SLOVAK SAUSAGES

FROM ČAKLOV EASTERN SLOVAKIA

Two things I always wanted to know how to make were: home made wine and sausages. I am a firm believer of learning from someone that knows, than from a book. As the one that knows will familiarize you only with the important things and you wont waste time by reading a 300 page book on how to make 4 gallons of wine, otherwise you may just go to the liquor store and buy it. The same goes for sausages. Many of our friends are making home wine and home sausages. I always liked to eat them and drink the wine, but I was never brave enough to venture into this unknown culinary area. With Lubos Demcak's help I ventured into both.  Late last October I phoned Lubos to give me little bit of an advice about wine making. He explained the important things: what to do, what not to do. I bought 4 gallons of red and 4 gallons of white juice, the wine was not bad. I am now doing my fourth batch and it's getting better with every new batch. I can't understand why I didn't ask him earlier.

During this lent Lubos mentioned that he was going to make some sausages for Easter. I have asked him if I could participate. So one evening we all got together: Lubos, Maria, his visiting sister Helenka and his brother Jozef, at Lobos house. We have pealed and ground at least quart of garlic cloves, Hand ground pork, some moose and deer, added spices and mix it all well together and than through the grinder's special attachment we stuffed the mixture into natural casings. Lubos does have huge smoke house in his back yard, so he smoked them for few days and we had them Easter Sunday. They are delicious. So finally after all these years I have learned how to make sausages. Many thanks Lubos.

Here is the recipe for 

sausages from ČAKLOV

20 pounds of meat. You could use just pork or mixture of pork and beef, or pork, beef and game if you are a hunter ore have good friends as we have that hunt. 1/2 pound of table salt, 5 ounces of ground black pepper, 2 ounces of red paprika, couple of spoons of ground caraway seeds, 2 ounces of hot red paprika if you want your sausages a bit hot.
Grind the meat in electric or manual meat grinder, not too fine not too coarse. Mix in all ingredients and let sit for an hour. Untangle the natural casings and install sausage attachment on your grinder. Start putting the mixture trough the grinder again, this time without the meat grinder knife. Slowly fill the casings. After you have filled all the mixture to casings, twist the sausages in the length you want, put them in the smoker and smoke for couple of days. The smoked sausages should be stored in a freezer and cooked well or barbecued prior to eating. They are delicious.

Many Slovak families living in the villages still breed pigs for their own consumption. Most of the pigs are slaughtered in early December. I wasn't too sure about this, so I have just called Mrs. Lunter, Maria Demcak's Grandmother from Telgart and she told me that the pigs were slaughtered by December 15 and the next slaughter was during Fasiangy, time after New Year and before the Lent. After they made the sausages, hurky or jaternice (sorry I don't know the English word), all of the meat and bacon were smoked. The procedure with meat was that they put it all in a trough and pored salt over it. The meat would let out a brine and they would pour it over the meat for a week or two and then smoke it. In the old days the chimneys on the houses were rare due to taxation of the chimneys and the attic used to serve as the smoke house. Later on, when they built chimneys in the houses they divert the smoke through the attic to smoke the sausages, ham, bacon, hurky, and meat. Now many people in Telgart have smoke houses in their back yards and there are still some houses without the chimneys and their attics are used by different people from the village without smoke houses. All I can say is that making the sausages is much harder than eating them, but we never realize it until we venture into making them.

GO TO EASTER TRADITIONS

GO TO RECIPE CORNER

Published in the Slovak Heritage Live newsletter Volume 3, No. 2, Summer 1995
Copyright © Vladimir Linder 1995 
3804 Yale Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5C 1P6
The above article may not be copied, reproduced, republished, or redistributed by any means including electronic, without the express written permission of Vladimir Linder. All rights reserved.