Longaniza is the long, thin pork sausage of Spain — the word is Latin lucanica, worn smooth — and the version worth making first is the white one from Graus, in the Pyrenean foothills of Aragón. It is a coarse, lean pork sausage seasoned with black pepper, oregano, nutmeg, clove and a little anise or sweet sherry, stuffed into a narrow casing and bent into a horseshoe, then grilled or fried.
The diagnostic detail is what is missing: no pimentón. Most Spanish sausages are red with smoked or sweet paprika, and the Graus makers’ own quality mark forbids it. That makes longaniza de Graus a picture of Spanish sausage from before the New World pepper arrived — the same plain-pork baseline as Catalan botifarra, with an older spice cabinet.
It is sold both fresh (cook it) and cured; this recipe is the fresh one. Valencian and Latin American longanizas are different sausages under the same name, noted below. I have not made this one yet; it is built from the Graus quality-mark rules and Spanish fresh-sausage practice, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1,590 g (3 lb 8 oz) lean pork shoulder or leg — 70% (the Graus minimum)
- 680 g (1 lb 8 oz) pork belly or jowl, skin off — 30% (the Graus maximum)
SEASONING, NO PIMENTÓN, NO CURE (% of meat)
- 48 g fine salt (2.1%)
- 7 g coarsely ground black pepper (0.3%)
- 2 g dried oregano, rubbed fine (0.1%)
- 1 g ground nutmeg (0.05%)
- 0.7 g ground cloves (0.03%)
- 1 g ground cinnamon (0.05%) — optional
- 2 g ground anise seed (0.1%) or 45 ml oloroso sherry (2%)
- 9 g garlic, grated to a paste (0.4%)
- 45 ml cold water or dry white wine (2%)
CASING
- 28–32 mm hog casing
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: the absence of paprika. Put this beside Botifarra Crua (Catalan Fresh Sausage) and Chorizo Español (Dry-Cured Spanish Chorizo) and you have Spanish sausage before and after the pepper.
- Grind coarse and cold: meat and fat at −1 to 1 °C through an 8 mm plate. Graus longaniza is a coarse sausage; the texture should show pieces of meat when cut.
- Mix: add salt, spices, garlic and liquid and mix until the meat turns sticky — 2 minutes. That bind is what keeps a lean, thin sausage from crumbling on the grill.
- Rest: cover and refrigerate overnight. Oregano and clove need time to come through; fried the same day, it tastes only of pepper.
- Test: fry a patty and taste. The clove should be a background, not a note; reduce it next time if it stands out.
- Stuff and shape: fill the casing evenly, tie off 40–60 cm lengths, and bend each into a horseshoe. Do not link-twist; the horseshoe is the Graus shape.
- Cook: grill over medium coals or fry in a little olive oil, turning, to 71 °C (160 °F) — 15–20 minutes. In Aragón it is eaten with bread, fried potatoes, fried eggs, or cut into a bocadillo.
- Keep: refrigerate up to 3 days; freeze for longer.
- Sibling: Longanisa (Filipino Sausage) is what the same word became after it crossed the Pacific.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Rules from the Aragonese quality-guarantee mark (C’alial) for longaniza de Graus as reported by es.wikipedia and producers: at least 70% lean pork, no more than 30% belly, jowl or fat; salt, pepper, oregano, nutmeg, anise or oloroso wine, clove and other natural spices, never pimentón; natural casing; horseshoe 20–70 cm; sold fresh or cured. Each Graus butcher keeps its own spice proportions; the amounts here are this recipe’s, set from general Spanish fresh-sausage practice. Deviations: (1) garlic and optional cinnamon, which the mark allows but does not name; (2) an overnight rest. Untested.
Where longaniza came from. The word descends from Latin lucanica — Varro says the Romans learned the stuffed gut from the Lucanians — and travelled with Spanish into Latin America and the Philippines. In Spain, Marianski’s definition is the useful one: a longaniza is a chorizo-type sausage stuffed under 40 mm and 30–70 cm long, straight or horseshoe, usually with pimentón, sometimes with less or none. Aragón is the main exception. Graus holds a Longaniza Day each July; in 1997 it registered a 505.47 m longaniza in the Guinness book.
Variations. Cured longaniza de Graus: add Cure #2 at 2.5 g/kg, a starter culture and dextrose, ferment to pH 5.3 or below, and dry to 30% weight loss — a separate project following the dry-sausage rules on Salami. Valencian longanissa: thin, fresh, often with pimentón, eaten in paella and with beans; llonganissa de Pascua is a thin dried version. Catalan llonganissa is a dry salami (the Vic style). Latin American longanizas (Mexico, Chile, Argentina, the Caribbean) are separate sausages: anise and paprika in Argentina, achiote and vinegar in Puerto Rico, bitter orange in the Dominican Republic.
Sourcing and gear. 28–32 mm hog casing. An 8 mm plate. Oloroso is a dry, nutty sherry, not a sweet cream sherry.
Still open. The C’alial specification text itself was not read, only reports of it; the date the mark was granted is not confirmed.
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