Kiełbasa lisiecka

Appearance & taste

The sausage is shaped into a ring that follows the natural curve of the casing. The ring is on average 35 to 40 cm long, the sausage on average 52 mm thick and round or oval in cross-section. On the outside it is dark brown, as is typical of naturally smoked products; the surface is smooth, shiny, slightly wrinkled and feels dry.

When cut, the embedded pieces of meat are clearly visible. They are naturally light pink, and the filling around them is a slightly darker pink with a brownish tinge. The sausage is compact and firm. It has a distinctive taste of seasoned pork, with a pinch of pepper, a garlic aroma and salt, and an unmistakable smell.

The sausage is sold as a whole ring; each ring carries its own label in the form of a band. Sausage cut into pieces or slices must be vacuum-packed and then carries a sticker with the name and the PGI symbol.

Production

The meat comes from pig half-carcasses of trade class E with a lean meat content of 55 to 60 %. It is only stored and transported chilled at −1 to +4 °C and must not be frozen. 85 % of the raw materials are muscle meat from the ham without fat, tendons and connective tissue; two very dark ham muscles, including the one called “myszka”, are left out because they would spoil the traditional appearance. 10 % is meat from ham and shoulder with less than 50 % fat, 5 % meat from the front and rear knuckle. For every 100 kg there are 1.5 kg of curing salt, 400 g of fresh garlic and 300 g of ground white pepper, of which up to 50 g is black.

The meat is removed from the ham 48 to 120 hours after slaughter. The muscle meat is cut into cubes of 3 to 5 cm, and all three kinds of meat are dry-cured separately for 2 to 4 days at 4 to 6 °C. Then the cubes are left whole, the second meat is minced to 10 mm and the knuckle meat with garlic and pepper to 3 mm. The diced meat is mixed first until it binds well, then the rest is added; up to 5 % water is permitted.

The mixture is stuffed tightly into beef runners or protein casings of 52 mm calibre, shaped into rings and closed with sausage skewers or twine. After hanging for about 2 hours in a warm, airy place, the rings go into traditional smokehouses, under which alder, beech or fruit-tree wood burns. In one continuous process they are dried, smoked and roasted there for 3.5 to 4.5 hours and then cooled to 18 °C at 85 to 90 % humidity.

Origin & history

The area comprises the municipalities of Czernichów and Liszki in the district of Kraków. Since the 17th century, Polish towns had free markets, “wolnice”, at which craftsmen without a guild were allowed to sell; sources from 1930 report that butchers from the villages around Kraków offered their goods there, many from the area around Liszki and Czernichów. Electoral rolls from 1865, 1867 and 1870 already name butchers from these places.

A manuscript from 1894 counts 87 butchers in what was then the district of Kraków: 35 in the area of today’s city of Kraków, which at the time had about 70,000 inhabitants, and 34 in villages of the municipalities of Liszki and Czernichów. From the middle of the 19th century, these two municipalities were thus the second centre of sausage making in the district. During the Second World War, the butchers sold their sausages illegally despite the threat of confiscation and punishment, and so kept the tradition alive. In 1949, 18 of the 45 private butchers in the district of Kraków worked in these municipalities.

According to the specification, the sausage emerged in the 1930s from the coarse Kraków sausage, following a recipe of the local butchers that was secret at the time. During the period of the planned economy, the butchers made it for 50 years in a cooperative sausage factory in Liszki. After 1989, new private butcher’s shops were set up that continue its production.