Kabanos, the World’s Greatest Slim Jim
February 04, 2013 | Updated June 06, 2022
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I must confess I’d never heard of kabanos until about eight years ago, I started looking for a superior sausage recipe that used sheep casings. I’d never really used sheep casings before, but I like the idea of narrow, easy-to-eat sausages and salami.
Think Slim Jim, but several orders of magnitude better.
My first impulse was to make cantimpalitos, the skinny little chorizo sticks from Spain that are to canned Vienna sausages what God is to a lump of mud. I will make these, by the way, but later.
I’d been making a lot of paprika-heavy sausages lately, so I decided to go with something less aggressively spiced. That’s when I read about this Polish kabanos recipe in one of the finest charcuterie books ever written, Home Production of Quality Meats and Sausages by the Marianski Brothers.
Kabanos, pronounced Kah-bah-NOSS so far as I can tell, is what a Slim Jim dreams about becoming when it grows up. It is fairly lightly spiced with garlic, nutmeg, black pepper and a hint of caraway, smoked over cherry, apple or beech wood, then hung for a few days to dry. Kabanosy is the plural of the word.
It is an unusual sausage because even though it’s air dried, you don’t use starter cultures or Instacure No. 2. The drying process is too short for that. (Two other great recipes with short drying time are stÃ¥ngkorv, a Swedish breakfast sausage, and landjaeger, a German dry-cured sausage perfect for taking on a hunt.)
Traditionally, kabanos is a pork sausage, but really any meat works: Pork, beef, wild hogs, bear, venison, duck or goose, whatever. Kosher versions use chicken or turkey. I used venison, cut with pork fat.
Make LOTS of these, as you will find yourself eating them uncontrollably. Once made, kabanos will keep in the fridge for a couple weeks or so, and after you vacuum-seal them or wrap them tightly, they will freeze for up to a year without loss of quality.
If you can’t find sheep casings where you live, you can buy sheep casings online from The Sausage Maker.
Kabanos, Polish Smoked Meat Stick
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 pounds pork venison, wild boar, bear or other meat
- 10 ounces pork fat
- 23 grams kosher salt, about 2 tablespoons plus a teaspoon
- 3 grams Instacure No. 1, about 1/4 teaspoon
- 4 grams sugar, about a heaping teaspoon
- 4 grams crushed black pepper, about 2 teaspoons
- 2 grams nutmeg, about 1 heaping teaspoon
- 2 grams caraway seed, 2 teaspoons
- 1 gram celery seed, about 1/4 teaspoon
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/3 cup ice water
Instructions
- Cut the meat and fat into pieces that will fit in your grinder. Mix all the salts and spices with the meat and fat. Put everything in the freezer for 1 hour to chill. Meanwhile, take out about 20 feet of sheep casings and soak them in tepid water.
- Grind the mixture in the fine die of your grinder, making sure everything stays cold. If the meat warms beyond 35°F, stop and freeze everything for 30 minutes to cool it down. Put the ground meat in the fridge while you clean up.
- Using a Kitchenaid or other stand mixer, or your (very clean) hands, add the ice water and garlic. Mix the meat and fat -- use the lowest setting on a stand mixer -- until it binds, about 1 to 2 minutes. Again, put the meat in the fridge while you clean up.
- Flush the sheep casings with warm water and set aside.
- Put the meat mixture in your sausage stuffer and stuff into the sheep casings. Remember that sheep casings are weaker than hog casings, so you do not want to overstuff them. Â As you are stuffing, fill up a link between 12 inches and 24 inches, leaving plenty of extra casing on either end. Cut the casing and continue to make these large links until you've used all the meat.
- Use a sterilized needle to pierce the casings wherever there are air pockets. Gently squeeze the meat in the casings to tighten. You may break some until you get the hang of it. If you do, put the meat back into the stuffer and make another link. Once all the links are firm in their casings, tie the ends together in a double or triple knot. Trim any excess casing.
- Hang the links to dry in a cool place for several hours, depending on how warm it is. If the temperature is 70°F or above, hang for only an hour.
- Move the links to a smoker and smoke until the interior of the meat hits 150° -- keep your smoker cool enough so that this takes about 4 hours. You want the links to get lots of smoke time.
- Let the links cool, then move to a place to hang them. Ideally this place is between 35°F and 60°F and dark. Hang the links for 3 to 5 days to let them dry out a bit. They are now reasonably shelf stable, but I keep them in the fridge. If for some reason you plan on keeping them more than a month or so, wrap tightly (or vacuum seal) and freeze.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Mark: Weird. I’ve never had that happen with my LEM. As for more ice water, I would not go more than 1/2 cup or so. I usually max out at 1 cup of liquid for a 5 pound batch, to give you a sense of proportion.
I made these without weighing the salt, just measuring. They taste good, but a tad salty. Will weigh next time.
Hank – question – I used my LEM 5 lb sausage stuffer for the first time when making this recipe. I had several instances in which I had to back the plunger off because the meat wasn’t moving well enough and would push back through the gasket seal. I’m thinking the meat was too tacky, needed more ice water prior to stuffing?
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Thanks for great idea. I’m fairly new to sausage making, have chorizo and salami drying in one of our wood shelters and experimented a little due to lots of pork from the Berkshire pigs who cleared our back garden of thistles last yeat. But now I want to have a go at these too, look wonderful!
Thats Mortons course kosher.
Think im going to go with the diamond crystal. If you have ever google sausage you may have seen my sausage posts done in my Bradley or my smokehouse. Also my dry cure done in my sobe cure fridge. I recently started back up on a blog after my other got hacked. I need to update with my recent pics.
Thanks Hank for all your replys.
Nepas: I used 25 grams of kosher salt. Always go with weight over volume in my salami recipes, because I’ve seen WEIRD shit happen with tablespoon measurements, as you just illustrated. And I usually use Morton’s.
I’m Polish and I grew up with these. Insanely delicious, satisfying and addictive. Glad to see you’re enjoying them! Pronounced more like kah-bah-NOH-sih.
Hank
Like your Kabanosy recipe but have some weight issues on the salt
What kind of kosher you use?
Mortons
Diamond Crystal?
The 2 will weigh different.
Mortons 3 Tbs I get a Gram weight of 56.3 (approx)
Diamond Crystal 3 Tbs I get a gram weight of 39
Thanks
Rick
Nepas: Good catch! Yes, it should be 1/2 teaspoon. Changed the recipe.
Nice recipe. Just 1 question.
Why 1 t cure #1 to 2.5 lbs of meat? Should be 1/2 t.
Mark: You could, but I don’t like them. Personal choice.
hank – could you use collagen casings?
Liz: Thanks for the Polish lesson! Good to know.
Will: Yep. You eat them as-is because they are hot-smoked.
Can you eat these as is? Or do you have to cook/grill them afterwards?
Wow, grew up eating these but never thought about making them myself! Now I am seriously craving one. By the way, kabanosy is plural; a single one would be a kabanos… but how often are you eating just one? 🙂
Did someone actually tell you that Kevin just got a brand-new industrial-strength sausage stuffer, or do you have some kind of charcuterie ESP?
I’m familiar with Polish kielbasa; this looks wonderful. I can’t wait to try it.
Thanks!
John
These look and sound so good but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to try it. If you ever do a live lesson, please let us know!
My favorite use for sheepskin casings: long, skinny merguez sausages, perfect for grilling & folding into fresh flatbread.
Thank you for this! Someone gave my husband some kabanosy a couple years ago and he’s been talking about it ever since, but I hadn’t yet tracked down a recipe. Now to get my hands on some sheep casings.
This looks amazing. I’ve been a little intimidated by the Marianski book; thanks for helping me get into it.
One thought, from the world of smoked sausages, is that instead of hanging the links to dry at room temperature, set them overnight in the fridge with as much surface area exposed as possible. That would give it more time (with less risk) to form the pellicle for the smoke to stick to.
And I recommend Butcher & Packer out of Detroit for casings and other curing orders. Great service, solid website and excellent quality – better than I’ve gotten from buying the “single serving” casings from the Fish Hunt Camp stores or Amazon. I’m not affiliated. Just a fan. https://www.butcher-packer.com/