Make Polish Wedding Sausage: Traditional Recipe, Modern Twist

Kielbasa is an integral part of Poland's culture and cuisine. It is the Polish word for sausage and can be smoked, fresh, or cured, and include pork, veal, or any variety of meats. Kielbasa Weselna, or wedding sausage, is a double-smoked pork sausage with a hint of garlic. It was traditionally served at weddings and other important events to sober guests up before they went home.

Making your own kielbasa is not difficult and is well worth the effort. The preparation is very easy. All you need to do is grind meat and fat, add spices and mix, stuff into casings, and smoke. The choice of meat is important, so pick the best and freshest meat you can. You will also need a good meat grinder and sausage stuffer.

Choosing the right meat

When selecting your meat, look for cuts with a good amount of fat marbling. Fat is essential for a juicy, flavourful sausage. If the meat is too lean, your sausage may turn out dry and crumbly. You can also add pork belly or back fat to increase the fat content.

It is best to grind the meat yourself, as this will give you more control over the texture of your sausage. Grind the meat and fat together on a medium grinder plate (4.5mm to 6mm). Grinding it too fine will result in a mushy texture. If you plan on making sausages regularly, invest in a good commercial-quality meat grinder, as it will make the process much faster and easier.

Once you have ground the meat, mix in your spices and other flavourings. Common ingredients in Polish wedding sausage include garlic, juniper, marjoram, salt, and pepper. You can also add other herbs and spices to suit your taste.

After mixing, it is important to stuff the sausage mixture into casings. Natural hog casings are a good option and are available at most grocery stores. When stuffing, be careful not to overfill, as this can cause the casings to burst. The sausages should feel slightly firm but not too tight.

Grinding the meat

When grinding the meat, use a medium grinder plate with hole sizes ranging from 4.5mm (3/16") to 6mm (1/4"). Avoid grinding the meat too finely, as this will result in a sausage with a less desirable texture. If you plan on making sausages regularly, invest in a good commercial-quality meat grinder, as it will make the task faster and easier. A good grinder will also provide a cleaner grind without squishing the meat or smearing the fat.

Before grinding, cut the meat into strips or chunks of approximately 2" in size. This size will feed more easily into the grinder and help achieve a better texture. Keep the meat cold during grinding, as this will make the process easier and help prevent the fat from smearing. If your meat has been sitting at room temperature, consider placing it in the freezer for about 30 minutes to an hour before grinding to firm it up.

If you are using a grinder attachment for a stand mixer, be aware that these are generally not designed for stuffing sausages and may not produce satisfactory results.

Once the meat is ground, mix in the ice water and all the spices, ensuring that they are well incorporated. At this point, the sausage meat is ready to be stuffed into casings.

Adding spices

Spices are what make kielbasa taste so good. The choice of spices is very important and will determine the final flavor of your sausage. The good news is that you can be quite flexible with your choice of spices.

The most popular spices used in Polish sausage are garlic, marjoram, black pepper, and juniper berries. Garlic is a must, in my opinion. It gives sausage a very nice, pungent flavor. I like to use a lot of it, about 5g per kg of meat. If you like garlic but don't like its harshness, zap it in a microwave for about 60 seconds before adding it to the meat.

Marjoram is also very popular in Polish sausage-making. I like it a lot and use about 2g per kg of meat. If you don't have it or don't like it, you can substitute it with oregano, about half the amount of marjoram.

Black pepper is another very popular spice. I like to use a lot of it, about 1% of the meat weight. I use coarse ground pepper.

Juniper berries are used in hunter's sausage. They give a very nice, piney flavor. I like to use about 0.5% of the meat weight.

Other spices that are used in Polish sausage-making include allspice, caraway, and coriander.

Stuffing the meat into casings

Stuffing meat into casings is a tedious task but it's not difficult. You can use a dedicated sausage stuffer or a meat grinder with a sausage-stuffing attachment. I've tried both and prefer a dedicated sausage stuffer. I've tried a few and like the LEM Products 5 Pound Stainless Steel Vertical Sausage Stuffer the best. It's perfect in every respect.

I like to use natural hog casings, which are available at pretty much any grocery store's meat counter. They don't usually have them on display, but ask and they will be happy to sell them to you. If that fails, they are available for purchasing online too: Hog Home Pack Sausage Casings 32mm.

When stuffing your sausages try not to stuff too tight as that may result in burst casings. You want the sausages to feel slightly firm, but not too tight.

When the time came to replace my consumer-grade meat grinder I settled on a LEM Products Stainless Steel #8 Meat Grinder and could not be happier with it. At 36 lbs, it's a bit heavy but quite manageable even for my wife to handle when she needs to use it and I am not around. But, boy, can it grind! It grinds just about anything with ease and speed. For example, it can grind 10-15 lbs of meat in a matter of 2 minutes. It puts a smile on my face every time I use it. It's built like a tank and I have a feeling I will never have to buy another grinder.

Smoking the sausage

There are many ways to go about smoke generation, from DIY solutions (a tin can with a handful of wood chips) to inexpensive pre-made devices like the A-MAZE-N Pellet Smoker or its sibling A-MAZE-N Pellet Tube Smoker, to fairly expensive ones like the Smoke Daddy Smoke Generator.

The key to smoking kielbasa is keeping the temperature low. If you raise the temperature too high, the fat will start melting and you will end up with holes in the sausage. It's best to smoke this sausage at around 140F. If you can't go that low, try 150F or 160F max. You may raise the temperature slightly to 170-175F at the end of the cooking process for a brief period of time if the internal temperature is not rising to the target internal temperature of 154F.

Sometimes the internal temperature just won't rise and you may have to go as high as 195F, and that's fine. It does happen every now and again. Better yet, try the poaching method.

The best smoker for smoking sausages is the one that can maintain a low enough temperature. A lot of people successfully use electric smokers, like the very popular Masterbuilt Electric Digital Smoker, which some consider to be the best value for home sausage making.

If you have a propane smoker and have trouble maintaining a low enough temperature for smoking sausages, you will need to install a needle valve. Or you can buy a pre-made assembly that comes with the needle valve already installed, like the Bayou Classic M5HPR-1 10 PSI Hose, Regulator, Valve Assembly. Before you buy, make sure the assembly is compatible with the burner in your smoker.

When I smoke kielbasa even at temperatures not exceeding 170-175F I sometimes see some fat inevitably melting. When you cut into the sausage while it's still hot, you will see some hollow areas, and juices/melted fat running off.

Let the sausage cool down, then put it in the fridge overnight. Once it is properly chilled, the fat will solidify again and there will be no hollow areas.

You may or may not want to chill your sausage quickly in an ice water bath. If you do that, it will supposedly prevent wrinkling and will make the sausage full and plump. This will make the sausage lose some color but it's not bad as I initially thought. I now finish cooking my kielbasa by poaching then give it a cold shower to cool off quickly.

My kielbasa recipe has not changed, this is still the best-tasting kielbasa for me and my family, and I've tried dozens of new very good recipes. What changed is I've finally built my dream smokehouse, and I've been smoking sausages in it like there is no tomorrow. Check out the garlic sausage, beef sticks, Krakowska kielbasa, Lisiecka kielbasa, Andouille sausage, and the traditional Polish kabanos sausage that I made in it. This thing is a beast and performs just like I wanted.

Another thing that has changed is how I now finish cooking my kielbasa. Finishing in the smoker is long and tedious. It may take hours to get kielbasa to 154F internal temperature. By the way, I changed the target internal temperature from 152F to 154F, seeing how many traditional Polish kielbasa recipes use it. I resisted the poaching method for as long as I could. Then I gave up and finally tried it. I am glad I did as I loved it. That's what I do for most of my smoked sausages now.

I use a 36-qt stainless stock pot with a basket. It's as effective and convenient for sausage making as it is for crawfish boils, which our family loves. It easily fits 10 lbs of sausage. The water is heated up to 167F. It takes about 20-30 minutes for 10 lbs of sausage to reach 154F internal temperature. I normally don't have to heat the water during poaching, the burner is off all the time.

The basket makes removing kielbasa, moving it around and giving it a cold shower a breeze.

I don't feel like the sausage is not smoky enough or doesn't have sufficient color. It smells, looks and tastes just as good, but this makes my job so much easier.

Last but not least, in colder months I dry my smoked kielbasa at around 38F-55F in my unheated veranda.

Ideal drying conditions are 52F - 58F and 75% RH. Dried kielbasa has a longer shelf life, and has a richer taste and color.

The kielbasa on the picture above has a finer grind, I used a 4.5mm plate to grind the meat.

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