Kiełbasa piaszczańska

Appearance & taste

The sausage is light brown to cherry red on the outside and is in a protein casing. It is 25 to 45 cm long and, depending on the casing, 35 to 50 mm in diameter. When cut, larger pieces of meat of about 2 cm can be seen at the edge, light to dark pink, surrounded by a lighter filling. The consistency is firm.

The taste and smell are shaped by the herbs of the marinade and by smoking, with clearly noticeable juniper. Well smoked, the sausage keeps for up to a month. It is sold loose in pieces or vacuum-packed.

Production

The meat comes from pig half-carcasses with a lean meat content of 55 to 60 %; meat from sows and boars is not permitted, nor is deep-frozen meat. It is obtained 24 to 96 hours after slaughter. 90 % is class I meat from the ham and loin, free of sinews, fat and tissue; 10 % is class II meat from the ham and knuckle with up to 20 % fat.

A herb decoction is boiled from allspice, bay leaf, juniper berries and clove and made into a marinade with salt, in which the meat is semi-dry cured. Then the filling is prepared with ground black pepper and nutmeg, mixed, filled into the casing, dried, smoked and roasted and finally cooled. Smoking takes place in chambers over a fire of beech, alder and oak wood; the sausages hang on crossbeams in the rising smoke. In the last smoking phase juniper branches or berries are added. All steps from preparing the meat to cooling take place in the production area.

Origin & history

The area covers the city of Kraków and the municipalities of Wieliczka and Świątniki Górne in the Lesser Poland voivodeship. The name comes from Piaski Wielkie, a village near Kraków that has been part of the city since 1940. In the hilly area ordinary farming was hardly possible; the inhabitants traded in livestock and made meat products and sausages. According to the specification, their sausage was delivered to Kraków for centuries, including to the royal table at Wawel. The livestock traders and butchers were called “Kijacy”, after the stick (Polish “kij”) that they carried for protection against robbers on the way to Kraków and into which each had carved his mark.

According to the specification, a decoction of herbs, including juniper berries, was used for curing very early on; until the end of the 19th century skilled women of the Kijacy mixed the herbs for payment. Curing took place in cold earth cellars, and the meat was for a long time chopped with heavy swords, later with axes, before the mincer arrived at the beginning of the 20th century; a cattle horn was used for filling. Smoking was done at first in the earth cellars, then in the wide chimneys of the houses, and in the 19th century already in separate smoking chambers.

A legend published in 1899 tells that King Casimir the Great allowed the people of Piaski to trade sausage in Kraków after they had smuggled a two-metre sausage past the guards in a hollowed-out stick. From 1825 the Kijacy sold their sausage on St Stephen’s Square, later in their own shops. In the planned economy of the Polish People’s Republic it was made only for home consumption; with an unchanged recipe it later returned to the shops.