Food

Harbin Red Sausage (Hongchang)

Beef · Chinese · Pork · Sausage · Smoked Foods

Harbin Red Sausage (Hongchang)
Prep 1½ hours, plus 1–2 days curing
Cook About 2½ hours (drying, poaching and smoking)
Serves About 2.9 kg / 6½ lb — 15 links of 20 cm
Level Medium

Harbin red sausage, hongchang (红肠), is the smoked garlic sausage of Harbin in north-east China: a pork-and-beef sausage bound with starch, studded with small cubes of fat, stuffed into hog casing, dried hot until the skin goes red-brown, poached and then smoked. It is sliced cold or eaten with bread and beer, and it tastes like an Eastern European deli sausage because it is one. Its local name, lidaosi (里道斯), is a Chinese spelling of the Russian kolbasa litovskaya, ‘Lithuanian sausage’. The usual story is that the Russian trading firm Churin & Co., which opened in Harbin in 1900 after the Chinese Eastern Railway arrived, started making it in 1909 with a Lithuanian sausage maker. That story needs two corrections: Ivan Churin himself died in 1895, so it was his firm, not the man, in Harbin; and a rival Chinese account dates the sausage to 1913 and a different technician. The diagnostic detail is the starch and the garlic: next to a Polish sausage it is softer, smoother and much more garlicky. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from Chinese trade formulas and the Chinese encyclopedia’s description and is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

  • 1,250 g (2 lb 12 oz) lean pork shoulder or ham — 55%
  • 680 g (1 lb 8 oz) lean beef chuck — 30%
  • 340 g (12 oz) firm pork back fat — 15%

CURE (% of meat weight)

  • 50 g fine salt (2.2%)
  • 5.7 g Cure #1 (0.25%) — 2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm nitrite

BINDER (% of meat weight)

  • 180 g (6⅓ oz) potato starch (8%)
  • 455 g (1 lb) ice water (20%)

SEASONING (% of meat weight)

  • 45 g fresh garlic, finely minced (2%)
  • 7 g white sugar (0.3%)
  • 4.5 g black pepper, fine (0.2%)
  • 1.1 g nutmeg (0.05%)
  • 1.1 g ground coriander (0.05%)
  • 32–35 mm natural hog casing, about 4 m (13 ft)
  • Hardwood for smoking — birch, maple or fruitwood

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

  1. In the collection: Cornstarch can stand in for the potato starch at the same weight. The family resemblance is with Polish Sausage and Smoked Sausage; taste them side by side.
  2. Cure the meat: cut lean pork and beef into 3 cm cubes, toss with the salt and Cure #1, pack tight in a covered tub and refrigerate at 2–4 °C / 36–39 °F for 24–48 hours. Traditional Harbin practice cures 2–3 days. The cubes turn deep red and sticky; that is the colour that will show through the casing.
  3. Dice the fat: cut the back fat into 6 mm (¼ in) cubes and keep them frozen-firm. Blanch in boiling water 30 seconds and chill if you want them to stay pearly; that is optional.
  4. Grind: grind the beef through a 3 mm plate and the pork through a 6 mm plate, both very cold.
  5. Mix: stir the starch into the ice water. Mix the meats with garlic, sugar and spices, then work in the starch slurry a little at a time until it is absorbed and the paste is sticky and smooth. Fold in the fat cubes last.
  6. Taste: poach a small piece. It should be garlicky first, then salty and meaty. Adjust the garlic now.
  7. Stuff and tie: stuff firmly into the hog casing, tie 20 cm links in pairs, and hang them so they do not touch.
  8. Dry hot: dry in a smoker or oven at 65–75 °C / 150–165 °F with the damper open for 45–60 minutes, until the casing is dry to the touch and reddish. This is the step that gives the name its colour.
  9. Poach: poach in water at 78–80 °C / 172–176 °F until the centre reads 71 °C / 160 °F, about 25–30 minutes for this calibre. Water at a boil splits the casing and melts the fat cubes.
  10. Smoke: hang in a smoker at 60–70 °C / 140–160 °F with steady hardwood smoke for 1–2 hours, until the skin is a deep red-brown. Cool in cold water, dry, and refrigerate. Keeps 10 days refrigerated, months frozen.
  11. Sibling recipe: Lap Cheong (Chinese Sausage) is the opposite pole of Chinese sausage — sweet, air-dried and never smoked.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The Chinese encyclopedia describes hongchang as about 80% lean, 10% diced fat, 7% starch and under 3% salt, seasoned with garlic and black pepper. Chinese trade compilations give two formulas — one of 90 kg lean pork, 10 kg pork fat, 20 kg starch, 3.3 kg salt with nitrate; another of 30 kg lean pork, 20 kg fat and 50 kg beef with 10 kg starch, garlic and pepper — and a process of salt-curing 2–3 days at 3–4 °C, mixing with starch and 30–40% water, roasting at 65–80 °C for 0.5–1 hour, then cooking in 80 °C water. Deviations: (1) beef at 30%, between the two trade formulas; (2) Cure #1 at 2.5 g/kg replaces the trade’s unmeasured ‘nitrate’; (3) starch at 8% with 20% water, less than the trade’s watered paste; (4) a final hot smoke, which the encyclopedia’s description and the sausage’s colour call for but the trade outline omits. Untested.

Where Harbin red sausage came from. Harbin grew from a riverside settlement into a Russian-built railway city after the Chinese Eastern Railway was laid across Manchuria in the late 1890s. The Siberian merchant firm I. Ya. Churin & Co. — founded in the Russian Far East by Ivan Yakovlevich Churin with partners from the Kasyanov family — opened a Harbin branch in 1900; its Chinese name is Qiulin (秋林). Churin himself died on 30 April 1895. Chinese accounts say the firm opened a sausage shop on Daoli’s Commercial Street in 1909, with a Lithuanian worker making a ‘Lithuanian’ sausage, and the name lidaosi stuck. That outline is repeated across many Chinese secondary sources; no primary document for the 1909 date has been seen. A rival Chinese account says the red sausage was brought in 1913 by a technician named in Chinese as Aijinbinsi (爱金宾斯), and traces it through the Harbin Meat Combine (哈肉联), now a rival brand to Qiulin. Both firms sell ‘the original’ today.

The name. Hongchang means ‘red sausage’, for the colour of the dried, smoked skin. Lidaosi (里道斯, also 立道斯) transliterates Russian litovskaya, ‘Lithuanian’, from kolbasa litovskaya. Whether the Harbin recipe matches any Russian ‘Litovskaya’ formula has not been established.

Variations. Pork-only versions; beef-heavy versions; tea sausage (chachang) and other Qiulin products. Some makers colour the casing.

Sourcing and gear. Hog casing in 32–35 mm. A smoker that can run hot and dry first, then take smoke, does the whole job; an oven for drying and a smoker for the end also works.

Still open. The 1909 and 1913 accounts have not been tested against Russian-language Harbin records. The smoking wood traditionally used in Harbin is not documented in the sources read.

The photo. The photograph is a commercial Harbin-style red sausage in its retail pack, labelled in Chinese and English.

Read more on the site. China