Ahle Wurst

The meat goes in still warm from the slaughter, and the article names the slow damp maturing as the point.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork, sausage casings, which are gut unless it says otherwise.

Ingredients

• 1 kg pork shoulder, very fresh
• 400 g pork back fat or belly
• 35 g salt
• 2 teaspoons coarse black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tablespoon rum or brandy
• natural hog casings

Method

1. THE MEAT GOES IN STILL WARM FROM THE SLAUGHTER, AND THE ARTICLE NAMES THE SLOW DAMP MATURING AS THE POINT. It says both in two sentences: ONLY HEAVY PIGS ARE PROCESSED FRESH (WITH THE MEAT STILL WARM) AND QUALITY CUTS OF MEAT PRODUCED, and THE SLOW MATURATION AT RELATIVELY HIGH HUMIDITY IS THE DISTINGUISHING MARK OF THE SAUSAGE.
2. WHICH IS A RARE THING TO FIND IN A SOURCE: the article has done the job of saying which step matters, rather than leaving it to be worked out from a list.
3. WARM MEAT IS THE PART YOU PROBABLY CANNOT COPY, and it is worth being plain about that. Butchery within hours of slaughter, before the muscle has set, is a farmhouse circumstance and not a kitchen one. The nearest a kitchen gets is meat as fresh as it can be had and never frozen.
4. THE NAME IS THE AGEING. Ahle Wurst is A DIALECTAL FORM OF ALTE WURST -- old sausage -- so the sausage is named for the one thing that is done to it slowly.
5. AND THE SHAPE DECIDES WHAT IT IS CALLED: STRACKE IF ELONGATED OR RUNDE IF ROUND. Same sausage, two names.
6. SALT AND PEPPER AND LITTLE ELSE. The article is firm -- SEASONED ONLY WITH SALT AND PEPPER -- then allows that some butchers add nutmeg, cloves, sugar, garlic, cumin and rum or brandy. Start with the two.
7. MINCE COARSE AND MIX COLD AND BRIEFLY. This is not an emulsion: the fat should stay in visible pieces. Worked warm, it smears and the dried sausage goes greasy.
8. FILL THE CASINGS TIGHT WITH NO AIR POCKETS. An air pocket in a sausage that will hang for weeks is where mould starts on the inside.
9. THEN HANG IT SOMEWHERE COOL AND DAMP AND LEAVE IT ALONE FOR WEEKS. Nothing is cooked, nothing is attended. Damp is the counter-intuitive half -- dry air case-hardens the outside and traps moisture in the middle, which is the one failure the article's phrase is warning against.
10. SMOKED OR AIR-DRIED, BOTH OF WHICH THE ARTICLE ALLOWS: THE SAUSAGE CAN BE SMOKED OR MADE AIR-DRIED. Eaten in thin slices on bread once it has lost about a third of its weight.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Germany · All recipes