Food

Kantwurst (Austrian Pressed Dry Sausage)

Charcuterie · Cured · European · Fermented · Pork · Sausage · Smoked Foods

Kantwurst (Austrian Pressed Dry Sausage)
Prep 1 hour 30 minutes, plus 5 days in the press
Cook None — fermented, cold-smoked and dried for 3–5 weeks
Serves About 3.3 lb / 1.5 kg finished — six to eight square bars
Level Hard

A firm, dark-red Austrian dry sausage pressed into a square-sided bar. Kantwurst — “edge sausage” — is a raw, fermented, cold-smoked sliceable sausage of about two-thirds lean pork (sometimes beef) and one-third back fat, pressed during the first days of ripening until its cross-section is a rectangle. The shape is the diagnostic detail, and it is not decoration. A flat-sided sausage has more surface for its weight than a round one, so it dries faster and more evenly; the Austrian trade wiki says so in as many words. It is the clearest evidence that the flat Landjäger shape is a technique, not a quirk.

It is eaten raw, sliced thin, like a salami. That makes the safety rules non-negotiable: Cure #2, a starter culture, a pH-meter reading of 5.3 or below after fermentation, and a weighed drying loss of at least 30%. The formula follows the Austrian description (two-thirds meat, one-third Speck, about 30% drying loss) with the collection’s Landjäger spicing, because no published spice list was found. I have not made it, and it is untested as written.

Ingredients

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

  • 1,520 g (3 lb 6 oz) lean pork shoulder, trimmed (or up to half beef chuck) — 67%
  • 750 g (1 lb 10 oz) firm pork back fat — 33%

CURE, SALT AND CULTURE (% of meat weight)

  • 64 g salt (2.8%)
  • 5.7 g Cure #2 (2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm nitrite plus nitrate)
  • 7 g dextrose (0.3%)
  • 0.6 g Bactoferm T-SPX starter culture, in 30 ml distilled water

SPICE (% of meat weight)

  • 7 g black pepper, coarse (0.3%)
  • 4.5 g garlic, finely minced (0.2%)
  • 3.4 g caraway, toasted and ground (0.15%)
  • 2.3 g ground coriander (0.1%)
  • 50 mm water-permeable fibrous casing, cut in 25 cm lengths

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper · Cheese Cultures (Mesophilic & Thermophilic)

  1. In the collection: lean pork, hard back fat, Cure #2 and a starter culture. This is the square cousin of Landjäger (Swabian, Traditional Raw) — read that recipe’s safety notes before starting, because the same rules apply.
  2. Weigh the cure on a 0.01 g scale: 5.7 g of Cure #2, dissolved with the salt and dextrose. Cure #2 rather than #1 because this sausage dries for weeks without ever being cooked; the nitrate in #2 converts slowly to nitrite and keeps protecting it late in the dry.
  3. Wake the culture: T-SPX in distilled water for 30 minutes at room temperature. Chlorinated tap water can kill it.
  4. Grind cold: meat and fat nearly frozen, through a 5 mm plate. Warm fat smears and seals the surface of the sausage, and a smeared sausage case-hardens instead of drying.
  5. Mix to the bind: salt, cure, dextrose, culture and spices into the meat, mixed until sticky — the bind is what lets a pressed bar slice without crumbling.
  6. Stuff tight: into the soaked fibrous casing, no air pockets. Prick any you see. Tie both ends.
  7. Press and ferment: lay the sausages side by side between two boards (or in a square press) with light, even weight — about 5 kg / 11 lb — and hold at 20–22 °C / 68–72 °F and about 90% humidity for 48 hours. The pressing gives the shape; the warmth lets the culture make lactic acid.
  8. Check the pH — do not skip this: at 48 hours the pH must read 5.3 or lower on a meat pH meter. If it has not dropped, the culture failed: do not continue to drying, because a raw sausage that sat warm without acidifying can carry staphylococcal toxin that no later step removes. Cook it to 71 °C / 160 °F and eat it as a cooked sausage, or discard it.
  9. Keep pressing while it firms: continue under the boards at 15–18 °C / 59–64 °F for about three more days (five days pressing in total, as the Austrian method does), turning once a day.
  10. Cold smoke: out of the press, hang a day to dry the surface, then give 2–3 sessions of beech smoke of 4–6 hours each, below 20 °C / 68 °F, with rests between.
  11. Dry to a weight, not a date: hang at 13–15 °C / 55–59 °F and 75–80% humidity. Weigh one tagged sausage at stuffing and again as it dries; it is ready at 30–35% weight loss — usually 3–5 weeks at this size. A hard rim with a soft, wet centre is case hardening: wrap it in paper, refrigerate a week to even out, then hang again. Green or black fuzzy mould, slime, or an ammonia smell means throw it away; fine white bloom is normal.
  12. Serve: sliced thin, raw, with bread and beer — the same board as a Landjäger. If either the pH check or the weight loss was missed, cook it before eating.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The description is from wikimeat.at, the Austrian meat-trade wiki, which cites the Austrian food code: about two-thirds mostly pork (sometimes beef) and one-third first-quality Speck; water-permeable fibrous casing; pressed for about 5 days during the first ripening phase; mild cold smoke; about one more week of drying and ripening; about 30% drying loss. Deviations, numbered: (1) Spices are the collection’s Landjäger spicing (pepper, caraway, garlic, coriander) because no published Kantwurst spice list was found. (2) A starter culture, dextrose and a pH target are added. The Austrian description names none; home safety needs them. (3) Drying is to a measured 30–35% loss over 3–5 weeks, longer than the commercial one-week finish, because a home drying chamber is less controlled. (4) Cure #2 at 2.5 g/kg on the meat. UNTESTED.

Where Kantwurst came from. It is an Austrian schnittfeste Rohwurst — a firm, sliceable raw sausage — of the same Alpine family as the Landjäger, the Tyrolean Kaminwurz and the Alsatian gendarme. Austrian producers in Tyrol and Upper Austria sell it today. No date of origin is documented. The dive’s Landjäger pages pair it with South Tyrol; that attribution is not confirmed by the sources read here.

The name. Kante means edge. Kantwurst is literally the sausage with edges, which is the whole point: the pressing makes a cuboid, and a cuboid has a larger surface-to-volume ratio than a cylinder of the same weight, so moisture leaves it faster and more evenly.

Variations. With beef: replace up to half the pork with sinewy beef, which gives a darker, firmer bar. Kaminwurz (Tyrol) is pressed flat in pairs and smoked harder. Landjäger is the same idea in small pairs of thin casing.

Sourcing and gear. A pH meter with a meat probe, or a slurry method and calibrated meter; strips alone are not precise enough at 5.3. A drying chamber that holds 13–15 °C and 75–80% humidity (a converted fridge with a humidity controller). Fibrous casing rather than natural casing, because it presses into a square without tearing. A 0.01 g scale for the cure and culture.

Still open. The Austrian food code’s Kantwurst entry was not readable online here, so the official grain size, spices and casing calibre are not stated. Whether South Tyrol has a Kantwurst tradition of its own is unconfirmed.

The photo. No open-licensed photograph of Kantwurst exists; the photograph is an Austrian Brettljause, the cold board it is served on.

Read more on the site. The German Tradition · What It Is