Knysza () is a type of
fast food
Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredien ...
, consisting of a
bread roll
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made foo ...
amply filled with a variety of ingredients. The bread is a sliced-in-half
sponge cake
Sponge cake is a light cake made with egg whites, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated ...
(''bułka drożdżowa''), sometimes
grilled
Grilling is a form of cooking that involves dry heat applied to the surface of food, commonly from above, below or from the side. Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct, radiant heat, and tends to be used for cooking meat a ...
prior, abundantly infilled with a variety of ingredients, including vegetables,
cutlet
Cutlet (derived from French ''côtelette'', ''côte'', " rib") refers to:
# a thin slice of meat from the leg or ribs of mutton, veal, pork or chicken
# a dish made of such slice, often breaded (also known in various languages as a ''cotoletta ...
, topped profusely with
sauce
In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi-solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to a dish. ''Sauce'' is a French word t ...
.
The original knysza is
vegetarian
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter.
Vegetarianism m ...
and is named "knysza with vegetables" (''knysza z warzywami''), with the bread roll solely infilled with fresh vegetables (white and red
cabbage
Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&nb ...
,
tomato
The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...
,
cucumber
Cucumber (''Cucumis sativus'') is a widely-cultivated Vine#Horticultural climbing plants, creeping vine plant in the Cucurbitaceae family that bears usually cylindrical Fruit, fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables. and canned
corn
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
), generously topped with garlic sauce,
mayonnaise
Mayonnaise (; ), colloquially referred to as "mayo" , is a thick, cold, and creamy sauce or dressing commonly used on sandwiches, hamburgers, composed salads, and French fries. It also forms the base for various other sauces, such as tartar ...
or spicy sauce, besprinkled with roasted
onion
An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion ...
. Variants of knysza include those with meat, for example
cutlet
Cutlet (derived from French ''côtelette'', ''côte'', " rib") refers to:
# a thin slice of meat from the leg or ribs of mutton, veal, pork or chicken
# a dish made of such slice, often breaded (also known in various languages as a ''cotoletta ...
(''kotlet''), chicken or sausage, as well as a version with cheese.
Knysza is most popular in
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
, where the meal rose in popularity in the 1990s.
See also
*
Knish
A knish is a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish snack food consisting of a filling covered with dough that is typically baked or sometimes deep fried.
Knishes are often purchased from street vendors in urban areas with a large Jewish population, som ...
External links
Guilty Pleasures: Regional Fast Foods from Poland
References
{{Reflist
Polish cuisine
Wrocław
Silesian cuisine
Fast food