Do sosu dodaję czosnek i pieczarki, a potem smażę wszystko na oleju.

Because the preposition do requires the genitive case.

• sos = sauce
• do sosu = to the sauce / into the sauce

So:

• sos is the basic dictionary form
• sosu is the genitive singular form

This is a very common pattern in Polish:

• do domu = to the house / home
• do sklepu = to the shop
• do zupy = into the soup

In this sentence, Do sosu dodaję... literally means To the sauce I add...

Polish often uses the present tense to describe instructions, demonstrations, or a sequence of actions, especially in cooking.

So dodaję literally means I add, but in context it can sound like:

• I add
• I’m adding
• You add (as an instruction, in a looser English translation)

This style is natural in Polish when someone is explaining what they do step by step.

Compare:

• Do sosu dodaję czosnek... = I add garlic to the sauce...
• Potem smażę wszystko... = Then I fry everything...

It is a kind of instructional/narrative present.

They are the direct objects of dodaję, so they are in the accusative case.

However, the forms happen to look like this:

• czosnek — accusative singular, same as nominative because it is a masculine inanimate noun
• pieczarki — accusative plural, same as nominative plural for this feminine noun

So although the case is accusative, the forms do not change visibly here.

Breakdown:

• dodaję czosnek = I add garlic
• dodaję pieczarki = I add mushrooms

This is one reason Polish cases can feel tricky: sometimes the case matters grammatically even when the word looks unchanged.

Not exactly. Pieczarki usually means button mushrooms or champignon mushrooms, the common white or brown mushrooms sold in shops.

So:

• grzyby = mushrooms in general
• pieczarki = specifically cultivated button mushrooms

A learner might translate pieczarki simply as mushrooms, and that is often fine in normal English, but the Polish word is more specific.

Here a links the two parts of the sentence and gives a sense of and then / and after that / whereas next.

In Polish, a is often used where English might use:

• and
• and then
• while
• whereas

depending on context.

So:

• Do sosu dodaję czosnek i pieczarki, a potem smażę wszystko na oleju.

means something like:

• I add garlic and mushrooms to the sauce, and then I fry everything in oil.

Could you say just potem? Yes, in some contexts.
Could you say i potem? Also possible in some contexts.
But a potem sounds very natural for moving to the next step.

Wszystko means everything or all of it.

In this sentence, it refers to the ingredients just mentioned, or more broadly to the mixture being worked on at that stage.

So it could mean:

• the garlic and mushrooms
• the whole mixture now in the pan
• everything added so far

Polish often uses wszystko in this practical, slightly broad way, just like English does in cooking:

• Mix everything
• Cook everything together
• Fry everything

It does not have to mean literally every ingredient in the universe—just everything relevant in the current cooking step.

Yes, na often means on, but in Polish prepositions are broader than their basic English equivalents.

In cooking, smażyć na oleju means to fry in oil / using oil.

This is a very common pattern:

• smażyć na oleju = fry in oil
• smażyć na maśle = fry in butter
• smażyć na oliwie = fry in olive oil

So even though na often corresponds to on, here the natural English translation is in oil or using oil.

Here oleju is in the locative singular.

With na, Polish can take different cases depending on meaning:

• na
  • accusative often suggests movement onto/onto a surface
• na
  • locative often suggests location or the medium/state in which something happens

In smażę wszystko na oleju, the meaning is not movement onto oil, but rather frying in/with oil as the cooking medium, so Polish uses the locative.

The noun olej has:

• nominative: olej
• locative: oleju

So:

• na oleju = in oil / using oil

Polish word order is much more flexible than English word order.

Starting with Do sosu puts emphasis on what the ingredients are being added to:

• Do sosu dodaję czosnek i pieczarki...

This feels a bit like:

• To the sauce, I add garlic and mushrooms...

If you changed the order, it could still be correct:

• Dodaję czosnek i pieczarki do sosu.

That version is also natural, but the focus is slightly different. Polish often moves elements around for emphasis, flow, or style.

In this kind of step-by-step description, the imperfective is very natural:

• dodaję = I add / I am adding
• smażę = I fry / I am frying

If you used perfective forms, the feeling would change. Perfective verbs in Polish emphasize completion of an action.

For example:

• dodać = to add completely / to add as a completed action
• usmażyć = to fry completely / to finish frying

In recipe-style narration, the imperfective present often sounds smoother because it presents the actions as an unfolding process.

Polish has no articles, so there is no direct equivalent of English a/an and the.

That means:

• sos can mean a sauce or the sauce
• czosnek can mean garlic or the garlic
• pieczarki can mean mushrooms or the mushrooms

The exact meaning is understood from context.

So Do sosu dodaję czosnek i pieczarki could be understood as:

• I add garlic and mushrooms to the sauce
• I add the garlic and the mushrooms to the sauce

depending on the situation.

In this sentence, czosnek is being used as a mass noun, just like English garlic.

So Polish says:

• dodaję czosnek = I add garlic

not necessarily:

• dodaję czosnki

because that would suggest separate garlic units in a more unusual way.

If you want to be more specific, Polish can say things like:

• ząbek czosnku = a clove of garlic
• dwa ząbki czosnku = two cloves of garlic

But by itself, czosnek usually works like English garlic.

A rough English-style guide would be:

do SO-su do-DA-ye CHO-snek ee pye-CHAR-kee, a PO-tem SMA-zhe FSHIST-ko na o-LE-yu

A few useful pronunciation notes:

• cz sounds roughly like ch in chop
• rz in pieczarki sounds like a voiced zh sound, like the s in measure
• ę in dodaję is a nasal vowel, but in normal speech at the end of a word it is often heard roughly like e with some nasal coloring
• sz in smażę sounds like sh
• w in Polish sounds like English v
• ł sounds like English w

So wszystko is roughly fshist-ko, not vsz... in the English sense.

Yes, depending on the exact cooking context, it can.

Grammatically, wszystko is broad enough to include the whole mixture at that point. In real cooking logic, though, the sentence most naturally suggests frying the ingredients together in oil after adding them.

If the larger context is a recipe, the listener usually understands from common sense what is being fried:

• sometimes just the garlic and mushrooms
• sometimes the whole mixture
• sometimes the ingredients before they fully become the sauce

So the phrase is slightly flexible, and context tells you the precise interpretation.