Sausages were invented out of necessity thousands of years ago, making use of every last scrap of butchered meat and preserving it by smoking and salting. They have lots of flavour and are usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs may be included as fillers or extenders.


Portuguese Sausages

Obviously, these are going to be top of the list! Known as salsichas here, they are an integral part of Portuguese cuisine, and it’s hard to find a meat dish in Portugal without at least one kind - in feijoada (bean stew) or in soups such as caldo verde. My favourite is Portuguese chouriço - a spicy, smoky sausage, fully cooked and ready to eat, delicious with cheese and crusty bread as a starter.

There is an endless variety produced all over the country, but predominantly manufactured in the North (in the districts of Vila Real and Bragança, generally defined as Trás-os-Montes) and in the Southern region of the country, Alentejo, comprising the districts of Évora, Beja, and Portalegre.


The Wurst of Germany


Do you know your knackwurst from your leberwurst? With so many varieties of German sausage, which one is the wurst for you! The most popular is bratwurst, it’s made from pork, beef, and many added spices, and are usually grilled and served with a roll and sweet German mustard, or cooked in beer and served with potatoes and red cabbage.


Italian Sausages


Again, many to choose from, but here’s a weird one. Mazzafegato, also called salsiccia matta - meaning ‘mad sausage’ – is made from inferior parts of pork such as liver, tongue, tail, heart, spleen, lungs, and different leftover scraps of meat, that are coarsely ground and flavoured with salt, pepper, pepperoncino (a type of chilli pepper), garlic, fennel flowers, lemon, and orange zest.

A sweet variety also exists, enriched with raisins, pine nuts, cinnamon, sugar, and red wine, and is grilled or baked in the oven with aromatic herbs. It has a strong flavour that pairs nicely with hearty bread and robust red wines.


United Kingdom


In the UK, it’s mostly pork sausages providing tasty and filling meals, traditionally served with mashed potato, in a humble sausage casserole or a ‘toad in the hole’, a distinctive dish where batter is poured over the sausages and oven-baked. Although many other countries make them, ‘black pudding’ is probably the most famous and distinct regional type of sausage from the UK and Ireland, made from pork or beef blood, with added fat or beef suet, plus some sort of cereal.

A quality sausage should contain around 80 percent meat, depending on whether it is pork, beef or other mixtures of meat. Pork sausage is typically made with meat from the shoulder, belly, or leg.


Veggie versions


Common base ingredients in successful vegetarian sausage recipes are chickpeas, lentils, and tofu. They do tend to be lower in fat, but that's not to say all vegetarian sausages are healthy, many of the best veggie sausages taste impressively similar to real ones. However, vegan sausages are likely to have considerably less saturated fat making them a healthier option overall.


Sausage Skins


Now you can start squirming. Traditionally, natural sausage casings are made from the submucosa of the small intestine of animals, a layer of the intestine that consists mainly of naturally occurring collagen. In Western European and Chinese cuisine, most casings came from pigs, but elsewhere the intestines of sheep, goats, cattle and sometimes even horses were used. Commercial sausages are now made with synthetic casings more often than not, introduced in the early 20th century, made of collagen and cellulose. The material is then shaped via a continuous extrusion process – producing a single sausage casing of indefinite length, which is then filled and twisted off or cut into prescribed lengths once filled by the sausage producer. Most sausages that you buy have edible casings - those that don't, such as dry sausages or deli meats, will be wrapped in plastic or collagen that are fairly thick and easy to remove.

Author

Marilyn writes regularly for The Portugal News, and has lived in the Algarve for some years. A dog-lover, she has lived in Ireland, UK, Bermuda and the Isle of Man. 

Marilyn Sheridan