Croquettes are very popular in Poland and you can find them in every restaurant or takeaway shop that serves polish food. Polish Croquettes are thin, large pancakes filled either with meat or cabbage and mushrooms. The pancakes are coated with breadcrumbs and fried.
The meat filling is exactly like we make it for another traditional polish dish: Pierogi. I guess Poles didn’t want to invent any other meat-vegetable filling then this one!
For the stuffing, we use carrots, celery and meat (usually beef or pork) that are first cooked together and then minced using a grinder. The mixture is seasoned with salt, pepper and marjoram. The pancakes for Krokiety are a little more elastic than the usual once because we need to roll them. In the recipe below you will find out how to make this special dough!
Each pancake is stuffed with at least 2 tablespoons of this delicious meat filling and then coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs. Please don’t skip the flour in this coating method, because the breading will go off the pancake while frying and you don’t want that!
Polish Krokiety are usually served as a starter with clear beetroot broth on the side. They are soft from inside and crispy from outside – my favourite combination!
Traditional Polish Krokiety
Ingredients
Filling
- 1 kg beef cut into big chunks
- 2 carrots medium
- 0,5 celery
- parsley
- 1 tsp pepper black
- 0,5 tsp salt
- 4 bay leaves
- 5 grains allspice
- 1,5 l water
Elastic pancakes
- 200 g flour all-purpose
- 4 eggs
- 500 ml milk
- 2 tbsp oil vegetable
- 0,5 tsp salt
Additional filling ingredients (to add when the filling is ready)
- 1 tsp marjoram
- 1 tsp salt
- 0,5 tsp pepper black
- 1 breadroll soaked, recommended but optional
- 2 tbsp parsley chopped
- 2 eggs
Coating
- 0,5 glas flour
- 3 eggs
- 0,5 salt
- 0,5 glas breadcrumbs ideally fresh
Frying
- 0,5 glas oil vegetable
Instructions
Filling
- In the large pot cook together meat, vegetables, parsley, salt, pepper, allspice and bay leaves in hot water for 40-50 minutes or until the meat is tender.
- After meat and vegetables are ready take them out from the pot and let them cool down. Keep the broth! We might need it for the preparation of the filling, when the filling is too dry.
- Grind the meat and vegetables in a meat mincer. Squeeze the bread roll so it does'nt contain any water, add to the mixture with salt, pepper and marjoram. At this point try the mixture and correct the seasoning and broth, if needed. Add raw eggs into the stuffing. Mix all ingredients well.
Prepare the pancakes
- In the large bowl mix flour, eggs, milk, oil and salt using a wire mixer.
- Take a large pan and heat it up on medium heat. You don't need oil to fry the pancakes. Use between 120-150ml of the mixture for every pancake.
- Fry each pancake on medium heat until done (the first side 2 minutes, the other one 1 minute).
- Set the pancakes aside.
Roll the Krokiety
- Take one pancake and place it on the flat surface. Add 2 tablespoons of the filling in the middle of the pancake and press the filling toward the bottom (see the image attached), keeping it about an inch from the right, left and bottom. The section in the top should not contain the filling.
- Fold the bottom over the filling, fold the sides in and continue rolling.
Coating
- Prepare three deep plates: one with flour, one with eggs and one with breadcrumbs.
- Add salt to the plate with an egg. Beat the eggs using the fork for few seconds to mix the ingredients.
- Carefully coat krokiet with flour, egg and lastly breadcrumbs. Don't skip the flour! Otherwise your coating will go off the pancake while frying!
Frying
- Preheat the oil on the medium heat.
- Place krokiety in hot oil, fry until golden brown, about one minute on each side (all the sides!)
Serving
- Serve with clear beetroot broth. If you don't have one eat krokiety on their own or prepare mushroom sauce. It's not typical, but it will do;)
