Kutia or wheat berry pudding is a traditional Polish Christmas eve dish. Originally, people from Eastern Poland enjoyed Kutia as a part of their Wigilia feast. However, fragrant figs, nuts, raisins, and cream made Kutia deservingly popular all over Poland.
In Polish cuisine, Kutia is traditionally one of the five desserts in Wigilia, Poland’s very own Christmas meal lineup! The best part? It takes a little time and a few ingredients to make the authentic Kutia dish!
Kutia is a flavorful mix of dried fruits, poppy seeds, wheat berries, and honey. It’s sweet, chewy, and smells delicious! We have the original Kutia recipe, the one with piquant wheat berries and nuts! Let’s see how it’s done!
Polish Kutia Ingredients
If you know how to cook Polish Borscht, making Kutia will be a cinch! You don’t need a lot of ingredients to prepare this traditional dish. Most of the items can be found in your local health food stores.
- 1 cup of whole wheat berries, Kamut berries (optional)
- 1 cup of ground poppy seeds
- 4 tablespoons of honey
- ½ cup of ground walnuts
- ½ cup of blanched coarsely ground almonds
- ⅔ cup of plump raisins
- 5 dried and chopped figs
- 5 pitted and chopped dates
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- ½ teaspoon of salt
- 2 cups of orange zest
- ½ cup of sugar
- 1 lemon
Wheat Berries
Kutia translates to wheat berry pudding. So, wheat berries are essential for this traditional Christmas eve dish. It’s a yellowish wheat kernel and needs to be soft enough to go inside a pudding.
Although the cooking time is a few minutes, preparation can stretch over twelve hours for Kutia, thanks to these hard whole wheat kernels. So, if you can get your hands on processed wheat berries, you can skip soaking and rinsing them all night long.
Not a fan of crunchy and crumbly wheat berries? There’s another way to make Kutia. You can replace wheat berries with whole-grain barley, Kamut berries, or rice. Traditionally, rice was used by noble Polish families. But now it’s available in every other online store and supermarket outlet.
Poppy Seeds
Kutia is traditionally eaten with poppy seed and berry base. Most Poles prefer to soak poppy seeds in boiling water, while others prefer to soak them in milk. Add a little bit of sugar if you like your Kutia sweet!
To make traditional Polish-style Kutia, poppy seeds need to be ground to a fine paste. You can achieve such consistency by grinding the poppy seeds with a coffee grinder. There’s a simple trick my family uses to make poppy seed paste.
We rinse the poppy seeds with warm water through a fine-mesh sieve and leave them to soak overnight. The next morning, we rinse them again and soak them one last time in boiling water. After half an hour, drain the water and add some cream to make your Kutia extra sweet!
Dried Fruits and Nuts
Various nuts and dried fruits give Kutia a chewy texture. Polish families use raisins and dates to prepare this traditional dish. But nowadays, people also use apricots and apples.
Originally, Kutia consisted of sultanas, seedless golden raisins, for their sweet flavor and nutrients. As for the nuts, we use generous proportions of crushed walnuts and almonds. Remember to coarsely grind the almonds to keep them bite-sized.
How to Make Traditional Polish Kutia?
Among the twelve Christmas dishes, Kutia is fairly easy to make. The cooking time is about 5 minutes, given the poppy seeds are rinsed, soaked, and ready to go! If you want to make this Christmas eve dish the traditional way, follow our Kutia Wigilijna recipe below!
This Christmas dinner can be cooked in all different ways. But this is how most Poles make Kutia during Christmas time.
1. Rinse and Soak Wheat Berries Overnight
First, rinse fresh wheat berries and place them in a bowl. Add two cups of hot water and soak the berries overnight. Rinse poppy seeds through a mesh sieve and place them in another bowl. Add 1-½ cups of hot water and soak them overnight.
2. Boil the Wheat Berries So That They Increase in Volume
Drain and rinse the berries. Once you’re done, place them in a mixing bowl, add 1-½ cups of water, and bring them to a boil. Use low heat and simmer the berries for an hour. Most of the water would have been absorbed at that point. If the cooked wheat berries are tender, drain all the water and set them aside to cool.
3. Soak the Dried Fruits in Orange Juice
For this step, soak the raisins/ chopped apricots in orange juice for about an hour or more. Occasionally stir the mixture so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.
If orange juice doesn’t sit right with your stomach, use water instead.
Similarly, you can make your Kutia dairy-free by using non-dairy milk options such as almond milk, oat milk, and rice milk.
4. Make Poppy Seed Puree
If you’ve made it this far, then congratulations! You’re very close to making your first wheat-poppy pudding! Now, quickly rinse the poppy seeds and soak them in a cup of fresh water for half an hour.
Drain the water, rinse the poppy seeds again, and combine this poppy seed mixture with cream. Use a food grinder to puree the poppy seed until it thickens.
Stop when the puree is creamy and a little grainy at the same time.
5. Mix the Ingredients with Orange Zest and Lemon in a Bowl
Take out your mixing bowl to combine the poppy seed puree and berry mixture with orange juice and honey. Throw in the chopped nuts and dried fruits. Adding two spoonfuls of orange juice will give the pudding a tangy, refreshing flavor.
6. Stir the Mixture and Let It Cool
This is the last step in our traditional Christmas eve dish. We stir the mixture for a few minutes before covering the bowl with a lid. Kutia is traditionally eaten cold. So, refrigerate the mix overnight or a few hours before serving.
Alternative Kutia Recipe (with Spelt Berries and Honey)
Traditional Polish Kutia consists of three main ingredients: cooked wheat berry, poppy seed, and honey. But this Christmas eve dinner is also eaten in other parts of Eastern Europe, including Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Belarus.
Instead of wheat berries, spelt berries and dried apricots are used for making Kutia in some of these regions. They have spelt kernels, similar to whole wheat kernels. The only difference is: spelt berries taste like bulgur wheat and nuts.
Rounding Up
Kutia is one of the five Wigilia desserts, including sweet gingerbread (Pierniki), plaited Jewish bread (Challah), cheesecake (Sernik), and poppy seed rolls (Makowiec). We hope our Kutia recipe finds its way to your traditional Polish Christmas eve dinner menu! Thanks for reading!
Based on 1 Review(s)
