Written by Indie John Baptiste
Everyone has things they look forward to in the wintertime, such as sleigh rides, turkey, cards, Christmas movies, and white Christmases. When the cold season arrives, one of the things I look forward to is summer sausages. My family has happy memories and a history of summer sausages, starting with my dad. Maybe our love of sausages is thanks to our Germanic heritage...
The summer sausage, a traditional Christmas delicacy in Southern American families that is often part of gift baskets, was brought to America by German immigrants. Summer sausages consist of meat, such as ham, beef, or venison, and curing salt. They derived their name from the fact that, in the centuries before refrigerators, they would not spoil in the warm months due to being cured. They are usually sliced.
Schinkenwurst is a German ham sausage mixed with bacon, beef, ground pork, meat trimmings, garlic, and spices stuffed into casings. Like the summer sausage, it can be cured via a solution that is rubbed into the ham.
The weisswurst (meaning “white sausage,” because it is made without color-preserving nitrite), made of minced veal and pork back bacon and mildly seasoned with spices such as mace, is associated with Bavaria. The Cinderella of sausages, if you will. They are traditionally supposed to be eaten before the church bells ring at noon! However, in modern times, they are often part of German lunches. A great weisswurt is as white as snow.
Similarly to the weisswurst, farmers would be sure to eat the bratwurst by noon. It is now considered a delicacy. Liverwurst is made from liver.
Saumagen, made of seasoned pork, potatoes, carrots, and onions stuffed in a pig’s stomach, is popular in the Palatinate and was created by farmers during the 18th century.
Germany is not the only European country with sausages! For more than a century, the Czech Republic has produced the špekáčky/špekačky, a combination of pork, bacon, and beef with spices, and traditionally this sausage would be roasted outdoors over an open fire.
The Czech Republic also began making a salami named lovecký salám or lovecká saláma in the winter of the 20th century. It is a popular traditional delicacy made from a mixture of beef and pork with sugar, ground cloves, garlic, ground black pepper, and collagen casings, and is cold-smoked.
Párek v rohlíku consists of little parek sausages inside bread rolls, traditionally topped with ketchup or mustard. Jelito is made from pig’s blood and ground pork, lard, and spices. Grains, or plain white buns, are sometimes included.
Sevnica, a Slovenian town, is known for its sausages, and Slovenia often holds salami competitions. One sausage, the reddish-brown Kranjska klobasa, is a point of pride and one of the most recognizable symbols of Slovenia’s heritage. It is made of the finest pork, hard bacon, pig’s intestine, salt, garlic, and pepper, held together with a wooden skewer. The meat has a pinkish-red color, while the bacon is white. The Kranjska sausage is traditionally eaten with a white bun, mustard, and grated horseradish, and often a vegetable such as sour turnips as well.
In the British Isles, white pudding, which consists of suet or fat, oatmeal or barley, breadcrumbs, and sometimes pork and its liver filled into a sausage casing, is quite popular.
The Western Isles of Scotland boast the Stornoway black pudding (marag dubh). This sausage delicacy, made from pig or beef blood, suet, and oatmeal, arose from crofters. According to producer Kenneth Macleod, desiring to make use of their animals, they would use their blood as well as their stomachs for the pudding’s casing and marry it with oats from the fields to make a meal for their families.
Stornoway black pudding possesses absolutely no artificial colors or preservatives. Charles MacLeod’s has been awarded six Great Taste awards by the Guild of Fine Food. MacLeod’s and Macleod’s black pudding won a Great Taste award as well. (Some of the black pudding’s top producers are MacLeods.)
Norway has a reindeer hot dog, reputed to be sweet and savory. With meat from northern Norway, this hot dog is served in a bun. Pølse med lompe is made from lompe, a flatbread made from potato and wheat flour, wrapped around pølse, a sausage. Toppings include ketchup, potato salad, and shrimp salad.
Pylsur is an Icelandic hot dog made from a free-range lamb sausage and a bun. Blóðmör is made from lamb’s blood and suet, oats, and rye flour, traditionally stuffed in pouches sewn from the stomach of the lamb.
While this is surely not a comprehensive list of the sausages of the European continent, these are some of the dishes that you can dine on during a trip or vacation to Europe, as sausages have quite a history there.
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