Meat and cold cuts
3 May 2023
Homemade Krakowska sausage – poached
Category:
Meat and cold cuts
Difficulty:
Medium
Servings:
4
Krakowska sausage is one of the best-known cold cuts in Poland. Making it at home is not as difficult as it might seem. All you need is a bit of willingness and patience. The wait for a tasty, fragrant, lightly dried sausage is a few days. It’s worth the wait to delight in its flavor and aroma!
Notes
How to make Krakowska sausage?
Recipe for homemade Krakowska sausage - poached
Preparation:
The day before you start making the sausage, cut the meat into pieces about 3x3 cm and dry-cure it at 4-6 ºC. Add the weighed amounts of salt and saltpetre to the meat, mix, then set aside for 24 hours. (Dry curing consists of cutting the meat, salting it with the addition of the weighed saltpetre and mixing thoroughly — then placing it in a cool place).
After the curing period, divide all the meat in half and grind one part in a meat grinder. Grind the pork through a plate with holes of about 10 mm. Grind the back fat through a plate with 8 mm holes. Grind the beef twice through a plate with 3 mm holes and work it thoroughly with 50 ml of cold water.
Combine all the ground meats, season with the Krakowska sausage spice mix (or season to taste with salt, pepper and sweet paprika), then knead thoroughly. Meanwhile, soak the protein casings in a 10-15% brine solution (1/2 cup salt per 1 L water) at about 25 °C for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, the casings are ready to be filled with the meat filling.
For this, use a sausage stuffer fitted with a 26 mm stuffing tube.
Be sure to stuff the meat into the casing very thoroughly and tightly. Tie off the ends of the casing with butcher’s twine, creating sections about 20 cm long.
Poach the prepared sausages at 75 °C for 45 minutes. Then remove them and cool in cold water, and then hang to dry — as desired.
Note!
Once poached, the sausage is ready to eat immediately. You can also hang it in a cool place to dry.
*The sausages shown in the photo were prepared at the same time from the same ingredients. The difference in their degree of drying is due solely to the use of two different types of protein casing.
Enjoy! ...because homemade is better!
