Poland’s blood sausage, bound with buckwheat: cooked pork head meat, liver and skin, a large share of buckwheat groats cooked in the meat stock, fried onion and marjoram, all set with pig’s blood in a casing and poached. Sliced and fried with onions, it is one of the cheapest and best things in a Polish kitchen. The grain is the diagnostic detail. Ireland binds its black pudding with oats, Germany its Blutwurst with barley or none, Spain its morcilla with rice; Poland reaches for buckwheat, which carries a nutty flavour of its own. Barley kaszanka exists too. Many Polish-American families call it kiszka, from the Slavic word for gut.
It was made at the świniobicie, the home pig slaughter, in the hours when the blood was fresh. Traditional recipes include lungs, which are not legal as food in the United States, so this version replaces them with more head meat and liver, as Marianski does. The blood must come from a licensed source, and the sausage is cooked to 71 °C / 160 °F. The formula is built from Marianski’s kaszanka, and it is untested as written.
Ingredients
MEATS (cooked before mixing)
- 750 g (1 lb 10 oz) pork head meat, snouts or cheek
- 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) pork jowl
- 125 g (4.5 oz) pork liver
- 125 g (4.5 oz) pork skin (rind)
GRAIN, BLOOD AND ONION
- 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) roasted buckwheat groats (kasza gryczana), dry weight
- 1 litre (1 qt) of the meat cooking stock
- 500 ml (2 cups) pork blood, from a licensed source
- 300 g (10 oz) onion, finely chopped
- 50 g (2 oz) lard
SEASONING
- 45 g salt to start, then to taste
- 6 g dried marjoram, rubbed
- 6 g black pepper
- 3 g ground allspice
- 36–40 mm hog casing or beef rounds, about 4 m (13 ft)
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: head meat, liver, buckwheat and blood. Its relatives in the collection are Blutwurst mit Graupen (German Blood Sausage with Barley), Irish Black Pudding and Morcilla de Burgos — the same idea with barley, oats and rice.
- Cook the meats: simmer the skin at a bare simmer (about 95 °C) until very soft, about 2½ hours. Poach the head meat and jowl at 80–85 °C / 176–185 °F until tender, about 2 hours, and the liver for the last 15 minutes. Keep the stock. Gentle heat keeps the meat moist and the stock clear.
- Cook the buckwheat in the stock: bring 1 litre of the stock to the boil, stir in the groats, simmer about 20–30 minutes, stirring, until the stock is absorbed, then cover and let it stand. Cooking the grain in the meat’s own stock is what makes kaszanka taste of pork rather than of porridge.
- Fry the onion: in the lard, slowly, until golden. This is where much of the sweetness comes from.
- Grind: the head meat, jowl, liver and skin through a 5–6 mm plate while still warm. Warm skin grinds cleanly and its gelatin helps hold the slice.
- Mix: combine the warm meat, buckwheat and onion with the salt, marjoram, pepper and allspice. Taste now, before the blood goes in — everything here is cooked, so it is safe to taste. It should be well salted; the blood dilutes it.
- Add the blood last: let the mix cool to about 40 °C / 104 °F, then stir in the blood. Too hot and the blood cooks into lumps in the bowl; cold blood into a cold mix does not blend evenly.
- Stuff loosely: fill the casings about three-quarters full and tie off in links of about 25 cm. The grain swells in the poach, and an overfilled casing bursts.
- Poach: in water at 80–85 °C / 176–185 °F until the centre reads 71 °C / 160 °F, about 45–60 minutes. Prick any link that floats with an air bubble. Do not boil. Lift out, cool in cold water, and refrigerate.
- Serve: sliced or crumbled out of its casing and fried with onions until crisp at the edges, with mustard, sauerkraut or pickles. Keeps about a week refrigerated; freezes well.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s kaszanka (meatsandsausages.com, “kiszka kaszana wyborowa”): pork head meat, jowls and snouts 300 g, jowls 200 g, liver 50 g, skins 50 g, blood 200 g, buckwheat or barley groats 200 g; per kg: salt 18 g, black pepper 2 g, allspice 1 g, marjoram 2 g, chopped onion 30 g; skins at 95 °C, meats at 80–85 °C; groats boiled in the stock about 30 minutes; poached at 80–85 °C for 60–90 minutes to 68–70 °C. Marianski notes the original contained pork or veal lungs, replaced with more pork. Deviations, numbered: (1) Scaled to about 2.5× and given in ordinary quantities. (2) Onion increased to 300 g and fried in lard, as most Polish home versions do. (3) Groats given by dry weight; Marianski does not say whether his 200 g is dry or cooked. (4) Cooking to 71 °C / 160 °F. UNTESTED.
Where kaszanka came from. It belongs to the świniobicie, the pig-killing, when blood has to be used within hours. Every pig-keeping culture in Europe made a grain-and-blood sausage; Poland’s grain is buckwheat (kasza gryczana), sometimes barley (kasza jęczmienna), occasionally millet. No date is documented. Under communist-era standards it was a mass-market product and it remains a cheap everyday sausage in Poland.
The name. Kaszanka, from kasza, “groats”. Kiszka, from the Slavic word for gut, is the older and more general name, and the one Polish-American families use. The Ashkenazi kishke shares the word and the casing but cannot contain blood under kashrut; it is flour, fat and onion.
Why there are no lungs. Traditional kaszanka includes lungs. US federal rules (9 CFR 310.16) bar livestock lungs from human food, so they cannot be bought or used here. More head meat and liver fill their place.
Variations. Barley kaszanka (z kaszą jęczmienną). Rice versions in some regions. Kaszanka baked in a pan without a casing (kaszanka w misce). Grilled kaszanka is a Polish barbecue staple.
Sourcing and gear. Pork blood: fresh with an anticoagulant from a licensed slaughterhouse or processor, or frozen from a licensed supplier; keep it cold and use it within a day of thawing. Roasted buckwheat (kasza gryczana prażona) from a Polish or Eastern European grocer. Head meat and skin from Asian or Latino butchers. A wide funnel is easier than a piston stuffer for a loose, grainy mix.
Still open. No Polish standard for kaszanka was read, so the legal blood and grain shares, if any, are not given here.
Read more on the site. Kosher and Halal · Poland and the East