Poland’s fresh white sausage, the one on the Easter table: coarse pork with a little beef, marjoram, garlic and pepper, stuffed as one long rope and sold raw. It is never cured and never smoked, so it cooks up grey-white rather than pink — hence biała, “white”. The diagnostic detail is that rawness. A smoked kiełbasa is ready to eat; biała must be cooked, usually poached and then simmered in żurek, the sour rye soup of Easter morning, or in white borscht, or browned in the oven with onions. Marjoram and garlic are the flavour, and they are what separate it from Germany’s Weisswurst, which is veal-based, finely emulsified and seasoned with parsley, mace and lemon.
It exists because a fresh sausage is the quickest thing to make at a pig-killing, and Polish Easter keeps it: it goes into the basket blessed on Holy Saturday and onto the table on Sunday. The formula follows Marianski’s biała surowa. I have not made it, and it is untested as written. Keep it cold and cook it to 71 °C / 160 °F.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 2,040 g (4 lb 8 oz) pork butt, with its fat — 90%
- 230 g (8 oz) lean beef chuck — 10%
SALT AND WATER (% of meat weight) — NO CURE
- 41 g salt (1.8%)
- 105 ml (3.5 fl oz) ice water for the beef (45% of the beef)
- 120 ml (4 fl oz) ice water for the pork (6% of the pork)
SPICE (% of meat weight)
- 4.5 g white pepper (0.2%)
- 4.5 g dried marjoram, rubbed (0.2%)
- 4.5 g fresh garlic, minced to a paste (0.2%)
- 32–36 mm hog casing, about 4 m (13 ft)
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: pork butt, a little beef, marjoram and garlic — no cure. The Bavarian counterpart is Weisswurst (Münchner Weißwurst); the soup it goes into is Polish White Borscht (Bialy Barszcz) - 2.
- Why no cure: nitrite would turn it pink and give it a ham flavour; biała is meant to be white and taste of fresh pork. Without cure it is a fresh sausage like any bratwurst: keep it cold, cook it within two days, or freeze it.
- Make the beef paste: grind the beef twice through the smallest plate (3 mm), then mix it hard with its ice water until it is sticky and has absorbed the water. This paste is the bind.
- Grind the pork: through a 6–8 mm plate, cold. Mix it with the salt, its ice water, marjoram, garlic and pepper, then add the beef paste and mix until the whole mass is tacky.
- Taste: fry a small patty. Marjoram should be clear but not medicinal, garlic present, salt firm.
- Stuff as one rope: into the hog casing as a single continuous length, not linked — biała is sold and cooked as a long coil and cut to portions after cooking.
- Poach, never boil: lower the coil into water at 75–80 °C / 167–176 °F and hold it there until the centre reads 71 °C / 160 °F, about 20–25 minutes. Boiling splits the casing and the sausage comes out dry. Keep the water — it is the classic stock for żurek.
- Finish: cut into pieces and simmer them in żurek or white borscht; or brown the poached sausage in a pan or a hot oven with sliced onions.
- Serve: on Easter morning with hard-boiled eggs, horseradish and rye bread.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s white sausage, kiełbasa biała surowa (meatsandsausages.com): pork butt 900 g and beef 100 g; per kg salt 18 g, white pepper 2 g, marjoram 2 g, garlic 2 g; the beef ground twice through the smallest plate with 45% cold water on the beef; the pork with 6% water; no nitrite (“turns grayish white after cooking”); 32–36 mm hog casing as one rope; must be fully cooked. Deviations, numbered: (1) Garlic is given as fresh paste at 0.2%; Marianski’s 2 g/kg is the same weight but does not say fresh or dried, and many Polish home cooks use more — taste the test patty. (2) Cooking specified to 71 °C / 160 °F internal. UNTESTED.
Where biała came from. Fresh sausage is the oldest and simplest thing made at a pig slaughter, and biała is the Polish version that survived as a holiday food. On Holy Saturday Polish families take a basket (święconka) of eggs, bread, salt, horseradish and sausage to church to be blessed; biała, white like the Easter linens, is the sausage most associated with it, though smoked kiełbasa goes in too. On Easter morning it is eaten in żurek, the soured rye-flour soup, or biały barszcz, the soured wheat version. No date for biała as a named product is documented.
The name. Biała kiełbasa: white sausage. Biała surowa is the raw one made here; biała parzona is a scalded, pre-cooked version sold in shops.
Variations. Biała parzona: poach right after stuffing, chill, and sell it ready to reheat. Some regions leave out the beef; some add a little allspice. Polish-American butchers sell it as “fresh kielbasa” or “white kielbasa”, especially at Easter.
Sourcing and gear. Pork butt with its fat on — around 25–30% fat is right. Rubbed dried marjoram, fresh; old marjoram tastes of dust. 32–36 mm hog casing. A stuffer that can run a continuous rope.
Keeping it safe. Biała is a raw, uncured sausage, so it behaves like fresh ground pork: no more than two days in the fridge raw, or freeze it the day it is made. Once poached to 71 °C / 160 °F it keeps three or four days refrigerated. The traditional Easter rhythm — make it on Thursday or Friday, poach it on Saturday, eat it on Sunday — fits inside those limits. The poaching water is not waste: Polish cooks use it as the stock for żurek, and it carries the marjoram and garlic into the soup.
Still open. No Polish standard for biała was read, so whether a legal definition (beef share, spices) exists is not stated here.
Read more on the site. Poland and the East