Food

Farinheira (Portuguese Flour Sausage)

Pork · Portuguese · Sausage · Smoked Foods

Farinheira (Portuguese Flour Sausage)
Prep 1 hour, plus 3 days marinating the fat
Cook 4–6 days cold smoking; 15–20 minutes to cook
Serves About 2.5 kg / 5½ lb — 12–15 small horseshoes
Level Medium

Farinheira is a smoked Portuguese sausage of pork fat and wheat flour, seasoned with red-pepper paste, garlic and white wine, with no lean meat in it at all. It is orange-yellow, soft and pasty, and is never sliced and eaten as it is: it is fried, roasted, or squeezed out of its casing into a pan and scrambled with eggs (farinheira com ovos), where the flour and fat turn into something between a savoury pudding and a gravy.

The diagnostic detail is the ratio: about 40 parts soft pork fat to 60 parts flour. It exists for the same reason Burgos morcilla is mostly rice — at the pig-killing, flour and fat were plentiful and lean meat was precious, and smoke made the mixture keep.

Two corrections travel with it. It is sometimes grouped with alheira as a pork-free disguise sausage; it is made of pork fat. And its only protected form, Farinheira de Estremoz e Borba, is from the Alentejo, not Trás-os-Montes, though it is made all over Portugal. Raw flour can carry E. coli, so farinheira is always cooked through. I have not made this one yet; it is built from the IGP specification and Marianski’s formula, and it is untested.

Ingredients

BASE (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of fat + flour

  • 910 g (2 lb) soft pork fat — belly, jowl, fat trimmings — 40%
  • 1,360 g (3 lb) plain wheat flour — 60%

FAT MARINADE (% of fat + flour weight)

  • 41 g fine salt (1.8%)
  • 5.7 g Cure #1 (2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm nitrite) — because it hangs in smoke for days
  • 68 ml dry white wine (3%)
  • 18 g garlic, crushed to a paste (0.8%)

TO FINISH

  • 70 g Portuguese red-pepper paste (massa de pimentão) (3%)
  • 5 g sweet paprika (0.2%)
  • 5 g ground black pepper (0.2%)
  • 2 g ground nutmeg (0.1%)
  • 550 ml warm water, more as needed (about 24%)

CASING

  • 32–36 mm beef runners, or 32–35 mm hog casing

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

  1. In the collection: flour and fat. Massa de pimentão is salted red-pepper paste; make it by salting puréed roasted red peppers overnight if you cannot buy it.
  2. Marinate the fat: cut into pieces under 1 cm, toss with salt, Cure #1, wine and garlic, and refrigerate 3 days at 0–4 °C, stirring daily. The fat takes up the cure and the wine; the IGP calls this maturation.
  3. Heat-treat the flour: spread it on trays and bake at 175 °C (350 °F) for 10 minutes, stirring once, until it reads 74 °C (165 °F); cool and sift. Raw flour is a known carrier of E. coli and Salmonella, and this sausage is smoked cold. Toasting also gives a nuttier sausage.
  4. Make the paste: mix the fat and its marinade with red-pepper paste, paprika, pepper and nutmeg, then work in the flour and enough warm water to get a soft, sticky dough that holds a shape — like a stiff cookie dough. Too dry and it cracks in the casing; too wet and it slumps.
  5. Stuff: firmly into the casing, tie 15 cm lengths, bend into horseshoes, prick lightly.
  6. Cold-smoke: below 25 °C over oak, a few hours a day for 4–6 days, with the sausages hung in a cool (below 12 °C), airy place between sessions. The IGP minimum is four days of slow smoke.
  7. Store: refrigerate up to 3 weeks, or vacuum-pack and freeze.
  8. Cook it — always: roast or grill whole until crusted and steaming, 74 °C (165 °F) at the centre; or slit the casing, crumble the filling into a hot pan with a little olive oil, stir until it sizzles, then add beaten eggs and scramble. Serve with bread and greens.
  9. Sibling: Alheira (Portuguese Bread and Poultry Sausage) is its Trás-os-Montes neighbour, bread-bound but with meat.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: the Farinheira de Estremoz e Borba IGP description (DGADR / protected-name registers): soft fat of Alentejana pigs cut under 1 cm, wheat flour at about 40% fat to 60% flour, salt, water, red-pepper paste and dried garlic; maturation, stuffing, tying, and cold cure with slow smoke of not less than four days; horseshoe 8–15 cm long, 2–4 cm thick, yellow-orange, semi-soft to pasty. Marianski’s formula supplies the spice detail: 400 g fat, 600 g flour, 18 g salt, 2 g Cure #1, pepper, 30 g red-pepper paste, paprika, nutmeg, ginger, garlic, white wine and water; fat marinated 3 days at 10 °C or below; beef casings; smoked 10 days at 30–40 °C over oak. Deviations: (1) Cure #1 at 156 ppm against his 125 ppm; (2) flour heat-treated; (3) smoke held below 25 °C rather than 30–40 °C, with cool hanging between sessions; (4) ginger dropped. Untested.

Where farinheira came from. The Alentejo protects it (Estremoz, Borba, Vila Viçosa and Alandroal), alongside its morcela, paia and chouriço; it is also made in Trás-os-Montes, the Beiras and elsewhere. The IGP was registered in 2004. It is a pig-killing product: the fat that could not go into chouriço, stretched with the cheapest starch in the house.

The disguise story. Farinheira is sometimes told as a sister to alheira — a pork-free sausage hung to fool the Inquisition. It is pork fat and flour, so it cannot have been pork-free; if it played any part in the story, it was as a sausage that looked like chouriço while costing almost nothing.

The name. From farinha, flour.

Variations. Some makers use part corn flour; some add cumin or a little cinnamon; northern versions are sometimes paler, with less pepper paste. Farinheira com ovos (scrambled with eggs) is the classic dish; it also goes into feijoada and cozido.

Sourcing and gear. Massa de pimentão is sold in Portuguese groceries (in New England, Newark and California). Soft fat means belly and jowl, not hard back fat. A cold smoke generator.

Still open. No study of farinheira’s water activity or pH after smoking was found; whether the traditional product is shelf-stable or simply cold-stored through winter is not documented.

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