Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 15X. nodaļa

Citas gaļu desas

Smoked summer sausages pressed with birch sticks

  • Makes about 1.35 kg raw sausage
  • 2 hours making, then 3 days hanging and 8–10 days smoking, or about 4 hours for the cooked version
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Zittas gallu dessas.

Modernizētslpp. 446–447 · PDF 460–461

The book gives 16 mārciņas of lean pork, 3 of young beef and 4 of back fat, with 8 loti of pepper, 24 of salt, 3 of nutmeg and 1½ of mace. That converts to 6.7 kg pork, 1.26 kg beef, 1.68 kg fat, 105 g pepper, 314 g salt, 39 g nutmeg and 20 g mace. We've used a seventh.

Method

7 soļi
  1. Weigh the trimmed meat and fat and scale the salt to them: 28 g of curing salt per kg for the dried version, 22 g per kg for the cooked one.
  2. Rinse the casings, soak them in lukewarm water for 30 minutes, then in the red wine for 30 minutes more, as the book softens them in wine.
  3. Cut the fat into 5 mm dice, spread it on a tray and freeze it for 1 hour. Cut the meat into cubes and freeze it for 30–45 minutes. Keep everything below 2–4 °C from now on.
  4. Mince the pork and beef twice through a 3 mm plate, or chop them in a food processor until smooth, like a dough.
  5. Knead in the curing salt, pepper, nutmeg and mace (and, for the dried version, the dextrose and starter culture) until sticky. Work in the diced fat so it is evenly spread with no clumps.
  6. Stuff the casings as tightly as you can, prick out air pockets with a clean needle and tie off sausages about 25 cm long.
  7. Shaping (optional): lay two or three sausages side by side with two skewers or sticks between each pair and tie the bundle firmly with string at intervals. As they dry, they take on a lobed shape, like a clover leaf.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

the book chops lean pork and young beef finely, pounds it with a wooden pestle, mixes it like dough with pepper, salt, nutmeg and mace and works in chilled diced pork fat without leaving lumps. It inflates fatty beef casings, hangs them in the air for 2–3 days, softens them in red wine, stuffs them as tightly as possible and ties both ends. Thin three-sided birch sticks go between the sausages, 2 or 4 to each, to give them the shape of clover leaves, and the bundles are tied firmly with strong thread, hung in the air for 3 days and smoked for 8–10 days with cold juniper smoke, checking after 4–5 days that the sticks are still tight. The book says they keep well into the summer. Curing salt, dextrose, starter culture, temperatures, humidity, drying to a weight loss and the cooked version are ours.

Safety

this is a raw dried sausage, safe only when it is properly cured, fermented and dried. Use curing salt, weigh it exactly, keep the meat cold until it is stuffed, and control temperature and humidity throughout. If you can't, make the cooked version. Pregnant women, small children and people with weak immune systems should not eat raw dried sausage.

Salt and spice

the book's 3.3 % salt is close to a modern dry sausage; we use 2.8 %. We halve the pepper; nutmeg and mace stay near the book's rate.

Clover-leaf shape

our reading of the sticks is a guess. Bundling sausages tightly between sticks would press them into lobes and keep them flat and even while they dry. If you skip it, the sausages are just as good.

Casings

taukas vēršu zarnas are the fatty wide parts of the beef intestine; beef middles are the nearest today. The book inflates them and dries them in the air for 2–3 days before softening them in wine. Salted casings from a supplier only need soaking.

Juniper

smoking over juniper (Latvian paegļi, kadiķi) is still traditional in Latvian farm smokehouses. Use only common juniper (Juniperus communis).

Dried version (the book's way)

  • Hang them for 2–3 days at 18–22 °C and 85–90 % humidity to ferment (our temperatures). The book hangs them "in the air" for 3 days.
  • Cold-smoke them over beech or alder with juniper on top for 8–10 days in total, in sessions of 6–10 hours, keeping the chamber below 20 °C. After 4–5 days check the string and sticks and tighten them, since the sausages shrink.
  • Dry them at 12–15 °C and 75–80 % humidity until they have lost 30–35 % of their weight, 2–4 weeks more. Slice thinly and eat raw.

Cooked version (no drying chamber needed)

  • Refrigerate the sausages overnight.
  • Hot-smoke them at 60–75 °C over beech with juniper for 1–2 hours, then poach them in water at 75 °C until the centre reaches 72 °C (about 1 hour). Cool them in iced water and keep them in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

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