Food

Loukaniko (Greek Sausage with Orange Peel)

Greek · Lamb · Pork · Sausage

Loukaniko (Greek Sausage with Orange Peel)
Prep 1 hour, plus an overnight rest
Cook 20–30 minutes
Serves About 5 lb / 2.3 kg — about 20 links, 15 cm each
Level Medium

Loukaniko is the everyday Greek fresh sausage — pork, often with some lamb, seasoned with orange peel, fennel, oregano, thyme and garlic, and wetted with red wine. It is grilled or fried, sliced as a meze with lemon squeezed over it, or cut into a pan with peppers and onions for spetsofai.

The diagnostic detail is the orange. Grated orange peel is what makes a sausage taste Greek rather than Italian: bright, slightly bitter and floral against the pork, with fennel seed doing the job it does in an Italian sweet sausage. The orange version is the southern one, strongest in the Peloponnese and Laconia; northern Greece makes leek loukaniko, and Crete dries and smokes its sausages.

The name is two thousand years old. Varro wrote that the Romans got their minced sausage from the Lucanians of southern Italy and called it lucanica; Greek loukaniko is that word, as are luganega, longaniza and linguiça.

I have not made this one yet. The formula is Marianski’s loukanika with fennel seed added and the garlic raised; it is untested.

Ingredients

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

  • 1,590 g (3 lb 8 oz) pork shoulder (butt), about 25% fat — 70%
  • 680 g (1 lb 8 oz) lamb shoulder — 30% (or all pork)

SEASONING (% of meat weight)

  • 41 g salt (1.8%)
  • 5.7 g black pepper (0.25%)
  • 14 g fresh garlic, minced (0.6%)
  • 11 g finely grated orange zest, from about 2 oranges (0.5%)
  • 6.8 g fennel seed, lightly crushed (0.3%)
  • 4.5 g dried Greek oregano (0.2%)
  • 4.5 g dried thyme (0.2%)
  • 2.3 g allspice (0.1%)
  • 180 ml dry red wine, cold (8%)

CASING

  • 32–36 mm hog casings, about 3 m

Directions

Key ingredients

Allspice · Black Pepper

  1. In the collection: Allspice, Black Pepper, Salt.
  2. Zest only: grate just the orange skin, none of the white pith, which is bitter and will dominate. Some cooks dry strips of peel in the sun and crumble them; dried peel is milder and more floral.
  3. Grind: chilled pork and lamb through a 10 mm (3/8”) plate. Loukaniko is a coarse country sausage.
  4. Mix: salt, spices, zest and garlic into the meat, then the cold wine, mixing until the mass is sticky and the wine has disappeared. Wine is mostly water; it helps the bind as much as ice water would, and adds acid.
  5. Taste: fry a teaspoon. You want orange you can name, not orange that tastes like a dessert. Adjust now.
  6. Rest: cover and refrigerate overnight so the orange and fennel go through the meat.
  7. Stuff: into hog casings without air, and twist into 15 cm links, or leave a long coil for the grill.
  8. Cook: grill or fry over medium heat to 71 °C / 160 °F. Marianski also simmers them in water for about 30 minutes and then browns them. Serve with lemon wedges.
  9. Decision point: crumbly links mean too little mixing; a bitter edge means pith got into the zest. For the Cypriot caul-wrapped cousin, see Sheftalia (Cypriot Caul-Wrapped Sausages); the Bulgarian sausage with the same Latin name is Lukanka (Bulgarian Pressed Dry Salami).

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s Loukanika — per kg of meat, pork 700 g and lamb 300 g; salt 18 g, pepper 2 g, garlic 3.5 g, allspice 1 g, dry thyme 2 g, dried oregano 2 g, grated orange peel 2 tsp, red wine 100 ml; 10 mm plate; 32–36 mm casings; 6-inch links. Deviations: (1) fennel seed added at 0.3%, because Greek descriptions of orange loukaniko name it; (2) garlic raised from 0.35% to 0.6%; (3) orange zest given by weight; (4) wine cut from 10% to 8% so the mix stuffs firmly. I have not made it; it is untested.

Where loukaniko came from. The Latin lucanica, the Lucanian sausage described by Varro in the first century BCE, gave its name to sausages around the Mediterranean, and loukaniko is the Greek form. Greece’s terrain favours sheep and goats over cattle, which is why lamb goes into the mix. The pig, though, is the main sausage animal of Greek villages, killed in winter; sausage, cured pork (siglino in the Mani) and lard came from the same slaughter.

Regional versions. Laconia and the Mani: orange peel, and the cured, smoked pork called siglino. Northern Greece and Macedonia: leek, and fennel with allspice. Crete: sausages soaked in vinegar, dried and smoked. Trikala and Thessaly: leek and pepper. Cyprus: loukanika soaked in red wine with coriander seed and then smoked — a dry-ish sausage, unlike this fresh one.

The name. Loukaniko is singular, loukanika plural; Marianski uses the plural as the name of the recipe.

Variations. All pork; leek loukaniko (cooked, cooled leek at 10% of the meat); spicy versions with chilli flakes; a wine-soaked, smoked Cypriot version that needs Cure #1.

Sourcing and gear. Pork butt with its fat; lamb shoulder; organic or untreated oranges, because the peel is the ingredient. Greek oregano (rigani) is stronger than most supermarket oregano; use a little less of a strong Mexican one.

Still open. No published Greek standard or protected-name specification for loukaniko was found; regional formulas with weights were not checked.

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