Csabai sausage (Csabai kolbasz)

In a natural intestine casing, preserved by smoking and drying, the Csabai sausage has a unique taste. It is typically spicy, and tastes of paprika.

Sausage is commonly eaten with bread and in Hungary people love to eat it with green pepper as well. Wine makers favour it as a 'borkorcsolya' (a spiced food which makes one savour wine), while in German speaking areas it is often served as a delicacy next to beer.

The Csabai sausage is a meat product made by people living in Békéscsaba, and in the surrounding villages. These Slovakian and Hungarian peasants developed the sausage over generations of home pig slaughters. The main requirement of the Csabai sausage is not the place it is made, but rather the way it has been made, its ingredients, and the use of spices. Its flavour matures in the smoking process: in earlier days, sausages were smoked in open chimneys with smoke from burning hay or sweet corn stems while in the 20th century people used beech sawdust, or sweet corn cobs.

After the drying and the smoking processes, its surface becomes dry to the touch. If we cut into it, we can see its characteristic redness inside given by the paprika, and the pieces of meat and lard are easy to spot. To make 100kg of the finished sausage 130-140kg of pork and lard are required; 10-15per cent of beef also can be added. About 1200-1800g of sweet paprika and spicy paprika, garlic, curing salt (a special mix of salts: sodium chloride, and potassium nitrate), ground black pepper, roughly ground caraway, and a very small amount of sugar make up the spices.

(Source of the Hungarian original: Hagyományok, ízek, régiók - FVM AMC Kht., 2001)