Sujuk 2012

After a lot of procrastinating, I finally got round to making sujuk again. The previous time is fairly well documented, I followed the instructions there, but changed the spice mixtures a bit.

This time, I went all the way and purchased four pieces of pork loin joint (called kotlett in Swedish). This is on my Mum's recommendation as I can then remove all fat and all sinews, ensuring the mince is as pure as possible. The loin joints were vacuum packet, but it was possible to see what they looked like and I picked four that had large areas of pure muscle meat.

I then set out to clean the joints and this turned out to be trickier than expected and I did the first two pieces on Friday (took about 4 h and caused substantial pains in my neck) and the remaining two yesterday (a bit quicker, the pieces were nicer and I guess I had worked out the technique, still my neck hurt).

I then quickly minced the meat, I was almost disappointed, given how long it took to trim the darn things. But the mince came out lovely, but well under 4 kg and I'd hoped to do a full batch of 5 kg. Never mind.

I divided the mince in two parts and spiced each as follows:

Spice mix 1
2 kg pork mince
40 g salt
8 g black pepper
8 g dried ground savory
3 tsp sweet paprika
3 tsp ground cumin

Spice mix 2
1.7 kg pork mince
34 g salt
7 g black pepper
7 g dried ground savory
3 tsp hot smoked paprika
2 tsp sweet paprika

I mixed each part well and left overnight in the fridge and today, I made the sujuks all by myself. Lundulph was a bit disappointed that I didn't ask him to help. But one person can do it, it's just easier to get a flow in the process if there's a second person at hand.

I didn't bother pushing an onion through to clean out the meat mincer, nor did I do the same when filling the sausages, so this left me with enough sujuk mixture for a further sausage. But instead, I made it into meat balls, since lunchtime had already passed and both Lundulph and I were quite hungry. But since this was pure mince, not mixed with onions and bread, it wouldn't really work very well as regular Bulgarian meatballs, so instead I used this opportunity to try out the technique used when making Swedish meatballs. They are made quite small, just under the size of an unshelled walnut and then fried in a pan, which is shaken around until the meatballs brown lightly all over. Then they need to be stirred until they are completely cooked. This is how they remain round.

I also had some duck eggs in the larder, so I decided to fry them sunny side up to go with the meatballs. Hot tip - if you're after lots of runny yolk, then go for duck eggs, the yolks are a lot bigger than chicken eggs.

Of course the meatballs were way too salty, but that was to be expected and as it should - for sujuk, the amount of salt must be 2% of the weight of the mince, to ensure that nothing nasty develops while they're drying. So, this year's sujuks are now happily hanging in the fridge and stinking it up (wet dog sort of) and hopefully in 6 weeks they will be ready.