Understanding Polish Cream, Syrup and Bacon

Hello,

I'm having a hard time figuring out where to find some of my usual groceries.

Cream: I'm always looking for the UK tasting Single Cream for in pasta and Double Cream for whipping into deserts. Most of the cream I buy taste sour and more like yoghurt.

Syrup: I'm also looking to find UK "Squash" or fruit cordial to mix with water for a sweet drink. I have bought some Syrups that I thought looked correct but they weren't as strong or sweet tasting when mixed with water.

Bacon: For some reason, I find it extremely hard to understand what bacon is raw (must be cooked) and what bacon is ready to eat. Many of the bacon I have bought seem extremely thin and look more like parma ham?

Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated.

Dolnos wife here.

Juice, the one that Dolno likes is Sunquick orange cordial, we normally find it at Carrefour, there are also other flavours.

Cream, you have to go for the highest fat content (30%+) and normally it says on the tub 'for deserts' anything else will be for soups, salads (as you said sour)

My best advice is to buy the UHT small cream cartons in the long life milk section, most big supermarkets have them, Intermarche, Carrefour, Tesco.

Finally Bacon. The Holy Grail....the only one I can recommend which is anything like bacon in the UK is Morley range Boczek. Your should be able to find it in Polo supermarkets. It is thinner than what we are used to and can be very salty but so long as you dont cremate it, its the best I have found so far. Tesco have recently started doing what looks like bacon but its really only sliced pork belly

well I suppose you will find that your 'usual groceries' are not available.
'Squash' is a British thing, the syrups are in fact much nicer, if a bit different.
I don't want to be rude, but of course things are different! You just have to change what you buy.

śmietana which is translated as cream in English is ALWAY sour (12 per cent or 18 per cent you see on the package is fat content) - if you want to buy Single Cream you need to look for śmietanka do kawy(the fat content is about 10 per cent) - the equivalent of double cream or the thing that Polish housewives use for deserts is śmietanka 30-36% (usually in smaller cups than śmietana)

bacon - if you want raw bacon you need to look for boczek surowy - cooked bacon (boczek gotowany) is not very popular and not widely available - instead Polish shops sell boczek wędzony (smoked bacon) - you can fry it, simmer in soups or eat straight from the package - as for the size of Polish bacons: yes it seems they are thinner than British or American equivalents - it is probably caused by different breeds of pigs that are raised in Poland and also on different methods of dissecting them after the slaughter

I don't use commercial syrups that often - they are inferior in quality to what we (my family) can make from the fruits from our own garden - however our own homemade fruits are not any sweeter than those available in shops - you just need to use more of them to reach the same sweetness you get from British style syrups (syrup is syrop in Polish as you probably have already noticed)

they are inferior because they contain sweeteners which typically ruin the taste and also because the genuine juice content is not astonishing and taste and colour are achieved by the use of artificial aromates and cheap colorants (black carrot juice or aronia juice)

For cream you want smietanka, anything else will be sour.
Instead of squash, why not make your own lemonade syrup? All you need is lemons and sugar (and some ice-cube bags to fill with the mixture).

As for bacon, I just bring it from the UK and freeze it as individual breakfast portions (i.e. three rashers of bacon and two sausages in each freezer bag).

Are you in Warsaw? Marks and Spencer sell it.

the trouble is śmietanka do kawy is mostly sold in very little packages or rather multi-packages (10 X 10g) - and it looks like this

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I have found śmietanka UHT 12% and 18% (should replace single cream) in big packages (500 ml) belonging to this brand -anyway you need to look for śmietanka not śmietana

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For double cream I use this stuff
spolem.home.pl/produkt_433.html
As someone else mentioned, looking for the 'k' is very helpful, at least in the big supermarkets (someone in a country shop once contradicted it, but I've found it to be a useful handy hint in practice)

Bacon. It will only ever be an approximation. However ...
I've started using Pikok's Boczek Parzony recently. It is sliced thicker - and I don't mind that it's apparently already cooked before I fry the life out of it again.

Some months ago I got some in Lidl which tasted more UK'ish but I've forgotten what the label was.

Syrups. I'm no help there as I don't use them.

While I agree with the majority of your post about just adjusting the shopping list, I found changing from a UK based recipe site for inspiration to a Polish one made a big difference for that. That being said, I think it's my British upbringing, but I prefer squash to syrup. Syrup is fine for hot drinks, but it never seems to dissolve properly in cold water and I find it often tastes of nothing more than sugar (obviously I am referring to the shop bought varieties). I also think there is a more eclectic selection of squashes.