Biała Kiełbasa

Poland's fresh white sausage of pork seasoned with garlic, pepper, and marjoram, poached or baked for the Easter table and sliced into żurek

Origin: Kraków & Lesser Poland

From the journey of Marjoram.

Biała kiełbasa, white sausage, is white because it is fresh: unsmoked and uncooked, pale pink in its casing, and made to be poached or baked the day it is eaten. It is pork, often with a little veal or beef, seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, and marjoram, and those last two are its whole character. It is a sausage for Easter above all, blessed in the basket of food taken to church on Holy Saturday and eaten on Easter morning, and it goes, sliced, into żurek, the sour rye soup of the same table, which is seasoned with marjoram too. Marjoram and garlic are the seasoning of Polish sausage-making in general, and biała kiełbasa shows the pairing most plainly because there is no smoke to hide behind. It is made in butcher's shops across the country before Easter and in many homes, and it is eaten hot with horseradish and mustard or baked with onions.

Ingredients

Sausage

  • 900 g pork shoulder with some fat, well chilled and diced
  • 200 g veal or lean beef, diced
  • 20 g salt
  • 1 tbsp dried marjoram, rubbed fine
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
  • 1 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
  • 150 ml ice-cold water
  • 3 m natural pork casings, soaked

To Serve

  • 2 tbsp grated horseradish, to serve

Method

  1. Mix the meat with the salt, marjoram, garlic, and pepper and chill for an hour.
  2. Mince through a medium plate, then work in the cold water by hand for 3 minutes until the mixture is sticky.
  3. Fill the casings and twist into rings or links about 20 cm long. Rest in the refrigerator for an hour.
  4. Poach in water just below a simmer, 80°C, for 20 to 25 minutes, until cooked through.
  5. Serve hot with horseradish, or brown the poached sausage in the oven with sliced onion, or slice it into żurek.

Notes

Uncooked sausages keep for two days in the refrigerator and freeze well. The poaching water, flavoured by the sausage, is traditionally used as the base for Easter żurek.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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