Homemade Sausage Making

Has anyone made Hungarian salami recently?
Maybe Gulyas has some experience?
Is the Tokay an important ingredient, or could I substitute a spaetlese, or leave it out altogether?
I'm heading to the markets tomorrow to pick up some ingredients for a few different fermented sausage types to make.
Has anyone got a recipe for Danish salami?
Thanks all.
Ursula

Has anyone got a recipe for Danish salami?
Thanks all.
Ursula

Ursula, how have you been doing sweet girl? In my sausage library I have the following recipes for Danish sausages. The ones on this list were handed down through my Swiss family but all are authentic and supposedly obtained from the "largest and best sausage factory of Copenhagen". Sounds like some cousin was trying to convince everyone of their quality Anyway, I am posting the Danish recipe for sausage akin to "salami". If anyone else would like any or all of the other Danish recipes I have, please look through this list and let me know. I`ll either send them to you or post them right here if there is enough interest.

Danish Sausage Recipes From Copenhagen

Danish Smoked Sausage
Cervelatpolse Or Danish Beef And Pork Sausage
Knockpolse Or Hard Smoked Danish Sausage
Wienerpolse (Bavarian Sausage)
Leverpolse Or Liver Sausage
Leverpostej (Liverwurst) Danish Liver Sausage
Danish Beef Sausage
Bologna Sausage (Danish recipe)
Brunswick (Cervelat Sausage)
Cambridge Sausage
Epping Sausage
Frankfort Sausages (Weinerwurst)
Danish Pork Sausages (First Class)
Danish Pork Sausages (Good Ordinary Sausage)
Danish Pork Sausage Seasoning
Danish Salami
Danish Smoked Sausage (Knackwurst)
_______________________________________________

Danish Fermented Sausage (akin to Italian "Salami") (at least 100 years old original recipe)
Here are the original Danish instructions for making fermented sausage much like Italian Salami. I have taken the liberty of "modifying and modernizing" it a little by using a sodium nitrate cure rather than saltpeter, cutting down the amount for home hobbyists, and by adding a Bactoferm culture.

Use 50 pounds of beef free from fiber, 25 pounds each of lean and fat pork, chop very fine and add 18 1/2 oz. of salt, 4 1/2 oz. ground white pepper, 1 1/2 oz. ground saltpeter, with 8 glasses of Rhine wine, in which previously has been soaked one pound of garlic. Stuff into calf's bladders. Let them hang in the open air for 2 or 3 weeks, then smoke for 12 days.

Modified version:

"Tenderfoot's Torpedo"
(Fermented Sausage)

5.5 lbs. [2.5 kg.] pork butt with fat
3.3 lbs. [1.5 kg.] lean beef chuck
2.2 lbs. [1.0 kg.] lean pork (butt or rear leg "ham" okay).
140 grams salt
15 grams white pepper
10 grams garlic
60 ml (1/4 cup) Rhine wine
12 grams Cure #2
10 grams powdered dextrose
10 grams sugar
0.6 gram (1/4 teaspoon) Bactoferm T-SPX culture
--- Mold 600

Grind the pork and fat through a 3/8" plate then refrigerate it. Grind the beef through a 3/8" plate, refreeze it 20 minutes, then grind it again through a 1/8" plate. Next, mix the two meats together with all other ingredients. Be sure to mix the Bactoferm with just a bit of distilled water for thorough distribution. (Fluoridated water will destroy the beneficial bacteria in the culture). Mix all ingredients until the proteins develop a sticky mass. Stuff the meat mixture into protein-lined fibrous casings and make links 12 inches long. Spray the links with Mold 600 then ferment the sausages at 68°F (20°C) beginning in 90% humidity and finishing at 85% in 72 hours. Dry the sausage until 30% weight reduction is achieved in about 2-1/2 to 3 months. The drying chamber should be 54-60°F. (12-16°C.) The storage conditions should be about 75% humidity at about 55°F. (13°C).

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Hi Ursula,

As far as know wine is not an important ingredient in any sausage or salami.
In dry salami making, most recipes say to use older animals meat, cut it up, and spread it on a board to dry for 3 days before grinding.
On the other hand many people use some kind of liquid, what ever the locals have/like, some of them use cognac. My personnel opinion is, that the less liquid the better.
I think its personal taste that should guide you.
I hate my mixers, and let them collect dust, because one have to add water in order to make it mix well/good.
So I guess big companies add tap water to make profit, but we home sausage makers just use meat.

Gulyas, I agree with you about the wine. I've always thought that it is better in a glass than it is in the meat mixture. And yes, the drier the mix, the better. However, there are folks in this world who will always refuse to believe that wine unravels the proteins in meat and upsets the binding quality. We'll never convince those folks to drink it instead of putting it in the salami.

The practice of leaving the meat out on the kitchen table for a length of time, was practiced to allow natural lactic acid-producing bacteria to "chance contaminate" the meat. It is a bad practice because it allows pathogenic and spoilage bacteria in at the same time. People don't realize that the bacteria is already there. There's no need to leave it out to gather even more spoilage and pathogenic bacteria. The thing to do is get the meat into the casing and into the fermentation chamber where the beneficial bacteria can go to work to outnumber the other types. The salt in the recipe must always be above 2-1/2 per cent at the very least in order to contain the pathogenic bacteria while the lactic acid goes to work. Never alter or reduce the salt in a fermented sausage recipe. Believe me, there is no need to leave it out to "dry". It is a bad practice invented by some cowboy who fell off his horse head-first into the cactus!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Yes Mr. CW,

Of course the drying (draining) was done in the cold, or in the refrigerator.

Thank you Chuckwagon. I have vacpacked the meat quantities required for your recipe. When my bresaola is ready to ferment I will time the salami production accordingly. That way I will set the chamber for fermenting first, then after everything I have made is fermented, I'll reset the chamber for drying all of it.
Just one question: the wine in the recipe: does it influence the final taste greatly?
Thank you Ursula

I've made smoked Hungarian Kolbasz a few times, the first time using a Len Poli recipe which called for Tokay wine, pretty expensive stuff. The last couple of times I left the wine out and replaced it with water, the sausage tasted just the same, the Tokay seemed to add nothing. RAY

ursula wrote:the wine in the recipe: does it influence the final taste greatly

When I make my Italian style salami I always add wine (usually my own plonk). I do that because most recipes ask for it. The amount I use use is very little, for 3kg it won't exceed two ounces, so I have never had an issue with binding. As far as affecting the taste, it's hard to tell, but it probably does in a small way.

I also bathe my solid muscle meats such as breasola, lonzino and coppa in wine after washing off the spices.

Chuckwagon wrote:Danish sausages. [...] Sounds like some cousin was trying to convince everyone of their quality

And given the choice I would rather opt for an invitation to try to sell sand in Sahara...
To convince somebody about the "quality" of Danish meat products you would have to mobilize some supernatural power because just one bite ought to send most victims away screaming. Especially the "Danish Salami" which Chuck at least magaged to humanize in his reshaping of an otherwise lost gastronomical cause. But a reshaping that resembles the plastic surgery that cosa nostra members have to undergo after breaking with the Family. That said: Chucks version of Danish Salami has taken a ride south of the Alps never to return to its slushy´n rainy birth place...

First a little language lesson: We Danes (just count me halfways in ) seldom use the word "Salami" about our fatty, red tainted big calibre pride. We still use the old (almost wikinguesqe) word SPEGEPøLSE. "Spege" meaning, salted (and smoked) and "Pølse" simply meaning Sausage. And now you almost have the recipe contained within the name itself: This sausage is composed of meat preserved by salting and smoking.

And I mean Mean Salting in the hard way The meat (usually more pork than beef. Often pork only) would be cured with salt and Salpeter (Saltpeter) app. 1 gram pr. kilogram of meat (no ntrite was used). Then finely grinded/chopped (most to hide the often excessive fat content as well as possible) and after filling put to rest in a trough well filled with salt where it was delicately covered with more salt. After a day or two transferred to a salt lake of app. 20 Beaume.

Fermentation time in this salty environment would be between 8 and 21 days depending on casing size after which the Spegepølser (plur.) were taken out for drying until there would be visible salt residue (hydrochloric effusion I think it´s called). This would indicate that the Spegepølse (sing.) was ripe for a goood long cold smoking - which we Danes refer to as "Salmon smoked" (Lakserøget). Salt content probably around 30 gr. per kilo -seldom less.
And after this no more excess drying out! NO Danish Butcher with respect for his profession would allow one drop of moisture to escape if it could be avoided. After all we Danes want our Spegepølse to be, above all, cheap and red! That issue is today solved by the glory of the "natural" dye Carmine E-120. You will have a hard time to find a Spegepølse where it hasn´t been added.

Given our slush, puddles and moist loaded climate, the most likely kind of mold on Spegepølse would probably be of the green type, was it not for our love&care treatment with salt and smoke galore... For many years GdL was (ad still is) the most popular acidifier as it enabled even the smallest butcher workshop to have a good soft´n salty but still slicable Spegepølse ready for sale in less than a week. Yes - we Danes generally like our Spegepølse to be sooooft
And no Dansih home without a package of "Three Star" in the fridge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTmCo6ykroU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtKg13BVoxs - do it yourself venison Spegepølse for those who want to hear a real exotic language (Jutland style - think of a Texan )

DAMNED !!! HOW DO YOU WRITE AN "Ø" ON THIS MF-EDITOR!!???

Hi Red,
Just curious. Do you generally use red or white wine, and does it make a difference to the final taste?
Best wishes Ursula

Hi Ursula,

If you are thinking to make a classical Danish "Spegepoelse" the F-1 culture could come in handy as it may give the right tangy and slightly sour taste providing that you are generous with the sugar/dextrose, but in a classical old-timer spegepoelse wine doens´t really fit in, unless you go for Chucks italianized recipe version.

For wine adding to salami it is, to be honest, not something that I have tried myself. Should it come to it I would go for red wine and make sure that it is as dry as it gets to avoid an overdosage of fermentable sugars. We had one member here whose fermentation went totally beserk after having added a sweet Vermuth style drink. And he did so in accordance with the recipe!

Technically speaking adding extra fluid to a product where you want low water activity doesn´t really seem to be the most logical thing in the world and I have a notion that wine-adding often seems to be a way to provide some extra local autenticy, like; Italian wine added to an Italian style salami will make it real´Italian... (LOL)
In the same way you will find Danish salami producers adding scottish whiskey to their products and labeling it "English Salami" just as it in Denmark for many years (and still today) seemed to be an absolute must to add Hungarian "Bulls Blood" red wine to Hungarian salami - otherwise it would not have the autentic Hungarian flavour!

Well, just take a trip to Hungary or Italy and check out how often they add wine to their Salami... Do I need to say more?

In Denmark "Roedvins spegepoelse" (Red wine spegepoelse) is actually quite popular but as I outlined in my previous posting about Danish salami production methods, it is a far cry from what we at wedlinidomowe would usually regard as "real" salami. And as we usually keep water activity high in spegepoelse (at least much higher than a well dried out salami -italian style) the taste impact of the added red wine will also be different.

This in mind I have no doubt that red wine addition will add aroma nuances, the question just being when the amount will large enough to start messing with the fermentation process and intoxicate our added culture friends

DAMNED !!! HOW DO YOU WRITE AN "Ø" ON THIS MF-EDITOR!!???

Folks... Please remember that this is a family-oriented site. ~CW~

Et øjeblik!

Hey Igor! When I post on the Polish site I just key in what I have on my North American keyboard and then let my Polish internet spell check make the corrections. I don't know which browser you are using, but I use Firefox and have no problem with ø by switching to the Danish spell check.

Helt i orden! Jeg venter

OK Red, thanks! I´m on Explorer. Guess I have to install Firefox. But I honestly thought it was enough to copypaste the already present ... ø (now I have copypasted yours from your above message and let´s see how THAT works ).

Anyway Red, considering the present topic of addition of wine to salami is it something you have experience with?
Or du you prefer your drinks not stirred (into the meat I mean )