Carniolan sausage

Ingredients

• Pork shoulder1.6 kg
• Pork back fat400 g
• Garlic8 clove
• Curing salt40 g
• Ground black pepper2 tsp
• Iced water150 ml
• Sausage casings200 g
• Grated horseradish — to serve100 g
• Mustard — to serve100 g
• Bread — to serve400 g

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Dice the pork and fat and chill them to just above freezing.

   25 min

2. 2

   Put the meat through the coarse plate of a mincer and the fat through the medium one.

   15 min

3. 3

   Work in the curing salt, crushed garlic, pepper and iced water and knead the mixture until tacky.

   15 min

4. 4

   Leave the mixture in the fridge for a day so the salt distributes and the colour sets.

   10 min

5. 5

   Fill the casings tightly but without air pockets and tie them in twenty-centimetre pairs.

   25 min

6. 6

   Air-dry the sausages two hours and cold-smoke them if you can.

   15 min

7. 7

   Lower them into water at 75 °C and hold them twenty-five minutes without letting it boil. Serve with horseradish and mustard.

   30 min

About the dish

The sausage is never boiled. It goes into water at 75 °C and is held there without letting it boil: at a boil the casing splits and the fat renders out.

The composition is fixed by regulation: eighty per cent pork, twenty per cent fat, salt, garlic and pepper — and nothing else. Carniolan sausage has held European protected status since 2015.

A pair is joined with a wooden pin rather than string. That is the mark of a genuine kranjska, and they are not separated before serving.

Worth knowing

• — A thermometer is essential. Eighty degrees is already too much: the casing starts splitting and the sausage loses its juices.
• — Keep the mixture and every piece of equipment cold. Warm fat smears, and instead of a grainy structure you get paste.
• — Without curing salt the sausage comes out grey and keeps less well. That is a question of safety in curing as well as colour.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

32 g

Fat

48 g

Carbs

22 g

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