Mici — also mititei, both meaning ‘little ones’ — are Romania’s grill sausage: fingers of minced beef, often with some lamb and pork, heavily garlicked, seasoned with thyme, pepper and a little allspice or coriander, shaped by hand and grilled over charcoal with no casing at all. They come to the table with mustard, chips, pickles and beer, and they are the smell of every Romanian summer weekend.
The diagnostic detail is baking soda. A small dose of sodium bicarbonate, with plenty of cold bone stock, gives mici their springy, juicy bounce and a slightly puffed surface. That is what separates them from ćevapi and plain kofta, which are their cousins in the Ottoman grilled-mince family.
The soda also produced the one legal fight in mici history, and it was not about a protected name. When the EU’s list of permitted additives became binding in June 2013, sodium bicarbonate was not on it for meat preparations, and industrial mici were suddenly non-compliant. Commission Regulation (EU) No 601/2014 fixed it in June 2014 by authorising E 500 by name in mici, ćevapčići, pljeskavice, seftalia and a few others.
I have not made this one yet. The formula is Marianski’s, with the meat shifted toward beef, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1,360 g (3 lb) beef chuck, about 80/20 — 60%
- 455 g (1 lb) lamb shoulder — 20%
- 455 g (1 lb) pork shoulder — 20%
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 36 g salt (1.6%)
- 5.7 g baking soda (0.25%) — no more
- 27 g fresh garlic, crushed to a paste (1.2%)
- 7 g black pepper (0.3%)
- 2.3 g dried thyme (0.1%)
- 2.3 g ground coriander (0.1%)
- 2.3 g ground cumin (0.1%)
- 1.1 g allspice (0.05%)
- 4.5 g sweet paprika (0.2%)
- 1.1 g cayenne (0.05%)
- 227 ml cold beef bone stock (10%), unsalted
SHAPE (NO CASING)
- 60 g per sausage, hand-formed, about 10 cm long and 25 mm thick
Directions
Key ingredients
Allspice · Baking Soda & Baking Powder · Black Pepper
- In the collection: Baking Soda & Baking Powder — the soda is the whole trick and the whole risk; Allspice; Salt.
- Grind cold: all the meat through a 4.5 mm (3/16”) plate, then through it again. Mici want a fine, even texture so they hold together on the grate without a casing.
- Dissolve the soda: stir the baking soda into the cold stock until it is gone. Undissolved soda leaves bitter, soapy pockets.
- Mix hard: add salt, garlic and spices to the meat, then pour in the stock a little at a time, kneading by hand or in a mixer until the mass is sticky, almost a paste, and has taken all the liquid. Good mixing is what lets a caseless sausage survive the grill.
- Taste: fry a teaspoon. It should taste of garlic and thyme and be well salted. If it tastes soapy, the soda is too high — do not add more to make them puffier, as Marianski warns.
- Rest overnight: cover and refrigerate 12–24 hours. The soda raises the pH of the meat so the proteins hold more water; that takes time, and so does the garlic.
- Shape: wet your hands and roll fingers about 10 cm long and 2.5 cm thick, about 60 g each. Chill them on a tray until grilling.
- Grill: over hot charcoal on an oiled grate, turning to brown all sides, about 10–12 minutes, to 71 °C / 160 °F inside. Do not press them; the juice is the point.
- Decision point: if they fall apart on the grate, the mix was under-kneaded or too warm; if they are dense and dry, there was too little stock or too much lean. Serve with mustard. Their nearest relative in the collection is Ćevapi (Ćevapčići); the spiced lamb fingers of the Levant are in Kofta Kebabs.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s Mititei — per kg of meat, pork 400 g, beef 300 g, lamb 300 g; salt 15 g, pepper 2 g, cayenne 0.5 g, coriander 1 g, cumin 1 g, garlic 12 g, baking soda 2.5 g, water or stock 60 ml; 6 mm plate, overnight rest, fingers about 19 mm thick. Deviations: (1) beef raised to 60% and pork cut to 20%, because Romanian commercial mici are mostly beef; (2) stock raised from 6% to 10% — Romanian recipes use a lot of cold bone stock (zeamă) for juiciness; (3) thyme, allspice and paprika added, which Romanian recipes commonly name; (4) a double grind. I have not made it; it is untested.
Where mici came from. The Bucharest legend has a cook at the La Iordache inn on Covaci Street running out of casings one night and grilling the filling bare. It is a story, not a record. A mici recipe is claimed for about 1872 and the dish is associated with the Caru’ cu Bere beer hall by 1902, which puts mici in late-19th-century Bucharest — the same years ćevapi were settling into a named form in Serbia and Bosnia. Both are local forms of the Ottoman grilled-mince tradition, not single inventions.
The EU fight, with the right date. It is sometimes told as a 2017 dispute over a protected name. It was 2013–2014, and it was about an additive. Regulation (EU) No 1129/2011 made the Union list of food additives binding from 1 June 2013; sodium bicarbonate (E 500) had never been authorised in meat preparations, so industrial mici with soda broke the rules, and Romania could make them but not export them. The meat-processors’ association said the soda was what made mici mici. Commission Regulation (EU) No 601/2014 of 4 June 2014 authorised E 500 quantum satis as a humectant in poultry meat preparations, mici, bifteki, soutzoukaki, kebap, seftalia, ćevapčići and pljeskavice, ‘to maintain consistency and juiciness’. No TSG for mici has been applied for.
Why soda works. Sodium bicarbonate raises the pH of the meat away from the isoelectric point of its proteins, so they hold more water and the cooked sausage stays juicy and springy. Too much tastes soapy. A Romanian doctor quoted in the 2013 debate pointed out the other side: alkaline seasoning can mask the smell of meat that is going off, so start with fresh meat.
Variations. All beef; beef and mutton; garlic-heavy Oltenian mici; some cooks add a spoon of lard or bicarbonate-free versions with extra stock. Mustard is mandatory.
Sourcing and gear. Beef chuck and lamb shoulder; a charcoal grill; a grinder with a 4.5 mm plate. Bone stock from roasted beef bones, chilled and defatted.
Still open. The 1872 recipe has not been traced to its printed source here.
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