28/07/2017
Beside the traditional ones, some pink-red color sausages are also very popular in Polish cuisine. The most characteristic one is a so-called 'white sausage' (biala kielbasa). This kielbasa is made of raw pork & beef, covered with white natural animal intestine. The recipes for biala kielbasa use some natural spices such as garlic, marjoram, black and white pepper and salt. This kielbasa is cooked or fried before consumption, but there are some daredevils who like to eat it raw. It is one of the traditional Polish food served during Easter in the delicious Polish soup called zurek (as I've already mentioned above). And by the way biala sausage – at its own – tastes excellent with horseradish sauce (a very typical Polish combination!).
Biala kielbasa is white, so now it is time to check the other side - the black sausage. Actually called kaszanka or kiszka in Polish, it is in fact a blood sausage - as we call it in English. And this is because it's made of a mixture of pig's blood, pig offal (commonly liver, lungs, skin, and fat) and buckwheat (sometimes barley or rice). All of these ingredients are stuffed in a pig intestine. Usually it is flavored with onion, black pepper and marjoram. Home production of this specific kind of kielbasa is mainly based on an occasion of killing a pig, when fresh blood is available. For making bloody kielbasa buckwheat or barley should be used. There is also another kind of this Polish sausage – baked and brewed (cooked after filling). The resulting product resembling kaszanka is called 'bulczanka' where grits are replaced by bread crumbs and kadrel, which consists mainly of blood and pieces of fat bacon. Kaszanka can be eaten cold, but traditionally it is either fried or grilled with some onions and then served with potato and sauerkraut.
As you have seen so far – there are many kinds of sausages in Poland. It is impossible to go to the store and ask for one pound of kielbasa… You would be asked: which kielbasa? All of them look great and appetizing, but it's worth to know some basic differences between all of those kinds. Smacznego!