Cognacsmedwurst

Hello sausage lovers,

I present to you today a unique semi-dry Swedish deli sausage: Cognacsmedwurst/Konjacsmedvurst.

As implied by the name, this sausage is flavored with French cognac. You can replace the cognac with frankly any alcohol you like; I have seen medwurst-style sausages flavored with scotch, aquavit, and even absinthe, but the cognac goes really well with the simple spice mix, especially the ginger.

This is a very common ready-to-eat sausage found in grocery stores and delis. It is pretty much the Swedish equivalent to American summer sausage, and is eaten in a similar fashion: charcuterie boards, buffet spreads, holidays and gatherings, or just on a sandwich.

The name medwurst is probably a loanword from German mettwurst, although the sausage has little in common with mettwurst, aside from sometimes having a softer texture.

There are other Swedish sausages in this style of semi-dry cold-smoked deli sausages: lökkorv (onion sausage), and other manufacturer-specific named sausages like Per i Viken's vikenringen & enewurst, Björk & Co's forbondekorv, and Heberleins förslövsringen to name a few. The common theme is the inclusion of potatoes, natural fermentation, and long cold-smoking, typically with the addition of enris (juniper) twigs.

It is worth mentioning that my sausage production skills have greatly improved over the past 4 years. The addition of an upright sausage-stuffier, vacuum-sealer, and learning cold-smoking techniques have vastly advanced the quality of my homemade sausages.

I would highly recommend these tools to anyone seriously interested in the quality production of home-made sausages and cured meats. The minimum batch of sausage I will make these days is 2 lbs, which is almost 1 kg. I do not recommend making a batch of sausage under 1 kg. I have provided guidance on calculations for scaling the below recipe to any size.

I have also re-focused my production efforts from strict recipes, filler ingredients, and cheap meats, to high-quality ingredients and proper techniques.

To scale this recipe, divide the metric weight of your raw ingredients by the metric sum of the weight on raw materials below. In the case of the pictures below, I did a batch with 1700g meat and 190g boiled potatoes. 1700 + 190 = 1890. 1890/1006 = ~1.88, which is your scale factor to multiply each ingredient by. Measure your spices in grams if you are going to scale up since my recipe uses so little spices I have no need to weigh them.

Cognacsmedwurst

906g (2 lbs) pork/beef

100g boiled potatoes

20g (2%) salt

2.3g (.25%) cure #1

5g (.5%) dextrose

20ml Cognac with below spices soaked in it

1/2 tsp sandalwood powder (optional)

1/4 tsp white pepper

1/8 tsp ginger powder

1/8 tsp F-LC bacterial culture mixed with 15ml distilled water (optional)*

2-3 1-1/2" X 12" prepared fibrous sausage casings

*note on starter cultures: humans have been performing lacto-fermentation for thousands of years without commercial starter cultures. Practically every food ingredient contains naturally-occurring lactobacillus bacteria, including the meat and potatoes used in this recipe. I made this recipe successfully for many years without using commercial starter cultures.

Cut the meat into small cubes the day before grinding and freeze it. This will ensure the meat retains its meat/fat definition after grinding and mixing.

Combine the spices with the cognac and let soak at least overnight. This will extract to orange/red color from the sandalwood (if using) and amplify the small amounts of spices

Cognacsmedwurst seasonings

Boil the potatoes skin-on and cool down. Take the meat out of the freezer and let it defrost about 1.5 hours prior to cutting and grinding

Frozen meat defrosting

Activate the starter culture in ~15 ml (1 Tbsp) DISTILLED water, if using. Distilled water is free of chlorine and other chemicals that can kill or otherwise adversely interfere with the bacteria. The bacteria culture can be replaced with milk, which was a common practice in many old Swedish fermented sausage recipes.

Preparing F-LC bacterial culture

Mix together the salt, cure, and dextrose.

Cognacsmedwurst salt/cure/dextrose mix

Cut up the partially-frozen meat and potatoes into chunks that suit your grinder's power.

Grind the meat and potatoes medium-fine. Mix in the seasonings and cognac into the mix prior to adding the starter culture at the end, if using.

Sandalwood dyes the cognac reddish-orange

Mix until the meat is sticky and well-bound.

Nicely bound

Pack the meat tightly in a sausage stuffer, which is what I recommend to those who want to consistently produce large amounts of well-bound sausage with great meat/fat definition and very little air pockets.

Stuffer ready

Stuff the sausage tightly in the soaked fibrous casings and tie them off tightly. Fibrous casings are very forgiving and the sausage is going to lose some moisture during drying, smoking, and cooking.

Ready for fermentation

Place the sausages in a gallon bag or other airtight container to lock in moisture. Ferment the sausages for about 24 hours at room temperature. You can't tell in my picture since I used brown fibrous casings, but the color will change from grey to pink, and the sausages with smell sour.

Fermenting cognacsmedwurst

Take the sausages out and rinse them off.

I hang sausages at room temperature overnight prior to smoking. At least 2 hours should suffice in a pinch. Depending on your smoker, you could also use your smoker without smoke to dry the outside of your sausages in preparation for smoking.

Surface drying prior to smoking

Cold-smoke the cognacsmedwurst for up to 4-12 hours depending on your smoke preferences. Medwurst is traditionally a cold-smoked sausage, some variants claim to be cold-smoked for as long as 3 days. With regards to Swedish sausage-smoking, the usual woods are alder, beech, and juniper.

Apple, cherry, oak, hickory, mesquite and any other traditional American smoking woods are rare in Swedish smoking culture. Enrisrökt means traditionally smoked with alder or beech, with the addition of fresh juniper twigs on top of the regular smoker wood which in Sweden is commonly alder. Since I do not have access to any juniper trees, I just do 75% alder, 25% pine pellets. Use whatever you like.

These days I do an unconventional smoke ritual that can be described as a 2-part hot-smoke, due in part to my reluctance to purchase an all-in-one smoker that suits all my needs. I instead cold-smoke meats and then I cook them via baking or boiling after the fact. I have a smoker that could be described as an oil drum with 2 racks in it. I use a pellet maze in the bottom of the drum.

Cold-smoking cognacsmedwurst

In my case, to end up with a food-safe product, I pasteurize the sausage at 176 degrees F for about 45-60 minutes. This brings the internal temperature up to 150-160 degrees, which is safe to consume. Depending on the texture you are aiming for, you could go as little as 140, and the sausage will have a stronger flavor and softer consistency.