Okay, you guys were a great help in my first 2 attempts at sausage so I think I’m brave enough to step into the real reason I entered sausage making. Slovenian & Polish sausage.
Grew up eating Slovenian Sausage and Polish sausage from many sausage shops in NE Ohio and it is by far one of my favorite foods. Yes, I now realize these names are very generic terms but that is what they are called here. So many great places for excellent examples of both around these parts as I mentioned in another post. R&D’s, Raddells, State St. Meats, Petes Meats, Rudy’s, Jaworskis, Trumbull County Meat Locker. I’m sure many more, these are just what I’m familiar with and like. All have their own slight differences but all with the same main flavors(garlic, pepper, smoke and IDK but that’s what this journey is all about?). I would recommend them all.
So now after 50 + years of eating it it’s time for me to figure out how to make it. After some deep diving, mostly from here and the Polish Site I have decided to start with the most simple recipe for what I call Slovenian sausage and then make some additions to half the batch to make Polish. Quite frankly, in these parts, they both taste very similar to me but Slovenian are in links and Polish is in ropes.
The base recipe is from Devo on the Polish Site. Hell, I loved Devo way back in the day and the Mothersbaugh bros. are from Akron so I thought this was perfect starting point.
An interesting note in his recipe is to cook the garlic in oil and water before adding it to the sausage.(Which I would not do again, btw)
Once again, thanks to SmokinEdge for emphasizing the conversion to grams. Can’t emphasize how much that has helped. I now have his words in my head every time I begin, in my Dad’s voice of course, “No Cups or Spoons”. It is so great to just add up all the meat I have available rather than weigh out 5, 10 or 15 lbs cause, What do you do with the rest????? Just take up room in the freezer.
From the base recipe I made test patties over 3 days with different spices found in different recipes. What I found was that I needed waay more garlic and a bit less salt. I did stray from the voice in my head and added an entire head of garlic to the mix without weighing it. I know, I know. Hey, this is just the first step in my quest.
Here are the results.
It was much warmer when I smoked these and I didn't have enough room in my treager for the 17lbs I made so I also used my big chief. As you can see, I got some hot spots in the Big Chief. The taste was almost there but I will need many more attempts to get this exactly to my liking. Besides the uneven smoke, I found out that to get the taste I am used to I will need a boatload more garlic. Also, as you can see, I still need practice stuffing. Very inconsistent Some real fatties and some slim ropes.
Grew up eating Slovenian Sausage and Polish sausage from many sausage shops in NE Ohio and it is by far one of my favorite foods. Yes, I now realize these names are very generic terms but that is what they are called here. So many great places for excellent examples of both around these parts as I mentioned in another post. R&D’s, Raddells, State St. Meats, Petes Meats, Rudy’s, Jaworskis, Trumbull County Meat Locker. I’m sure many more, these are just what I’m familiar with and like. All have their own slight differences but all with the same main flavors(garlic, pepper, smoke and IDK but that’s what this journey is all about?). I would recommend them all.
So now after 50 + years of eating it it’s time for me to figure out how to make it. After some deep diving, mostly from here and the Polish Site I have decided to start with the most simple recipe for what I call Slovenian sausage and then make some additions to half the batch to make Polish. Quite frankly, in these parts, they both taste very similar to me but Slovenian are in links and Polish is in ropes.
The base recipe is from Devo on the Polish Site. Hell, I loved Devo way back in the day and the Mothersbaugh bros. are from Akron so I thought this was perfect starting point.
An interesting note in his recipe is to cook the garlic in oil and water before adding it to the sausage.(Which I would not do again, btw)
Once again, thanks to SmokinEdge for emphasizing the conversion to grams. Can’t emphasize how much that has helped. I now have his words in my head every time I begin, in my Dad’s voice of course, “No Cups or Spoons”. It is so great to just add up all the meat I have available rather than weigh out 5, 10 or 15 lbs cause, What do you do with the rest????? Just take up room in the freezer.
From the base recipe I made test patties over 3 days with different spices found in different recipes. What I found was that I needed waay more garlic and a bit less salt. I did stray from the voice in my head and added an entire head of garlic to the mix without weighing it. I know, I know. Hey, this is just the first step in my quest.
Here are the results.
It was much warmer when I smoked these and I didn't have enough room in my treager for the 17lbs I made so I also used my big chief. As you can see, I got some hot spots in the Big Chief. The taste was almost there but I will need many more attempts to get this exactly to my liking. Besides the uneven smoke, I found out that to get the taste I am used to I will need a boatload more garlic. Also, as you can see, I still need practice stuffing. Very inconsistent Some real fatties and some slim ropes.
