Meats and Sausages
Mysliwska - Hunter’s Sausage
Hunter’s Sausage is popular in many countries, for example in Germany it is called Jadgwurst and in Italy Cacciatore. Polish Mysliwska Sausage (Hunter’s Sausage) is made of pork and beef. Hunting always was a popular sport in Poland practiced originally by the nobility and even then by only well to do people. A hunter carried a big hunting bag where he kept the necessary tools, honey wine and food that had to last for a number of days. Mysliwska Sausage was a relatively short, heavily smoked sausage semi-dry sausage that would make an ideal food or snack in those circumstances. Adding beef, prolonged smoking and juniper berries give the sausage its unique character and color. Unlike most sausages, Mysliwska sausage after smoking is baked in a smokehouse.
| Meats | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| pork, lean | 600 g | 1.32 lb. |
| pork, semi-fat | 300 | 0.66 lb |
| beef, lean | 100 g | 0.22 lb. |
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of meat
| salt | 18 g | 3 tsp. |
| Cure #1 | 2.5 g | ½ tsp. |
| pepper | 2.0 g | 1 tsp. |
| garlic | 3.5 g | 1 clove |
| juniper | 1.0 g | ½ tsp. |
| cold water | 100 ml | ⅜ cup |
Instructions
- Grind lean pork with ½” (13 mm) plate, fat pork with ¼” or ⅜” (8 mm) plate. Grind beef twice through ⅛” (2 - 3 mm) plate.
- Add 20-25% of cold water in relation to the weight of the beef (about 1½ tablespoon) into the ground beef and mix well with remaining ingredients (juniper, garlic and pepper). Mix all pork together until the meat becomes glutinous. Finally mix everything together adding remaining water.
- Stuff mixture into 32 mm hog casings and form 7 - 8” (18-20 cm) links.
- Hang sausages at room temperature for 2 hours. Sausage is hot smoked in a few distinct stages:
- a. at about 122º F (50º C) for 80-90 min. You can keep on increasing the smoking temperature gradually up to 176º F (80º C), b. at 176 - 194º F (80 - 90º C) for 25 min until the internal temperature of 154 - 158º F (68 - 70º C) is reached. The color of the sausage should be brown. Though the above listed cooking temperatures might seem to be high, the sausage will stay at them at few minutes only and the inside should only reach 154 - 158º F. Mysliwska sausage is somewhat baked on the outside. The sausage is done and ready to eat.
- In the past the following steps were added: the sausage was air-cooled at room temperature to 86º F (30º C) inside temperature. It hung on smoke sticks in the room until the next day allowing more moisture to escape from inside. The sausage was smoked again the next day with warm smoke, 86º F (30º C) from 3 - 12 hours until it developed the dark brown color. The sausage was stored at 60º - 65º F (16º - 18º C), in a dark place for 6 - 8 days (until the sausage obtained 60 - 65 % of its initial weight). The finished product was the dry sausage that did not have to be refrigerated.
