I’ve made bigos a couple times, my family is polish, but we’re a few generations removed from the old country, so it wasn’t exactly part of our regular diet growing up, just something we had once or twice at the local polish church’s feast.
The first time I made it, most of the recipes I found were ridiculously plain, mostly just cabbage, sauerkraut, pork, and kielbasa stewed together without much else, which don’t get me wrong, is a damn fine meal on its own, but I kind of knew deep down there had to be more to it.
So I just kind of took what I knew about polish food and threw it all in a pot, and what I came up something really close to that Chef John recipe. I don’t think I had allspice in mine, and I threw in a jar of pickled beets and every kind of mushroom I could get my hands on, but otherwise that’s almost exactly what I came up with. I’m kind of proud of that now that I’ve seen his recipe.
If anyone has ever been curious about the perpetual stews you tend to hear about in medieval fantasy books and such, bigos is probably about as close as you can get without actually keeping a pot simmering for weeks at a time (although if you want to keep it simmering and add to it as you go, more power to you.) Historically that’s pretty much exactly what it was, whatever the local hunters showed up with went into the pot, so it’s also a pretty hard thing to screw up, there’s not exactly a wrong way to make bigos.
I think I first saw it from Alton Brown, but he braises the beef the day before, then cools it down and uses any drippings from that the next day to cook the veggies/potatoes. Then when it’s ready to eat, you just toss in the beef and let it warm up.
It works because you need high temp (simmering/boiling) for the collagen to break down into gelatin. That’s when the beef gets really “shreddy” for lack of a better term. If you cool it down, though, the gelatin solidifies and holds the beef together in good bite sized pieces. When you warm it back up, you don’t warm back up to a boil (or at least not for long), so all that gelatin doesn’t completely dissolve, and you still get those good chunks.
I guess I can understand what you are saying. I have lived out of my vehicle off and on for about ten years, and having a full tine, good "chopping" knife that I can sharpen with what I might use on a shovel is really nice. I have had the same maine knife for 15 years. It is ok. I don't have to work on it much. It says "Chicago Cutlery" on it. It has been put up wet, been used in snow, and I have no money invested in it. It works great.
I also worked in a kitchen once, with really nice knives, it isn't that nice. But it was cheap. Full tine, and not that weird serrated but not serrated.
I’ve actually made a pretty similar gravy (I like it with meat loaf). One thing I’ve done is, rather than thickening with corn starch, try a roux made with beef tallow as the fat.
You might want to try Xanthan Gum as a thickener. It is flavorless, does not discolor or cloud sauces, and is temperature and pH stable. It does not need to be heated to work.
You just stumbled onto one of the great hacks of Indian cooking: Onion Masala base. myheartbeets.com/indian-onion-masala/ try the butter paneer in this series - so easy, so good.
Here is the after. Its very hot, I used it to top a variation on Chicken Katsu Curry today. I know that isn’t a hot dish but variety is the spice of life or some such.
This is a ‘burns the top of your mouth, and inside of your lips, but still has flavor’ hot sauce.
ETA: another photo from a few days in to the ferment.
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