Polish Smoked Sausage
Kielbasa Swojska
2019
Just a word about my smoking and some advice:
So it took me 3 fails to get it right. Too much salt again....I think it's a man thing. Wife always tells me I use too much salt in everything.
And then it was baking vs poaching. I decided to go with poaching. Baking dries it out. But if you like that baked look and smell, go for it.
More about that below.
After adjusting the salt it finally came out perfect.
I also decided to use less fresh garlic and use some powder garlic instead. Fresh garlic brings the smell and flavor but it is a wet ingredient and does not smoke well. Leaves little holes inside even if you crush it well.
By now I have tried making the sausage with pork, pork and beef and both ground pork and hand chopped pork.
I show photos of the difference below as well.
I realized that the hardest ingredient to find is pork belly, or bacon. Raw, unsmoked.
Not many stores have it, some can order it for you but it proved to be a challenge. If they do have it, it is sad looking. Skinny. Nothing to work with if you want to make home made bacon. But that is off course our stores in Southern California. You might have more luck where you live. So I substituted it a few times now with pork ribs. There is enough fat in them to supply the needed bonding material into the sausages. Again, we have to work with what we have available. So change what you need with what you have.
This kielbasa is called Swojska, which in Polish means more or less home made or self made. Next I will try to make Krakowska, or Krakow Sausage. This is a much thicker sausage with bigger meat pieces in it. My mega casings just arrived. So I am excited about that. After all, that is my home town sausage!
As for size of each batch, I have made 4 pounds and up to 9 pounds of meat for the sausages. I do have a large gas smoker. So I have the luxury of hanging them, the way they should be smoked. But if you only have a smaller smoker you can do it lying down. Just make sure you let them hang and dry long enough before so the meat can set.
9 pounds is pushing my smoker to the max. They sausage should not touch during smoking and they need space. And it takes 4 hours in the smoker to get to the end of part 1. So adjust your size according to your smoker. Or smoke over 2 days. The meat can marinate for 24 to 48 hours without problem while inside your fridge.
Now off to smokers.
All smokers will do the job. Some better and some worse. But they will smoke the sausage.
I have a gas smoker. Pretty big. Big enough to hang them. But controlling the temperature is a problem. I have not changed the valve on it to a custom one, but I will. Sausage should be smoked at a low, low temp. 120F is the optimal temp for the first 2 hours. Then you can do 150F to 160F towards the end. My smoker keeps going to 140-150F pretty quick. so i need to keep watching it and vent often. Which is not good for the sausage...
You want the end temp inside the sausage to be at around 155F when done. That is hard when smoking for 4 hours. So most poach or bake them after to get things done faster. You could smoke it longer until you reach that 155F temp but you need patience for it. Could take 6 or 8 hours. There is a point during smoking when the internal temp just stops. To me it happens around 130 to 140F. The mystery of smoking. From that temp it takes time to get up to the 155F.
So just poach them, will ya. Poaching also removes the smoke and dust and dirt from your smoked sausages. It will loose some color but will stay plump and moist longer.
Wood chips choice: up to each and all. I prefer apple and cherry wood for smoking sausages. Oak is too strong.
But again, your choice.
Get a nice double temp measuring device. A wireless one is the best. Specially during snow. You can monitor it from the inside of the house while drinking a Zywiec. One sensor for the sausage and one sensor for the internal smoker temp.
Pink salt, curing salt, can be purchased online or maybe in your store. You need that every time you smoke sausages. Smoking is a slow process and happens at a low temp. Curing salt makes sure your meat does not go bad. It also gives it a longer shelf life inside your fridge. Normally about 3 to 4 weeks.
But all of smoked sausages can be frozen. Wrap them in paper, place in a zipee bag and freeze.
I also store my sausage in paper, not plastic. Keeps it dry and fresh inside the fridge.
Mechanical needs:
1 good hand or electric food grinder.
1 manual or electric sausage stuffer.
I mix it all by hand. Using a machine can make the meat too liquid in my opinion.
1 large smoker. See photo below of mine. It is a gas smoker.
1 double sensor thermometer.
What you will need:
30 to 35mm hog casings
4 lb or pork butt
2 lb or pork shoulder or pork loin
1 lb of pork belly, bacon, or pork ribs
1 fresh garlic clove and 2 tsp of powder garlic
2 tsp of dried marjoram
2 tsp of ground black pepper
2 tsp of sea salt or kosher salt
1 tsp of pink salt number 1, you need this if you smoke. If you just cook your sausage you do not need it. Smoking is slow.
1 tsp of white pepper if you have some
1.5 tsp of red paprika, some people do not like that but I do. Gives it a more reddish tint and if you use sweet paprika it will not make it spicy
1 cup of ice cold water.
Step 1:
Grinding and chilling.
I do this one to two days before stuffing and smoking. The meat needs to marinate in the fridge. And you can rest in between.
Grind the fat meat first, so the pork belly or the ribs. This way your next meat will clean your grinder blades from the fat.
Use a medium grinder plate, 4.5mm, 3/16 to 6mm, 1/4. My Amazon grinder does the job like a charm. It's a beast. Loud, but does the job. If you want to try what I did, you can hand cut some of the super lean meat by hand. Not much, maybe just 10% to 15% of the whole batch. This way you will have more solid chunks inside the sausage. It takes a bit more but the reward...you can judge by looking at the photos below. I posted some from different grind sizes and the hand cut sausage as well.
Use a large bowl that can fit all your meat in it. Add the salt to the 1 cup of ice cold water, both kosher and pink salt, and mix it well. Set to the side.
Now add all the seasonings including the pressed garlic clove. Mix just a little. Now add the ice cold water with the salts in it and get busy. Here comes the important part that will shape the texture of your sausage.
You want to work your batch by hand, no more than 25 to 30 min. Pinch, squash and mix all of the meat well. If more water is needed add some. You want a slightly wet texture, but not too wet. There is a test you can do to see when it is ready. Take a meatball size of meat and slap it against your open hand while upside down. If the meat sticks and stays without falling down, you are done. The meat is mixed. You will already smell the seasoning mixing with the meat, the aroma will intensify.
Now you need to cover it and stick in a fridge for 24 to 48 hours to marinate.
When you pull it out and open you will be surprised how good it smells. Do not worry if it looks dark on top, and was red when you put it in. That is normal. You are ready for stuffing.
Step 2:
Stuffing the goods.
Start early, this takes time. I was stuck once till 2:30am waiting for my sausage to finish.
Calculate this: stuffing will take you 1 hour. Drying will take 2 to 4 hours. Smoking will take 4 hours. Resting will take 30min. Poaching will take 1 to 1.5 hours. Then you need to hang them and let them set and dry. That can be unsupervised overnight. But the rest you need to attend to in person.
You are now ready to stuff your sausages, wohooo. Excited, right? I was. As a kid i helped my dad but that was over 35 years ago. So I was excited. Then I realized it is good to have help when you have a manual sausage stuffer.....so I hired my 13 year old to help me out. You want both hands when it comes out to control the flow and the firmness of the sausage.
I use 32mm casings. I prepare them by washing them in cold water, inside and outside, to remove any salt from the brine it came with. Then I place it in a bowl with luke warm water to soften them up.
Use some olive oil on your funnel to make the casings go on easier. See photos of the casings on the funnel below.
For this size of a batch you might need 3 strands of casings. Yeah, they are looooong.
At this time I also preheat my smoker to 120-130 without any wood. And DO NOT USE the water pan. You can use it with some foil in it to collect any drippings, but do not put any water in it when smoking sausages. This is dry smoking. We are not making a roast beef.
Get the casings onto the funnel, load your stuffer and start cranking. When you start do not tie the casing, leave it open so the air can escape out of the first crank. I leave about 3 inches in the front, then start pushing out the meat. Once the sausage gets filled and the air is gone I tie a know and keep going. You want a firm texture. If you have air pockets it will not stick together. But do not panic. If you have loose sausage you can always fix it later by hand. But you do not want them super hard as it might burst the casing. If that happens just remove excess meat and tie some knots on both ends. So you will end up with a few shorter sausages, big deal.
Now hang your sausages by any way you can, I use S hooks. They need to dry and set. This can be 2 to 4 hours.
I usually hang them for an hour then transfer to the smoker and let them dry there for another hour at low heat, 120F.
Once that is done it is time to smoke'em
Step 3:
Smoking.
The longest part....
Hang or lay your sausages inside the smoker. Make sure they do not touch, will leave a mark. Plus you want the smoke to reach every inch of your sausages.
I start with an hour or so just finishing my drying time, so no smoke yet.
Then I add my wood and let it smoke. You should know your smoker by now so your own info goes here. I preffer cherry and apple wood. I try to keep the temp low, 120F for as long as possible but my smoker will go up to 140-150 quick. So I need to vent. I check the temp every few minutes and set my alarm on it. 4 hours is standard smoking time. Last hour I do let it go up to 150-160F.
Still I only get anywhere form 100-120F max internal temp. So far less than 155F you want to be when done.
That is why you poach, in the next step.
When 4 hours are up, you can smoke longer if you want, pull out the sausages and let them rest hanging in the kitchen for no more than 15 min. Or you will loose heat.
Off to next step....
Step 4:
Poaching.
Preheat a LARGE pot with hot water that is around 170F. I usually put some bay leaves and garlic cloves with all spice in the water.
Dip the sausages in the hot water with a thermometer stuck in one of them. Keep checking the temp of the water as well. DO NOT LET IT BOIL!!!
This can take 30 to 60min, depending on what temp they had when you took them out of the smoker.
When they get to 155-160 they are done.
Next step I do is to chill them as fast as I can. I do this by preparing an ice bath in my sink. Do not judge. It is the biggest pot I have....
Fill it with cold water and drop a lot of ice cubes in it.
Dip the sausages completly and swirl them around. Helps to chill them faster.
This does not take long, you can feel with your hand after about 10 min that they have gone cold.
I dip them for maybe 15 to max 20 min.
When done, pull them out, pat dry them with paper towels and hang up to set. I leave them hanging overnight and remove them in the morning.
That is it. You just became a Kielbasa maker. You will have more friends and more beer buddies than you ever imagined.
Store the sausages wrapped in paper, absorbs the moisture.
They are mainly for sandwiches as they slice super nice, see photos below. But I have used them in Bigos, Hunter Stew, fried them with eggs and grilled over fire. With lots of mustard, you need mustard. No Polish Kielbasa is complete without good mustard.
Below are some photos from start to finish. At the end there are some different variations of the sausages, you can see by the cuts.
The light one is the poached only soup sausage. Or for grilling.
Sky is the limit.
Hope you enjoyed my rantings and try this at home. If you do, let me know how it went.
Long Live The Kielbasa!
Just a word about my smoking and some advice:
So it took me 3 fails to get it right. Too much salt again....I think it's a man thing. Wife always tells me I use too much salt in everything.
And then it was baking vs poaching. I decided to go with poaching. Baking dries it out. But if you like that baked look and smell, go for it.
More about that below.
After adjusting the salt it finally came out perfect.
I also decided to use less fresh garlic and use some powder garlic instead. Fresh garlic brings the smell and flavor but it is a wet ingredient and does not smoke well. Leaves little holes inside even if you crush it well.
By now I have tried making the sausage with pork, pork and beef and both ground pork and hand chopped pork.
I show photos of the difference below as well.
I realized that the hardest ingredient to find is pork belly, or bacon. Raw, unsmoked.
Not many stores have it, some can order it for you but it proved to be a challenge. If they do have it, it is sad looking. Skinny. Nothing to work with if you want to make home made bacon. But that is off course our stores in Southern California. You might have more luck where you live. So I substituted it a few times now with pork ribs. There is enough fat in them to supply the needed bonding material into the sausages. Again, we have to work with what we have available. So change what you need with what you have.
This kielbasa is called Swojska, which in Polish means more or less home made or self made. Next I will try to make Krakowska, or Krakow Sausage. This is a much thicker sausage with bigger meat pieces in it. My mega casings just arrived. So I am excited about that. After all, that is my home town sausage!
As for size of each batch, I have made 4 pounds and up to 9 pounds of meat for the sausages. I do have a large gas smoker. So I have the luxury of hanging them, the way they should be smoked. But if you only have a smaller smoker you can do it lying down. Just make sure you let them hang and dry long enough before so the meat can set.
9 pounds is pushing my smoker to the max. They sausage should not touch during smoking and they need space. And it takes 4 hours in the smoker to get to the end of part 1. So adjust your size according to your smoker. Or smoke over 2 days. The meat can marinate for 24 to 48 hours without problem while inside your fridge.
Now off to smokers.
All smokers will do the job. Some better and some worse. But they will smoke the sausage.
I have a gas smoker. Pretty big. Big enough to hang them. But controlling the temperature is a problem. I have not changed the valve on it to a custom one, but I will. Sausage should be smoked at a low, low temp. 120F is the optimal temp for the first 2 hours. Then you can do 150F to 160F towards the end. My smoker keeps going to 140-150F pretty quick. so i need to keep watching it and vent often. Which is not good for the sausage...
You want the end temp inside the sausage to be at around 155F when done. That is hard when smoking for 4 hours. So most poach or bake them after to get things done faster. You could smoke it longer until you reach that 155F temp but you need patience for it. Could take 6 or 8 hours. There is a point during smoking when the internal temp just stops. To me it happens around 130 to 140F. The mystery of smoking. From that temp it takes time to get up to the 155F.
So just poach them, will ya. Poaching also removes the smoke and dust and dirt from your smoked sausages. It will loose some color but will stay plump and moist longer.
Wood chips choice: up to each and all. I prefer apple and cherry wood for smoking sausages. Oak is too strong.
But again, your choice.
Get a nice double temp measuring device. A wireless one is the best. Specially during snow. You can monitor it from the inside of the house while drinking a Zywiec. One sensor for the sausage and one sensor for the internal smoker temp.
Pink salt, curing salt, can be purchased online or maybe in your store. You need that every time you smoke sausages. Smoking is a slow process and happens at a low temp. Curing salt makes sure your meat does not go bad. It also gives it a longer shelf life inside your fridge. Normally about 3 to 4 weeks.
But all of smoked sausages can be frozen. Wrap them in paper, place in a zipee bag and freeze.
I also store my sausage in paper, not plastic. Keeps it dry and fresh inside the fridge.
Mechanical needs:
1 good hand or electric food grinder.
1 manual or electric sausage stuffer.
I mix it all by hand. Using a machine can make the meat too liquid in my opinion.
1 large smoker. See photo below of mine. It is a gas smoker.
1 double sensor thermometer.
What you will need:
30 to 35mm hog casings
4 lb or pork butt
2 lb or pork shoulder or pork loin
1 lb of pork belly, bacon, or pork ribs
1 fresh garlic clove and 2 tsp of powder garlic
2 tsp of dried marjoram
2 tsp of ground black pepper
2 tsp of sea salt or kosher salt
1 tsp of pink salt number 1, you need this if you smoke. If you just cook your sausage you do not need it. Smoking is slow.
1 tsp of white pepper if you have some
1.5 tsp of red paprika, some people do not like that but I do. Gives it a more reddish tint and if you use sweet paprika it will not make it spicy
1 cup of ice cold water.
Step 1:
Grinding and chilling.
I do this one to two days before stuffing and smoking. The meat needs to marinate in the fridge. And you can rest in between.
Grind the fat meat first, so the pork belly or the ribs. This way your next meat will clean your grinder blades from the fat.
Use a medium grinder plate, 4.5mm, 3/16 to 6mm, 1/4. My Amazon grinder does the job like a charm. It's a beast. Loud, but does the job. If you want to try what I did, you can hand cut some of the super lean meat by hand. Not much, maybe just 10% to 15% of the whole batch. This way you will have more solid chunks inside the sausage. It takes a bit more but the reward...you can judge by looking at the photos below. I posted some from different grind sizes and the hand cut sausage as well.
Use a large bowl that can fit all your meat in it. Add the salt to the 1 cup of ice cold water, both kosher and pink salt, and mix it well. Set to the side.
Now add all the seasonings including the pressed garlic clove. Mix just a little. Now add the ice cold water with the salts in it and get busy. Here comes the important part that will shape the texture of your sausage.
You want to work your batch by hand, no more than 25 to 30 min. Pinch, squash and mix all of the meat well. If more water is needed add some. You want a slightly wet texture, but not too wet. There is a test you can do to see when it is ready. Take a meatball size of meat and slap it against your open hand while upside down. If the meat sticks and stays without falling down, you are done. The meat is mixed. You will already smell the seasoning mixing with the meat, the aroma will intensify.
Now you need to cover it and stick in a fridge for 24 to 48 hours to marinate.
When you pull it out and open you will be surprised how good it smells. Do not worry if it looks dark on top, and was red when you put it in. That is normal. You are ready for stuffing.
Step 2:
Stuffing the goods.
Start early, this takes time. I was stuck once till 2:30am waiting for my sausage to finish.
Calculate this: stuffing will take you 1 hour. Drying will take 2 to 4 hours. Smoking will take 4 hours. Resting will take 30min. Poaching will take 1 to 1.5 hours. Then you need to hang them and let them set and dry. That can be unsupervised overnight. But the rest you need to attend to in person.
You are now ready to stuff your sausages, wohooo. Excited, right? I was. As a kid i helped my dad but that was over 35 years ago. So I was excited. Then I realized it is good to have help when you have a manual sausage stuffer.....so I hired my 13 year old to help me out. You want both hands when it comes out to control the flow and the firmness of the sausage.
I use 32mm casings. I prepare them by washing them in cold water, inside and outside, to remove any salt from the brine it came with. Then I place it in a bowl with luke warm water to soften them up.
Use some olive oil on your funnel to make the casings go on easier. See photos of the casings on the funnel below.
For this size of a batch you might need 3 strands of casings. Yeah, they are looooong.
At this time I also preheat my smoker to 120-130 without any wood. And DO NOT USE the water pan. You can use it with some foil in it to collect any drippings, but do not put any water in it when smoking sausages. This is dry smoking. We are not making a roast beef.
Get the casings onto the funnel, load your stuffer and start cranking. When you start do not tie the casing, leave it open so the air can escape out of the first crank. I leave about 3 inches in the front, then start pushing out the meat. Once the sausage gets filled and the air is gone I tie a know and keep going. You want a firm texture. If you have air pockets it will not stick together. But do not panic. If you have loose sausage you can always fix it later by hand. But you do not want them super hard as it might burst the casing. If that happens just remove excess meat and tie some knots on both ends. So you will end up with a few shorter sausages, big deal.
Now hang your sausages by any way you can, I use S hooks. They need to dry and set. This can be 2 to 4 hours.
I usually hang them for an hour then transfer to the smoker and let them dry there for another hour at low heat, 120F.
Once that is done it is time to smoke'em
Step 3:
Smoking.
The longest part....
Hang or lay your sausages inside the smoker. Make sure they do not touch, will leave a mark. Plus you want the smoke to reach every inch of your sausages.
I start with an hour or so just finishing my drying time, so no smoke yet.
Then I add my wood and let it smoke. You should know your smoker by now so your own info goes here. I preffer cherry and apple wood. I try to keep the temp low, 120F for as long as possible but my smoker will go up to 140-150 quick. So I need to vent. I check the temp every few minutes and set my alarm on it. 4 hours is standard smoking time. Last hour I do let it go up to 150-160F.
Still I only get anywhere form 100-120F max internal temp. So far less than 155F you want to be when done.
That is why you poach, in the next step.
When 4 hours are up, you can smoke longer if you want, pull out the sausages and let them rest hanging in the kitchen for no more than 15 min. Or you will loose heat.
Off to next step....
Step 4:
Poaching.
Preheat a LARGE pot with hot water that is around 170F. I usually put some bay leaves and garlic cloves with all spice in the water.
Dip the sausages in the hot water with a thermometer stuck in one of them. Keep checking the temp of the water as well. DO NOT LET IT BOIL!!!
This can take 30 to 60min, depending on what temp they had when you took them out of the smoker.
When they get to 155-160 they are done.
Next step I do is to chill them as fast as I can. I do this by preparing an ice bath in my sink. Do not judge. It is the biggest pot I have....
Fill it with cold water and drop a lot of ice cubes in it.
Dip the sausages completly and swirl them around. Helps to chill them faster.
This does not take long, you can feel with your hand after about 10 min that they have gone cold.
I dip them for maybe 15 to max 20 min.
When done, pull them out, pat dry them with paper towels and hang up to set. I leave them hanging overnight and remove them in the morning.
That is it. You just became a Kielbasa maker. You will have more friends and more beer buddies than you ever imagined.
Store the sausages wrapped in paper, absorbs the moisture.
They are mainly for sandwiches as they slice super nice, see photos below. But I have used them in Bigos, Hunter Stew, fried them with eggs and grilled over fire. With lots of mustard, you need mustard. No Polish Kielbasa is complete without good mustard.
Below are some photos from start to finish. At the end there are some different variations of the sausages, you can see by the cuts.
The light one is the poached only soup sausage. Or for grilling.
Sky is the limit.
Hope you enjoyed my rantings and try this at home. If you do, let me know how it went.
Long Live The Kielbasa!
