Authentic Hungngarian sausage recipe

[Greyham]

Hello chaps,
I appologiese that i do not have more time to get on here but making sausages for a living takes up a lot of my time.do
I am consistantly being asked to make A hungarian sausage by hungarian nationals now living over here.
I have tried many times, but i am struggling to get that authentic taste and texture. I have scoured the internet but all i can find are mediocre recipes.
I think possibly getting really fresh hungarian paprika would be a start...any ideas????
Secondly i do not want a smoked sausage recipe but a fresh hungarian sausage. I already do a Polish Kielbasa that is smoked
Thanks in advance
Greyham

[Ianinfrance]

Hi

I must confess that when I think of top class hungarian sausages, I think of Debrecen sausages. However, I always thought they were a smoked sausage. I've only ever seen one recipe which I'll gladly share with you - even if I've never tried it.

As for the paprika, it's certainly essential to use a top class hungarian paprika, though I'm not sure which of the many types would be best. I suspect that the best known one "edesnemes" (noble-sweet) is not the perfect choice, and it may be better - if you can - to get hold of csemege (excellent, or fine), but if you do get it make sure it's NOT csipos-csemege (hot etc). I don't think it's absolutely essential to get it really fresh, but it should always be kept cool and - especially - in the dark.

Could you ask your clients for a description as to the texture, coarse, fine, etc and if they are sure it's not lightly smoked?

I would love to be able to make some too, so I will be most interested to see what info you get.

[Greyham]

Ianinfrance,
Thanks for a great reply, i wish all could be as informative. With that information i am sure i shall be able to find what i need
Incidentally the texture should be course. that part is not a problem for me as most of my range are.
I see that you are in France........We are re-locating to France this year. Heading toward the Dordogne. I shall be bringing my business with me. Maybe you have useful info you might share.

[grisell]

You have a lot to choose from here (left column).

http://grocceni.com/tor/egyebkol.html#regi:

Find one, and I can help you with a translation if your Hungarian is insufficient.

[the chorizo kid]

maybe i can offer some help. there have to be as many hungarian sausage recipes as there are hungarians, but they all have a few things in common. [i don't claim to be an expert, but my family lived in hungary from 1720 until 1890]
1 # coarse ground pork, at least 20% fat
1 1/4 tsp salt, not kosher [or to taste]
scant 1/4 tsp black pepper
scant 1/4 tsp garlic powder [authentic would be at least 1 clove finely chopped fresh; but don't go to the office for a day or two]
2 tsp sweet hungarian paprika; use 3 if no hot is added [i think szeged is available in supermarkets]
1 tsp hot hungarian paprika [use less of this if you do not like spicy]
2 oz water
mix and stuff [keeps 2-3 days in fridge]; parboil and gently fry [good with chopped raw onions]
to vary, try adding scant 1/8 tsp ground cloves to above mixture; or,
scant 1/4 tsp ground allspice, with or without some ground caraway
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
you may have a lord, you may have a king
but the man to fear is the tax collector
sumerian 2200 BC

[Ianinfrance]

Hi Greyham

Grisell said

You have a lot to choose from here (left column).

http://grocceni.com/tor/egyebkol.html#regi:

Find one, and I can help you with a translation if your Hungarian is insufficient.

I was just about to say that I'd spent some time looking and found not much at all, when I had a last look and this is what I discovered:-

The important thing to do is to click on the picture of the sausages (I looked at the links below and they were pretty useless).

A new page opens and in it you'll see

Kolbászkészítés
Német, sváb receptek
# Nürnbergi kolbászkák

Spanyol receptek
Görög receptek
Magyar receptek
Citromos kolbászreceptek
Borsos kolbászreceptek
Köményes kolbászreceptek
Fokhagymás kolbászreceptek
Egyéb adalékanyagokkal
Grillkolbászok

The link to go for is the 6th one down "Magyar receptek" (hungarian recipes). That leads to:-

Állami Gazdasági kolbász (Szekszárd 1971) (State Farm sausage)
Friss kolbász 1. (Fresh sausage 1)
Friss kolbász 2. (etc)
Friss kolbász 3.
Magyar kolbászcsiga (snail - yes, really)
Kolbászgolyók (Sausage balls - I hope)
Pulykakolbász (Turkey)
Friss kolbász 4. (Fresh sausage 4-7)
Friss kolbász 5.
Friss kolbász 6.
Friss kolbász 7.

My hungarian isn't good enough to translate everything, but as an example in the recipe #4
the ingredients are
2 kg pork shoulder,
3 cloves garlic,
5 g salt
1 tsp ground pepper,
1 tsp ground caraway,
30 gm paprika

That should give you a clue for the ingredients in the other recipes. However here are a few other words that might be useful.

Bors is pepper, feher is white. tojás are eggs, tejszín is cream, tej is milķ, gomba is mushrooms, vörösbor is red wine, szegfûbors is allspice.

zsír szalonna is fat (VERY) bacon. When I was in Budapest market, they had great slabs of back fat, either smoked or salted and covered with paprika, and it's quite possible this is what's meant. If not, then it will be a heavily smoked and very fatty bacon. If you can get some very fat pork belly and bacon it, smoking it heavily - possible even hot smoking it, I think you'll get close to the right stuff. The more I think about this, the more I suspect that's been what was missing from your attempts.

If you copy and paste the recipes into Google translate http://translate.google.com/#, you will see that you can understand them pretty well.
=============
When you said you are relocating to the Dordogne, is that to the department? I live one department to the East of that, in the Correze, so if I can be of help don't hesitate to send me a pm.

[grisell]

I'm really impressed!

Some remarks:
Kolbászcsiga is not 'snail sausage', it's 'sausage snail' (since it's not twisted or tied).
Zsír szalonna is belly bacon, but it isn't necessarily smoked, although this is the usual treatment.
Google translate makes some mistakes: kömény means caraway, not cumin!
The unit dkg is decagram = 10 grams.

GoogleTranslate makes a good job, but Hungarian is so complicated semantically that it sometimes gets unintelligible. In this case, I'll be glad to be at your service!

[grisell]

Ianinfrance, I didn't mean to be sarcastic! It was totally unintentional! Sorry!

[Ianinfrance]

Hi Grisell,

First - I didn't take your remarks as being sarcastic. In fact, being half hungarian, and having visited the country several times, i am ashamed at how little I understand. That said, as you point out, Hungarian is a language for which we have absolutely no points of reference.

In the recipe #4 whose ingredients I gave, I did in fact automatically put the right weight of paprika, despite Google. Dkg is used a lot in recipes from there and you were right to point it out. I sent my message pretty late, and as you can imagine, it took a long time, and I got a bit impatient!!

Thanks for putting me right over my snail gaffe. I did wonder whether in fact it wasn't that (presented like a cumberland sausage) but couldn't be fagged to go and look... Quelle honte.

Thanks also for confirming what I said about the Zsír szalonna being fat bacon rather than fresh belly of pork. I know the word Zsir very well, because Disznozsir is pork fat (lard) and is the traditional fat used in Hungary for most jobs.

As you may have noticed, I did in fact translate kömény by caraway, completely automatically, and you're absolutely right to point out that Google gets it wrong. But the same could be said of the French who very often use the word "cumin" when they mean the spice caraway (carvi). As you can imagine, I sometimes (as a pig ignorant Brit) get treated with some disdain when I point out that an Alsacian recipe does NOT use cumin with choucroute but carvi.

There are quite a few other "faux amis" between Hungarian and English recipes. For example I've often seen English translations of recipes calling for parsnip, which is virtually unknown there. They would ALWAYS use hamburg (or turnip rooted) parsley, which is very commonly used in Hungary (petrezselyemzöld).


finally, to make amends, here's the ingredients for the hungarian version of a "cumberland shape" sausage

First the Google version
"
Hungarian to English translation
5 kg of pork
1 kg of fat bacon
1 cup black pepper (ground)
3.5 g of garlic,
3 g cumin,
8 cup paprika (sweet)
1 cup green pepper (hot)
12 g salt."

and now the corrected version

5 kg of pork
1 kg of fat bacon
10 g black pepper (ground)
35 g garlic, (corrected from 3.5 g)
3 g caraway
80 gm paprika (sweet)
10 gm paprika (hot)
120 g salt.

That's a lot of salt... 25 g per kilo.

Anyway... I'm tempted to have a bash at this when I get home. I'll have some pretty fat (unsmoked) bacon ready on the 24th.

Google CAN translate the method, but it really helps if you have some idea of a) what you're trying to make, and b) how Hungarian is put together, because sometimes you need to separate words for Google to make sense of them.

You clean and crush the garlic cloves, and mince the meats through the fine disk. Then you mix everything together, kneading well. Finally stuff into pigs casings. It may be tied into links before coiling.

I must dash. We're off to eat crepes for lunch.

Quantity of garlic corrected 2/3/10

[the chorizo kid]

i have to pipe in here. the two internet recipes given both call for a substantial amount of caraway. caraway is the backbone of a german bratwurst [just like marjoram is the backbone of a polish sauage]. however, i do NOT think that a hungarian sausage is simply a german sausage with paprika added. i have tried this and the result was somewhat bitter. i made a specific suggestion and that is to start with a small amount of ground cloves. try it. i think you will find it a good result. allspice is the next step for variety. some caraway plus the allspice adds a depth, but too much makes it bitter. for instance, a hungarian headcheese has allspice and a smal amount of carawy seeds, and therefore is not as sweet as a hungarian sausage.
finally, i do not believe that cumin is an authentic hungarian ingredient. as i said, there are as many recipes out there as there are hungarians. however, the authentic basic sauage recipe is what i gave you. nothing wrong with experimenting by adding sweet spices [coumin, coriander, fenugreek, cardamon, mace etc] but that is not an authentic sausage. it might be better for your particular taste, but the original question asked for a good authentic recipe.

[Ianinfrance]

Hi T.C.K.,

you said:-

the two internet recipes given both call for a substantial amount of caraway. caraway is the backbone of a german bratwurst [just like marjoram is the backbone of a polish sausage].

Yes indeed. And I have to admit that i was a little surprised. That said, the recipe that I based my way of doing Szekely Gulyas called for 5 times as much as I use and I find the quantity I use to be quite enough.

I think it's fair to say that caraway is used a lot in Hungarian and often in quantities way more than I'd ever think reasonable. While I'd not disagree with you about marjoram and polish sausages, (I don't know enough about the cuisine) I do know that it's also used a LOT in Hungarian cooking, to the extent that the oldest recipes call for marjoram and NO paprika at all, since they date from long before its arrival in Europe. The Cumin business is merely a mistranslation, and it's not called for in the recipes.

I made a specific suggestion and that is to start with a small amount of ground cloves. try it. I think you will find it a good result.

I like that idea very much. It will play the same role as the tiny amount of cinnamon that I use in my chile - just to "round out" the flavours.

but the original question asked for a good authentic recipe.

Indeed, which is why Grisell posted that link to recipes that are in Hungarian, and on a Hungarian website and why I chose the recipes said to be Hungarian, rather than Serbian, German, or others, all of which were present too.

Of course - there's no guarantee that they'll be any good, any more than one can be sure that American or British recipes found at random on an American or British website will be good!

[grisell]

I agree with Ianinfrance. I have about 10 Hungarian cookbooks, most of which are from Hungary and in Hungarian language. I also worked under a Hungarian head chef (who had been chef for 10 years at Gundel Hotel in Budapest). We talked and practiced a lot of traditional Hungarian cuisine. I think it's fair to say that I can cook Hungarian food. I'll sum up what I know about use of some spices in Hungary:

Caraway - extremely often
Paprika - extremely often
Garlic - very often
Marjoram - often
White/black pepper - seldom
Chili/hot paprika - seldom
Cumin - never seen
Cloves - never seen
Allspice - never seen

This applies to traditional cuisine of course.
Hungary never really had any dependencies which could have influenced the selection of spices, as is the fact with e.g. Great Britain (curry), Holland (cloves) and Sweden (allspice).
How paprika made its way to Hungary is a long story, though.
I can agree that caraway can get a little bitter if used excessively. I usually halve the amount when cooking Hungarian.

[Greyham]

Well gentlemen there is plenty of food for thought amongst that lot thanks to all for the input.
I shall be setting to it tomorrow i am however, going to be using both pork and short rib as the rib has good fat and adds good flavor. I will also after a change of heart, be smoking a quantity for camparison.
I shall let you all know how it goes.

[grisell]

In that case, may I also recommend my Gyulai? One of the best batches I've ever made. It's on the right in the pictures below:





And the recipe is here:

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=6213

It calls for a lot of garlic. You can reduce it if you don't like that.

[Ianinfrance]

Hi Greyham,

I shall be setting to it tomorrow i am however, going to be using both pork and short rib as the rib has good fat and adds good flavor. I will also after a change of heart, be smoking a quantity for camparison.
I shall let you all know how it goes.

Please do. In the meantime, I'm going to look through those recipes and see which one I like the look of, and make a 1/2 batch or so. I think I shall see if I can find a decent recipe for Debrecenikolbasz as well. That's the sausage that has about the best reputation in Hungary.

Grisell, thanks for your comments. I've never worked in Hungary, but not only have I eaten there with my gluttonous (Hungarian) uncle on several occasions, but learnt from him how to make some of the most traditional food from the country. I've promised myself a great dish of Erdelyi rakottkaposzta when I get home, and before it gets too warm!