UPDATE 06/09/09:
See my new and improved recipe for Homemade Longanisa.
Below is my original post on longanisa.
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Sausage is as near a universal food as you can get. Of course, France, Italy, and Germany all have their own unique sausage incarnates, but so does China, Mexico, Spain, the good ‘ol USA, and countless other cultures. But, seeing as I’m Filipino, and this is a Filipino Food Blog, I must mention with pride that most distinct Filipino sausage redolent of black pepper, vinegar, and garlic: Longanisa.
Although I’ve only somewhat recently come to appreciate the vinegary virtues of Longanisa, there was a time in my life when I avoided this sausage at all costs. One hot, San Fernando Valley summer when I was a wee little boy, my dad sweated away in our little kitchen making homemade Longanisa. I remember him squishing fatty pork chunks through his old school hand-cranked meat grinder, and then stuffing this slippery mess into lengths and lengths of pig intestines. While this scenario may be old-hat to grizzled sausage-making veterans, it was a bit disturbing to me as a little kid, what with all the grease and pig guts. Quite simply, I was grossed out.
This isn’t to say I avoided all sausage consumption. Oh no. I ate my fair share of hot dogs as a kid. But every time I saw Longanisa on our dinner table, I remembered pig guts and my dad’s greazy meat grinder—memories strong enough to prevent me from enjoying a truly delicious Filipino specialty.
Years later, after reading “The Jungle” in high school, I figured that there were worse things that could end up in sausage besides grease and pig guts. And last I checked, my father had all 10 digits in tact. As such, my aversion to Longanisa slowly gave way, link by garlicky link.
I started eating the Longanisa my mother would sometimes bring home from the Asian market. These store-bought links were fairly decent, if not overly sweet and filled with preservatives, food coloring, and who knows what else. But nothing compared to the gold-standard of Longanisas in my family—those made by my grandmother’s sister. Yup, my great aunt twists a mean Longanisa link—chopping her pork and stuffing her casings all by hand. My great aunt’s homemade Longanisa, I slowly learned, was the best sausage I’ve tasted—grease, pig guts, and all.
Even more years later, after reading Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie and after returning from a charcuterie and salumi-filled vacation in Europe, I learned that grease and pig parts are to be revered rather than feared. It also helped that the Filipino love of pork that was hardwired into my brain eventually made itself more dominant.
So, a few weeks ago, I decided I’d try my hand at homemade Longanisa, using Charcuterie as a guide. Although Charcuterie was written by non-Filipinos, I wanted to use it as a guideline for making Filipino sausage because it’s a great cookbook with sound sausage-making advice regardless of who wrote it. While there is no Longanisa recipe in Charcuterie, Ruhlman and Polcyn have a great “master ratio” for a standard sausage that consists of 5 pounds of pork and fat, 1.5 ounces of kosher salt, seasonings, and 1 cup of ice-cold liquid. Armed with this master ratio, and my Pinoy tastebuds, I went about creating my own recipe for homemade Filipino Longanisa.
[Sausage-making is a long process that is well worth the effort. And if you couldn’t already tell from the title of this entry, this will be a long post that is (hopefully) well worth reading.]
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