Leczo with Smoked Sausage recipe (Lecsó Recipe)

I love to prepare Lecsó in the summer when my fresh tomatoes, bell peppers, and courgettes are ripening in the garden. This vibrant Polish leczo recipe features a delicious blend of smoked sausage, Hungarian paprika, and seasonal vegetables, perfect for a flavourful one-pot meal. For a vegetarian option, simply omit the sausage and enjoy this classic Eastern European dish as a healthy, gluten-free dinner. Whether served with crusty bread or over pasta, this easy, comforting recipe is a true summer favourite in my kitchen! Summer is one of seven occasions in my guide to Polish food.

“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

PPin it

What Is Leczo, and Is It Polish or Hungarian?

It is both, in that order. Lecsó is Hungarian, a summer stew of peppers, tomatoes, onion and sweet paprika cooked down until the vegetables give up their liquid and the paprika turns everything deep red. Poland took it, spelled it leczo, and made it its own, and it has been on Polish tables long enough that most Poles would be surprised to hear it came from anywhere else.

The Polish version is the meatier one, and that is the version on this page. Hungarian lecsó is pepper-forward with the sausage as seasoning, sometimes with none at all and an egg stirred through at the end. Polish leczo puts in a proper amount of smoked kiełbasa, and in high summer it usually gains a courgette, because that is what the garden is producing. Mine uses 500 g of sausage to three peppers, which is roughly two and a half times the Hungarian balance.

You will see the same dish written a dozen ways and they are all the same thing: leczo in Polish, lecsó in Hungarian, and lecso, lecho or lesco wherever the accents have fallen off along the way. The Czechs and Slovaks call it lečo. In English it is usually just called Hungarian pepper stew, which is accurate enough but sells it short.

The Best Paprika for Leczo: Hungarian Paprika

Paprika, an essential spice in Leczo, comes from the dried red fruits of specific varieties of the Capsicum annuum plant, particularly the Hungarian sweet paprika types such as Balalaika. These varieties are known for their larger, sweeter, and more intensely red fruits, which provide the rich colour and depth of flavour that define authentic Leczo.

When it comes to buying paprika for cooking, Szeged is widely regarded as the best brand of Hungarian sweet paprika. Produced in the town of Szeged, Hungary, this paprika is known for its unparalleled quality, vibrant colour, and robust flavour that ranges from sweet to mildly spicy. Szeged paprika is made from carefully selected peppers grown in the fertile soils of the region, where the unique climate and traditional drying methods combine to create a distinctive, aromatic spice.

You can find Szeged Hungarian sweet paprika in most grocery stores, specialty spice shops, or online retailers like Amazon and Penzeys Spices. Choosing Szeged paprika ensures you are using the finest quality paprika, which will enhance your Leczo with its rich, authentic flavour, paying homage to the dish’s heritage.

Using Fresh Tomatoes in Leczo

For the best flavour and texture in your Leczo, using fresh, ripe tomatoes is highly recommended. To prepare them, start by placing the tomatoes in a large bowl and pouring boiling water over them until they are fully submerged. Let them sit for a few minutes - this process helps loosen the skins, making them much easier to peel. After a few minutes, carefully remove the tomatoes from the hot water and allow them to cool slightly. The skins should peel off effortlessly, leaving you with juicy, skinless tomatoes ready to be chopped and added to your stew.

While fresh tomatoes provide a natural sweetness and vibrant flavour that lift the dish, you can use canned chopped tomatoes as a substitute. However, canned tomatoes are typically more acidic and lack the natural sugars and complex flavours of fresh ones. To balance their acidity, consider adding a bit of sugar to the recipe. This adjustment will help bring out a richer, more balanced taste, closer to what you would achieve with fresh tomatoes.

PPin it

Using Smoked Sausage in Leczo

Smoked sausage is a traditional addition to Leczo, bringing a deep, smoky flavour that enhances the dish’s richness and heartiness. Varieties like Polish kiełbasa or Hungarian kolbász are ideal, as they are seasoned with spices and smoked over wood, giving them a distinctive taste and aroma. The sausage adds both flavour and a satisfying, savoury texture to the stew.

When choosing a Polish kiełbasa for your Leczo, consider these popular types:

• Kiełbasa Podwawelska: A lightly smoked, garlic-flavoured sausage with a mild taste, perfect for stews like Leczo.
• Kiełbasa Toruńska: A coarsely ground sausage with a slightly smoky flavour and a hint of marjoram, which adds complexity to the dish.
• Kiełbasa Krakowska: A firmer sausage, known for its robust, smoky flavour and distinct seasoning; it holds up well in stews and provides a hearty texture.

To prepare Leczo with smoked sausage, slice it into bite-sized pieces and brown them in a pan until caramelised. This step releases the flavourful fat and infuses the dish with a smoky depth. The sausage is then simmered with tomatoes, peppers, and onions, allowing all the flavours to meld together beautifully.

If you prefer a lighter or vegetarian version, you can omit the sausage and use smoked paprika to replicate the smoky flavour traditionally provided by the sausage. Additionally, lard can be used instead of vegetable oil for a more authentic, rich taste, as it was traditionally used in Hungarian kitchens. You could also add pancetta for a slightly different take, bringing its own unique saltiness and a hint of smokiness to the dish.

Adding Courgettes to Your Leczo

If you have courgettes (zucchini) available, especially when they are abundant in the garden, they make a wonderful addition to your Leczo. I love to add them when they’re in season, as they bring a light, slightly sweet flavour and a delicate texture that complements the stew’s rich, smoky base.

To prepare, simply dice the courgettes and add them to the pan after sautéing the onions and peppers. They will soften as the Leczo simmers, absorbing the flavours of the tomatoes, paprika, and any sausage or other seasonings you use. Courgettes also add extra nutrition and make the dish even more colourful and vibrant.

Including courgettes is an easy way to incorporate more fresh vegetables into your meal while enhancing the overall flavour and texture of this comforting stew.

One warning, and it is worth taking seriously. Courgettes are occasionally bitter, usually from cross-pollination in the garden, and a bitter one will ruin the whole pot rather than just its own corner of it. There is no fixing it afterwards. Cut a slice off the raw courgette and taste it before it goes anywhere near the pan. If it is bitter, throw that courgette away and carry on without it.

How to Make Leczo, Step by Step

This mirrors the recipe card exactly, with the reasoning behind each step. There are seven of them and nothing is difficult, but the order matters more than it looks.

1. Brown the sausage first, in a dry pan. It does not need oil, it needs to give up its own fat, and that smoky orange fat is what everything else gets cooked in. Take most of it out and keep a few pieces back for the top, because sausage that has simmered for forty minutes looks quite different from sausage straight out of the pan.
2. Onion in the sausage fat, then the garlic. Give the onion a good five or six minutes, until it is soft, translucent and just starting to sweeten, before the garlic goes anywhere near it. This is where the roundness of the finished pot comes from, and hurrying it is why some leczo tastes sharp and flat rather than deep. The garlic then wants two minutes and no more, because garlic put in alongside the onion will have gone bitter long before the onion is ready.
3. Peppers next, coloured but still firm. They have another forty minutes in the pot ahead of them, so you want a bit of char on the edges and a bit of give, not softness. Cook them to soft here and they will be pulp by the end. The colour you put on them at this stage is flavour you cannot add back later, so give them room and do not stir them constantly. Same again with the courgette if you are using one. Keep a few pieces of pepper back for the top, and if pepper skins bother anyone you are feeding, this is the moment to slip them off.
4. Fry the paprika on its own, and watch it. Two tablespoons of oil, the paprika and the chilli flakes, a minute or two until it smells sweet and toasty. This is the step that makes the dish and the step that can wreck it: paprika burns in seconds and burnt paprika is bitter all the way through, with no way back. Keep the heat moderate, keep it moving, and get the tomatoes in the moment it smells right. If you are nervous, take the pan off the heat and let the residual warmth do it.
5. Tomatoes, stock, sugar and marjoram, then twenty minutes under a lid. The sugar is there to answer acidity, so leave it out if your tomatoes are ripe summer ones and put it in if they came from a tin. If you are using fresh tomatoes and have not peeled them, there is a lazier way than a bowl of boiling water: drop them in whole now, on top of the braising peppers, put the lid on for three minutes and the skins will slide straight off. And if you are reaching for tomato concentrate instead, keep it to about 100 g with 100 ml of water. A whole jar tipped in is the single commonest reason leczo comes out too sour.
6. Lid off for another twenty minutes. This is where leczo actually happens. The liquid goes, the colour deepens and the flavour concentrates, and cutting it short is why people end up with soup and wonder what went wrong. Stir now and then so nothing catches, because the sugar and the paprika will both stick given half a chance and a caught base turns the whole pot bitter. Taste as it reduces rather than only at the end, since the salt concentrates along with everything else and a pot seasoned confidently at the start can finish far too salty. If it is still looser than you want and you are out of patience, tip some of the liquid off rather than boiling it harder, and keep what you pour off, because it is very good stirred into rice.
7. Final seasoning, then serve. Salt and pepper, and scatter over the sausage and pepper you held back. A squeeze of lemon at this point is not traditional but it lifts the whole pot if it is tasting flat.

Equipment You Will Need

Recipe Card for Leczo with Smoked Sausage

Storing, Freezing and Reheating

Fridge, three to four days, covered, once it has cooled. Like most stews it is better on the second day, when the paprika has settled into the tomatoes.

Freezer, up to three months. It freezes well and comes back almost unchanged, which is the point of making a big pot in August. Freeze it in portions and defrost overnight in the fridge. The one thing that suffers is courgette, which goes soft on the second heating, so if you are cooking a batch specifically to freeze, leave it out.

Reheat gently in a pan rather than blasting it in the microwave, and add a splash of water if it has tightened up in the fridge.

Please do not bottle it in jars for the winter. This comes up constantly on Polish cooking threads, and the advice you will see, filling jars with boiling leczo and turning them upside down, is not safe for this. Leczo is a low-acid mixture of peppers, onion and cured meat, and neither inverting a hot jar nor a water bath gets hot enough to deal with the spores that matter in a low-acid food. That needs a pressure canner. The freezer does the same job with none of the risk, so that is where my summer leczo goes.

Variations

• With chorizo instead of kiełbasa The most popular swap by a distance among Polish cooks online, and it works because chorizo brings its own paprika and a lot of red fat. Use a little less than you would sausage, and go easy on the chilli flakes since a spicy chorizo has already made that decision for you.
• With mushrooms Enough of a thing in Poland to be its own named recipe, leczo z pieczarkami. Brown them hard and separately first, otherwise they water the pot down, then stir them in with the tomatoes.
• With beans Leczo z fasolą, another named version. A drained tin of butter beans or haricot in for the last ten minutes turns it from a side into a full supper and stretches a small amount of sausage a long way.
• With an egg on top Closer to how it is often eaten in Hungary. Crack eggs straight into dents in the surface for the last five minutes with the lid on, or stir a beaten egg through the finished pot off the heat.
• Vegetarian Leave the sausage out, use oil, and lean on smoked paprika alongside the sweet to replace the smoke the sausage would have given. A tin of beans covers the substance.

What to Serve With Leczo

🍽 Crusty bread is the obvious one and hard to beat for mopping the pan. In Poland it is just as often served over a grain, and buckwheat groats are the classic partner, with millet or plain rice close behind. Pasta with grated cheese over the top is the version children tend to ask for. A fried egg on top turns a bowl of it into a proper supper, and a spoonful of soured cream stirred in at the table softens the paprika if you have made it fierce.

FAQ for Leczo with Smoked Sausage

Can I make it vegetarian?

Yes. Leave out the sausage and use smoked paprika (and a little oil or lard) to keep that smoky depth.

What sausage is best?

A good smoked Polish kiełbasa or Hungarian kolbász, browned first to release its flavour.

How do you serve leczo?

With crusty bread, over rice or pasta, or with a fried egg on top.

Can I use tinned tomatoes instead of fresh?

Yes. Fresh raspberry (malinowe) tomatoes are lovely in season, but out of season good tinned tomatoes give a richer, more reliable result. If you are ever short of sausage, a little leftover beef goulash stirred in works surprisingly well too.

My leczo has come out too sour. Can I fix it?

Yes, and it is almost always the tomatoes rather than anything you did. A whole jar of tomato concentrate or a tin of underripe tomatoes will do it. Stir in sugar half a teaspoon at a time until it stops tasting sharp, which is exactly what the two teaspoons in the recipe are there to pre-empt when you are cooking out of season. A grated carrot simmered in for the last ten minutes does the same job more gently if you would rather not add sugar.

It is too watery. How do I thicken it?

Do not thicken it, reduce it. Take the lid off, turn the heat up a little and let it bubble until the liquid goes, which is the whole purpose of the second twenty minutes. If you are short of time you can tip some of the liquid off, and it is worth keeping, because it is excellent stirred into rice. Flour or cornflour will make it gluey and is not how this dish is made.

I have made it far too spicy. Anything I can do?

Bulk it out rather than trying to dilute the heat. More peppers and another tin of tomatoes simmered in will spread the chilli across a bigger pot, and a spoonful of soured cream on each serving takes the edge off at the table. If it is genuinely inedible the honest answer from Polish cooks is to make a second unspiced batch and combine the two.

Can I bottle leczo in jars for the winter?

I would not, and I know this is a popular thing to do. Leczo is low in acid and contains cured meat, and the usual method passed around, filling the jars boiling hot and inverting them, does not reach the temperature needed to make a low-acid food safe to keep at room temperature. Doing it properly needs a pressure canner. Freezing gives you the same jars of summer in January with none of the risk, and the texture holds up well.

How long does it keep, and does it freeze?

Three to four days in the fridge, and up to three months in the freezer. It is one of the better stews for freezing because there is nothing delicate in it. Leave the courgette out of any batch you are freezing, since it is the only part that goes soft on reheating.

Do I have to peel the tomatoes?

It is worth it. Unpeeled tomatoes leave curls of skin rolling around the finished stew, and that is the one thing people notice about a homemade leczo. The easiest method is in step five above. Peppers can be peeled the same way if their skins bother you, though most people leave them on.

Can I use tomato concentrate or passata instead?

Yes, and it is useful in winter. Roughly 400 to 500 ml of passata stands in for the kilo of fresh tomatoes. If you are using concentrate, keep it to about 100 g plus 100 ml of water, because a whole jar is the single most common cause of leczo that tastes too sour.

PPin it

A Few Words from the Chef

Cooking this Hungarian Lecsó is a journey into rich flavours and comforting tradition. The beauty of this dish lies in its versatility - you can experiment with different ingredients, adjust the spices to match your taste, or try some of the variations I’ve suggested. Whether you stick to the classic recipe or add your own twist, each version of Lecsó brings its own unique warmth and character to the table, turning every meal into a special occasion. The joy of cooking comes from these small adjustments and personal touches, so feel free to make this Lecsó truly your own!