Pulpety in dill sauce are one Polish dinner I have never put on this site, and in Poland they are a favourite with children. Edyta at Eating European has a version, so I went through her pulpety and checked it as a chef: what works, why it works, and what I would change.
Pulpety are soft meatballs cooked in liquid rather than fried, then finished in a creamy sauce with a lot of fresh dill. They are gentle and comforting, and they are usually served with boiled potatoes and a cucumber salad.
Who Is Edyta?
Edyta writes Eating European. She was born and raised in Poland, at a time when eating out was rare and everyone cooked at home, and her parents both worked in hospitality with formal culinary training. Today she is a corporate lawyer in New York, and the blog started because her husband said it was a shame he was the only one who got to eat her cooking.
Her site mixes Polish home cooking with Mediterranean food, and the Polish recipes read like someone who grew up with them. Her line that Polish children eat dill from a very early age is exactly right.
More from Edyta’s Kitchen
Eating European has over 260 recipes, and the name is a fair description: Polish dishes sit next to Greek, Italian, French and German ones, with a strong lean towards Mediterranean cooking and plenty of vegetables. She writes what she cooks for her own family, which shows in how practical the recipes are.
Her Polish soups are the place to start. Her rosół is the Polish Sunday chicken soup, her dill pickle soup is zupa ogórkowa, the sour soup made with fermented cucumbers, and her cold beet soup, chłodnik litewski, is the bright pink cold soup of a Polish summer.
From the rest of Europe, I would try her Greek braised lamb shanks, her tirokafteri, a spicy feta dip, and her Kartoffelpuffer, the German cousin of our potato pancakes.
Where Pulpety Come From
The name comes from the Italian polpetta. In Polish cooking, as recorded in the culinary histories, a pulpet is a ball of meat or fish that is boiled or stewed in a sauce, which is what separates it from a klopsik, which is fried or baked. Old Polish cooks also made small pulpety to go into soups and flaki.
The classic Polish way was to grind the meat with a bread roll soaked in milk, which is what keeps them so soft. If you like the fried kind, my kotlety schabowe are the cutlet cousin, and kluski śląskie go well with the same sauce.
Edyta’s Recipe in Brief
She mixes minced meat with an egg, breadcrumbs, onion fried until golden, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, and shapes it into balls. The rest of the onion is softened in the pot, chicken stock goes in and is brought to the boil, and the meatballs cook covered for twenty minutes, turned halfway. Cream whisked with flour thickens the sauce for five minutes, and the dill goes in last. Her full quantities and step photos are on her page.
What Works, and Why
Frying the onion before it goes into the meat. Raw onion in a meatball stays sharp and releases water as it cooks. Fried golden and cooled, it is sweet and soft, and it seasons the meat.
Cooking the meatballs in the stock that becomes the sauce. Everything that comes out of the meat stays in the pot, so the sauce tastes of them. That is the whole point of pulpety.
A thermometer for doneness. She gives 160F for pork and beef and 165F for poultry, checked in the middle of the largest one. Minced meat is the one cut that must be cooked through, so this is exactly the right advice.
The dill goes in at the very end. Added after the cooking, it stays fresh and green rather than stewed.
What I Would Change
Simmer, do not boil. The recipe brings the stock to the boil and cooks the meatballs in it covered. Meat cooked in liquid stays more tender if the liquid is kept well below the boil, at a gentle simmer where the surface only just trembles. A hard boil tightens the outside and can break the balls apart. I would turn it down as soon as they go in.
The half cup of water. It is in her ingredient list but never comes up in the method. I would guess it is for loosening the cream and flour, or topping up the stock, and I would say which.
Try bread soaked in milk. Dry breadcrumbs bind well, but a slice of white bread soaked in milk and squeezed out is the old Polish way, and it makes the softest pulpety I know.
My Verdict
Edyta has written pulpety the way they are made at home in Poland: soft meatballs, a sauce built in the same pot and a lot of dill. Keep the pot at a simmer, explain the water, and it is a recipe I would happily send people to. For the cucumber salad she suggests on the side, my ogórki kiszone is the sour, pickled version.
A Few Words from the Chef
Pulpety in dill sauce are the kind of dinner nobody argues about. Edyta’s version is a good one to start with. If you make them, tell me in the comments what you serve them with. Smacznego!
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