Krupnioki śląskie

Appearance & taste

The sausages are 30 to 40 mm thick, 15 to 25 cm long and weigh 200 to 300 g. The surface is clean, slightly moist and grey to brown or dark brown; the natural casing fits tightly. When cut, the filling is brown with a purple or bronze tinge. It is firm and crumbly, small pieces of lean meat and groats are evenly bound into one mass, and slices 10 mm thick must not fall apart.

The sausage tastes and smells of meat and offal, of barley or buckwheat groats, fat and heated rinds, slightly salty and distinctly spiced. According to the specification, its taste is shaped above all by the groats, the liver, the onion and the pepper. It contains at most 35 % fat and at most 2.5 % salt.

Production

The raw materials should be uncured and unsalted; salted raw materials are permitted at the producer’s discretion if this is taken into account in the amount of salt. They may also come from outside the area. The share of groats is 15 %, compared with 20 to 25 % in similar sausages; the remaining 85 % of the raw materials are of animal origin.

In the area of origin, the ingredients are washed or soaked, heated, minced to at most 5 mm, mixed and seasoned. The mixture is then filled into the casing, the casing is closed, and the sausages are scalded and cooled.

Origin & history

Krupnioki have been on the Silesian menu as far back as ethnographic research reaches. The oldest mentions date from the end of the 18th century, from a village near Gliwice. In the 1830s they spread in Silesian kitchens, when pig farming in Silesia grew strongly and it became customary to put parts of the head of the slaughtered animals into the groat sausage. Their popularity rose further with coal mining, as the miners needed hearty food for the hard work. The sausage was also part of the wedding menu.

Many Silesians in the industrial centres kept pigs, rabbits and pigeons in small sheds. The whole family helped with the pig slaughter, and a butcher ran the day. The blood was made into black pudding and krupnioki, of which large amounts were traditionally shared out to relatives and neighbours, who in turn brought food scraps as feed for the animals. In this way the offal could be used thriftily. According to the specification, the word “krupniok” has entered sayings and proverbs of the Silesian dialect.