Recipes
← Sausage

The Wider World of Sausage

The old world made the sausage; the wider world remade it. Thirteen chapters follow the craft out of Europe and across the ocean — to the sweet dried sausages of China and the fish sausage of postwar Japan, through the one pivot that changed everything (after 1492 the pig crossed west and the chile crossed east), and into the Americas, where the same word — chorizo, andouille — kept getting attached to a different sausage. It ends where the corner butcher did: in the factory. As ever, the corrections are the point. Read it in order or jump to a country; every page links to its neighbors.

  1. 1 China: Follow the Sugar, Follow the Smoke Two sausages at the ends of one country: sweet, wine-scented, wind-dried lap cheong in the south; savory, garlicky, smoked Harbin red sausage in the north — which is, literally, “Lithuanian sausage.” Read this chapter →
  2. 2 Japan and Korea: Fish Instead of Pork What you make a sausage from when the pork runs out: Japan’s postwar pink fish sausage, Korea’s blood-and-glass-noodle soondae, and how a can of Spam rewired a cuisine. Read this chapter →
  3. 3 Southeast Asia: Four Answers on One Dial Four answers to what a sausage is for, on one fermentation dial: fresh herb (sai ua), sour ferment (sai krok Isan), raw ferment (nem chua — and why it’s safe), and the colonial sweet (longganisa). Read this chapter →
  4. 4 India and Goa: Portugal’s Pork Fingerprint A pork sausage that survives in exactly one place on a pork-averse subcontinent — Catholic Goa — because 450 years of Portugal made it a badge of who you are. Read this chapter →
  5. 5 Africa: One Continent, Three Answers One continent, three unconnected answers: boerewors and toasted coriander in the south, merguez and harissa in the north, blood-and-offal mutura in the east. Read this chapter →
  6. 6 The Columbian Exchange: The Pivot The hinge of the whole story: after 1492 the pig crossed west and the chile crossed east, and every sausage on earth got rewritten. There was no pig in the Americas before Columbus. Read this chapter →
  7. 7 Mexico: One Name, Two Different Foods Chorizo is two different foods wearing one name: fresh and crumbled here, dry-cured and sliced in Spain — which is exactly why I can’t buy the good kind and make my own. Read this chapter →
  8. 8 South America: The Third Chorizo The third chorizo: not Spanish-dry, not Mexican-crumbled, but a fresh sausage grilled over coals for the asado — where the fire does the work the cure does elsewhere. Read this chapter →
  9. 9 The Caribbean: A Thin Paper Trail A living home-and-street sausage with a thin paper trail — achiote-red longaniza, Puerto Rico versus the Dominican — and why being honest about the gaps is the point. Read this chapter →
  10. 10 Cajun and Creole: Two French Words That Lie Cajun andouille is German-smoked pork shoulder, and boudin is a rice sausage — two French words that don’t mean what they say. My six andouilles and my boudin live here. Read this chapter →
  11. 11 American Regional: Read the Immigrant Off the Bread You can read the immigrant off the grain: cornmeal scrapple, oat goetta, the beer brat, the pepperoni roll, and the hot dog — plus the myths about where its name came from. Read this chapter →
  12. 12 The Frontier: Making Sausage Out of What You Shot Venison, goose, reindeer, and the one safety rule that matters: with bear, only heat kills the parasite — never the smoke and never the cure. Cook it to a verified 165°F. Read this chapter →
  13. 13 The Industrial Sausage: Safe, Cheap, and the Same How the factory made the sausage safe, cheap, and all the same — and why “pink slime” is the wrong thing to be afraid of. The case, after twenty-five chapters, for making your own. Read this chapter →

Get new content

Occasional emails when something significant ships. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.