How To Guides

Cevapi are cylinder-shaped sausages, popular in Southeast Europe, especially Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Bulgaria. They provide a burst of smoky flavor and are delicious served with sliced onions and flatbread. Also known as Serbian sausages or cevapcici, they have a long history and originate from the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. These sausages come from a mixture of meats including lamb, pork, and beef. This is useful for helping the sausage hold its shape and [...]

Back in the day before supermarkets, grinding meat at home was extremely common. Now it seems to have been put in the too hard basket. A challenging activity best left for butchers and food geeks - the type that have to DIY everything. The fact is, some food preparation is best left to the professionals but when it comes to meat grinding, that's not one of them. It's surprising how simple the process is [...]

You might not know it but building a sausage smoker is pretty simple. Using just a few things that you might have laying around your house, you can construct a mean smoking machine, cooking up sausages with flavors that you can’t imagine. You can build a homemade sausage smoker in just a few simple steps using things like clay pots, trashcans, and even an old file cabinet. All you need is a closed space, a [...]

If you’ve ever been lucky enough to visit Catalonia, you’ll know their local chefs have a superpower. The ability to turn simple ingredients into a masterpiece. They rely heavily on local Mediterranean ingredients, including tomato, garlic, eggplant, fish, cheese, and olive oil. But if there’s one ingredient that’s revered by the locals, it would have to be botifarra (butifarra), a type of pork sausage stuffed in hog casing. You can prepare it by using [...]

If you're looking to up your barbecue game, smoking meat is the way to go. Smoking food can take an ordinary dish and transform it into something outstanding. Smoked chicken is one of the most delicious foods you can eat--but if you don't do it right, you'll end up with tough, rubbery skin that is practically inedible. To avoid tough skin when smoking chicken, be sure to let the skin dry out in the fridge [...]

Sausage skins will split when they are cooked for several reasons, including too much water in the filling, the sausages being stuffed too much, and the frying pan being too hot. Read on to find out why sausage skins will burst when cooked, the science behind it, and how to prevent it from happening. Why Do Sausage Skins Burst When Cooking? There are a couple of different reasons sausage skins will burst when cooking. [...]

Capicola is a type of Italian meat that is covered in spices and dry-cured. It is renowned for its strong, spicy flavor, typical for many kinds of charcuterie originating from Europe. But what we love about this meat is its succulent texture. Ribbons of fat provide a lovely buttery mouthfeel that balances the spices perfectly. Unlike prosciutto, which some find chewy, capicola is much easier to eat. Ideal on an antipasto platter, in subs, [...]

If you’ve ever ventured to the Southwest of France, you may have been lucky enough to visit the city of Toulouse; a location that’s steeped in history. Although it is a beautiful place to visit, with many sites to see, it’s own version of the humble sausage is what I love about it. The Toulouse sausage is known locally as the saucisse de Toulouse and is well worth trying. Stores make it in abundance, [...]

Chinese sausage can look and taste different depending on which region of China the recipe originates from. A popular type of Asian sausage is lap cheong or lap chong: a thin, hard, wrinkled looking, dried sausage traditionally made from pork meat with high levels of fat. Seasoning is added to provide a sweet flavor to the meat that is unique to sausages made in other parts of the world. Did you know? Lap cheong [...]

In most parts of the world bloedworst isn't a sought after protein. However, there are some that swear by this sausage thanks to its unique flavor and texture. Bloedworst doesn't have the usual texture you expect from a sausage, it's softer and easier to bite into. Bloedwurst goes by a range of names including bloedwurst, boudin noir and  blutwurst. Translated to English it means blood sausage, and yes, it's made from blood. Toss in [...]