The kielbasa I grew up eating was the generic stuff you'd find in the grocery store next to the hotdogs. It tasted like plain old sausage, and the smokiness was the only distinguishing flavor. It wasn't until I was older and started going to food trade shows that I got to try a variety of authentic Polish kielbasa and realized that the stuff I ate growing up was extremely watered down. Kielbasa simply translates to sausage, which means the word could apply to a lot of different types of Polish sausages. The one that is most familiar and popular in America seems to be simply seasoned and heavily smoked. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that, but generally speaking, the best sausages are usually not hanging up next to the Ballparks.

We made this smoked kielbasa with beaver meat, which was excellent, but you could really substitute in any red meat. This recipe is pretty minimalist. I used roasted garlic powder because I wanted a lot of garlic flavor without it overpowering the meat. This sausage is smoky and garlicky, and tastes great hot or cold. We use it in a lot of potato dishes, pasta, and by itself with some spicy mustard. Add it to anything that would benefit from some smoke and fat.

Beaver Kielbasa Recipe

As always, we use metric measurements and go by percentage weight for our sausage recipes. We do this to make the recipes easy to scale and replicate exactly, batch after batch. If you’re thinking of getting into sausage making and don’t own a kitchen scale, please do yourself the favor of buying one. They’re inexpensive relative to the cash outlay of all the other equipment you’ll need to pick up, and will save you a lot of effort in terms of scaling recipes into imperial measurements. To measure your ingredients, first weigh the meat you are using, and then calculate the weight of all the other ingredients based on the weight of the meat.

Prep time: 3 hours

Ingredients:

Beaver meat, cubed

40% pork fat, cubed

3% salt

0.5% instacure #1

1.8% sugar

1% white pepper

1% mustard powder

0.5% roasted garlic powder

2% cold water

Hog casings

Method:

Mix all ingredients except water. Grind through the fine/medium die of your meat grinder. Add water and mix well with a wooden spoon or in a stand mixer, 1-2 minutes on low-medium speed. 

Stuff into hog casings and twist into 12-18” links. Prick with sausage pricker or sterile needle.

Place uncovered in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours, ideally hanging, or evenly spaced on a wire rack so the air can circulate around them & allow them to dry. 

Preheat the smoker to low heat (165-180F), moderate smoke.

Smoke until internal temp reaches 150F, then immediately chill using an ice bath. Allow to hang or set on a wire rack to drain and cool completely.