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Home » Charcuterie » Loukaniko: Traditional Greek Sausage

Loukaniko: Traditional Greek Sausage

By Hank Shaw on April 24, 2008, Updated October 29, 2020 - 31 Comments

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4.89 from 9 votes
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Holding a tray of loukaniko sausage
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Every year or so Holly and I host a Greek-themed, springtime hootenany we call our Big Fat Greek Parties. We roast goats and lambs, eat octopus, sometimes grill sardines. But the mainstay of the party food is always this more or less traditional Greek loukaniko sausage.

Loukaniko is an ancient sausage, dating back to Classical times. Nowadays it is a roughly ground Greek country sausage that, like any country sausage, has lots of variation depending on the region and the cook.

The only constants I could find after researching these links is that they must include pork, garlic and citrus peel. Fennel is common, as are cinnamon and leeks. You’ll often see either white or red wine in the mix, too. The dominant flavors are usually the orange zest, garlic and coriander. You definitely taste the Mediterranean in this link.

Many versions of loukaniko are mixtures of both pork and lamb. I don’t often have lamb in the house, but I do have venison as a stand-in, so my mixture is about two-thirds wild boar with one-third venison trimmings. You can alter that ratio as much as you want.

Loukaniko is best cooked on a grill over an open fire. But you can use it in stews or cook it in a frying pan, too.

SOME SAUSAGE-MAKING NOTES:

  • Make sure everything you deal with — meat, liquids, equipment — is very cold, as in close to freezing. This really matters, not so much for sanitation, although that’s important, but for the final texture of your sausage. Warm ingredients won’t bind well.
  • If you don’t have a sausage grinder and a sausage stuffer, I really don’t recommend you try this recipe. But if you must, you can pulse the meat in small batches in a food processor and stuff it through a wide funnel.
  • You will need hog casings for this sausage, although I suppose if you kept kosher and wanted to skip the pork shoulder and use sheep casings, that’d work fine. Soak 5 to 6 lengths of hog casing (about 1o to 15 feet) in warm water for at least 30 minutes before you begin stuffing.
  • You will need a rack to hang these links on while they are drying. A hand-wash drying rack works well.
  • You may need string to tie off the links, if you need to hang them in a way that doesn’t allow your twisted links to stay twisted. Have this handy, along with scissors.
  • You will also need a needle to prick your sausages once they are hanging — this is to release any trapped air. You will see air pockets on some of your sausages. Prick these with your needle. Sterilize it in the burner of your stovetop.
  • Try not to eat them the same day. All sausages taste better the day after they have “cured” in the fridge overnight. These sausages will in fact cure a bit because of the Instacure, but even without it the link with firm up and hold its shape better after it rests.
loukaniko sausage recipe
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4.89 from 9 votes

Greek Loukaniko Sausage

Many loukaniko recipes call for smoking the links, or at least drying them for a couple days. If you do this, add a pinch of Instacure No. 1, a nitrite that helps the flavor and protects the sausage from bacterial issues while it smokes at low temperatures: Typically I smoke several pounds of these links for several hours to an internal temperature of about 155ºF before finishing them with a kiss from the grill.
Prep Time2 hrs
Cook Time3 hrs
Total Time5 hrs
Course: Cured Meat
Cuisine: Greek
Servings: 20 links
Calories: 340kcal
Author: Hank Shaw

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds lamb or venison trimmings
  • 2 1/2 pounds pork or wild boar
  • 1 pound pork fat
  • 32 grams kosher salt, about 3 tablespoons
  • 4 grams Instacure No. 1, about 1 rounded teaspoon (optional)
  • 25 grams sugar, about 2 rounded tablespoons
  • 5 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
  • 1 tablespoon ground coriander seed
  • 1 tablespoon cracked black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons fennel seeds
  • 1 tablespoon crushed dried oregano
  • 2 teaspoons dried thyme
  • 3 tablespoons grated fresh orange zest
  • 1/2 cup white or red wine
  • Hog casings

Instructions

  • Chop your pork and lamb into rough, 1-inch chunks. Mix in the salt, curing salt (if using) and sugar and grind through a coarse die on your grinder. Put this in the fridge overnight if possible or for at least an hour. The step helps the sausage bind to itself when you stuff it.
  • Set aside 1/2 of the coriander, black pepper and fennel seeds in a small bowl. Soak your hog casings in warm water. Put the wine in the fridge. Make sure all your grinding gear is cold.
  • Mix the remaining spices with the meat and fat and grind the meat a second time into a bowl. You can grind coarse again or go fine. Your choice. I do half-and-half. Set the bowl for the meat into another bowl full of ice if your room is warmer than 70ºF. Once it's ground, put the meat in the freezer and clean up.
  • Get out your stand mixer and find the heavy paddle to it (not the dough hook). If you don’t have one, put the meat mixture in a large bin so you can mix it by hand. Add the orange zest, reserved spices and the wine and mix the sausage well for 2 minutes, or until it forms a sticky, cohesive paste. If you are doing this with your hands, they should ache from the cold.
  • Get out your sausage stuffer, which if you’ve been smart has been living in your fridge or freezer for the past few hours. Fit it with the appropriate tube and stuff the sausage. Do it all at once before you twist it into links.
  • To twist into links, start at one end and compress the meat into the casing, then tie off the casing. Measure out a good-sized link, then pinch with your fingers. Do the same another good-sized link down the coil. Once you have them both pinched, twist several times to tighten the link well. Repeat on down the line of the coil, then tie off the final link after compressing it, too. Once you’ve finished, hang the links so your twisting does not come undone, or tie off each link with string. Use the needle to prick any air pockets, and compress the meat in the casing to fill those pockets; be careful or you can rupture the casing if you do this too roughly.
  • Hang your sausages to dry for about 2 hours in a normal room, only 1 hour if the room is warmer than 75ºF. Ideally, you hang the links overnight at about 40ºF.

Nutrition

Calories: 340kcal | Carbohydrates: 3g | Protein: 20g | Fat: 27g | Saturated Fat: 10g | Cholesterol: 78mg | Sodium: 674mg | Potassium: 341mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 12IU | Vitamin C: 2mg | Calcium: 28mg | Iron: 2mg
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Filed Under: Charcuterie, Greek, Recipe

Avatar for Hank Shaw

Hank Shaw

Hey there. Welcome to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, the internet's largest source of recipes and know-how for wild foods. I am a chef, author, and yes, hunter, angler, gardener, forager and cook. Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook.

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Comments

  1. Avatar for Bill PetkanasBill Petkanas says

    February 19, 2022 at 11:14 am

    My family came from northern Greece (Greek Macedonia) and my grandmother would make a dozen of these and hang them all over the kitchen to cure. She cooked them by cutting them into half-inch disks and drying them while squeezing lemons over them. She must have used a lot more pepper because they were spicy. Great memories – I always order this at a Greek restaurant and they come in so many variations, I assume from areas and family recipes.

    Reply
  2. Avatar for Peter KPeter K says

    September 9, 2021 at 3:31 am

    G’day Hank, thanks for the recipe, particularly the detail. I came here looking for a goat sausage so will use this recipe replacing the lamb with goat. Looking forward to having my hands aching with the cold. Also doing a batch of merguez with lamb. Looking forward to that as our lamb is pretty tasty and undervalued i reckon in snags. Cheers

    Reply
  3. Avatar for mrsmigmrsmig says

    July 10, 2021 at 5:52 pm

    Tried your recipe out this weekend and followed it to the letter – and I’ve got to say it was sublime. I love loukaniko, but after paying $12/lb for some boutique butcher shop stuff last week, and the huge letdown of how blah it tasted, I was ready to try my own hand. The husband and I aren’t strangers to sausage-making (he’s Italian), but this process has quite a few more steps. However, the aroma of the orange zest and garlic as we mixed more than made up for the extra time. Grilled three links this evening and served up with salad and rice – mmmm. Thanks for a great recipe!

    Reply
  4. Avatar for margaret olivermargaret oliver says

    May 1, 2021 at 10:36 am

    I would like to buy a box of those sausages please how would I go about it

    Reply
    • Avatar for Hank ShawHank Shaw says

      May 1, 2021 at 11:11 am

      Margaret: I am a writer and a cook, not a store. Sorry, I don’t sell food.

      Reply
  5. Avatar for Joel T ClarkJoel T Clark says

    August 29, 2019 at 12:20 pm

    I made these the other day and they turned out amazing. The orange was refreshing and seasoning was spot on. That said, by the next morning they were bordering on ‘unpleasant’. The gorgeous sweet orange character turned bitter and overpowering. Any chance I can get a guesstimate of the zest weight in grams? Overall I feel this is a solid recipe but assume that I simply had too much zest.

    Reply
    • Avatar for BrianBrian says

      November 18, 2021 at 3:56 am

      Make sure when grating the orange peel to only go as deep as the orange color holds. Avoid the white pulp part of it, this part is bitter. Maybe this I s what happened?

      Reply
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Hi, my name is Hank Shaw. I am a James Beard Award-winning author and chef and I focus my energies on wild foods: Foraging, fishing, hunting. I write cookbooks as well as this website, have a website dedicated to the intersection of food and nature, and do a podcast, too. If it’s wild game, fish, or edible wild plants and mushrooms, you’ll find it here. Hope you enjoy the site!

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