stuffed with preservatives and gelatins., full of god only knows what but so highly prized Polish sausages and deli meats... i would much rather buy 1/5 of proper quality stuff than the minced skin/fat/udder/eyes & whatever else they put in these things (anyone fancy the dreaded parówki for instance?). Same story with the cheap Polish breads (baltonowski type sponge and air crap).. I do like the properly dried kabanosy (french style ones) now and then... but overall, your Asda/Sainsbury/Morrison's offers such a great selection of foods especially in major cities, that it is easy to forget about Polish foods altogether... the only stuff I truly miss is the hand made/home cooked stuff from scratch that is made at home for special occasions and this is not for sale...

Ain't Foster's an Australian brand? I believe Carling is the only UK lager (local breweries aside) and it's cr@p in comparison. :)

A strange question. Britain has more breweries per head than any other country in the world. Most produce several beers and many have at least one lager. You should try Samuel Smiths.

What you won't find there so much is mass-produced headache-inducing local rubbish like Zywiec, Tyskie or Lech. They tried than in the 70s and it is now less popular.

Carling, by the way, is a Canadian company.

foreign food is off-topic

British massively produced food has basically 2 kcal, no fat, no taste and looks like it was "made by robots for robots". Artificial i would say. The most funny thing is that low-fat food culture. A nation with a level of obesity reaching 25% eats 2 callories worth of styrofoam-like toast "bread" (like it was a new collection of Dolce & Gabbana) and pile up moments after in front of McDonalds to actually eat something.