Get your mind out of the gutter, people. Real sausages. To eat. Not, you know… Ok, I give up. Have your laugh. Sausage party.
Last Saturday was a day that I had waited for—no, longed for—for almost a month, because Saturday was the day when we were going to get to learn how to make sausage. And really, how could that possibly be anything other than amazing? Unless you can’t eat pig, of course, in which case you can probably disregard the rest of this post until the very end. (I’ll try to wrap it up with something non-meaty.)
The sausage making cooking class was an event hosted by the American Women’s Club in Malmö, or, more specifically, Pete and Lucie. Pete and Lucie are two former Floridians who seem to have abandoned all sense of reason (read: change in climate) for familial ties, as they moved to Sweden to be closer to their daughter, who was lured here by a Viking, just like seemingly 90% of the expats I meet in this country.
Here’s the thing. Pete is not a sausage dilettante; Pete is a sausage master. A sausage master equipped with lots of tools to get the job done.
Look below and you’ll see what beckoned to us from within the kitchen as we entered their house. I was fairly awestruck by the array of tools until I got all the way into the kitchen and realized that Pete and Lucy have installed a heated floor in their kitchen, at which point my attention shifted suddenly to the wonderful sensation of WARMTH on my stockinged feet. Spending as much time standing on the tiles became one of the central foci of my night.
Photos: Kate Reuterswärd
Here’s what I learned about making sausage from scratch: first you have to grind the meat and fat, then you get to add whatever flavors you want, plus some rusk crumbs (yeastless bread crumbs) and water. Then you just lovingly feed the mixture into a casing, which holds the whole thing together.
That’s Pete in the red below and his daughter, Jennifer, in the top left photo. We were making Italian sausage, so Pete whipped up a special spice blend: heavy on the fennel with a healthy dash of chili flakes, just the way it should be!
Photos: Kate Reuterswärd
What happens next is this: you put the meat in this funnel contraption, which has this protruding rod thing that has to be first oiled and then sheathed with the casing, and honestly, how can you not die laughing throughout this process?
And yet, even as you’re cracking up, you’re also charged with this very serious responsibility of NOT DESTROYING THE SAUSAGE.
Because that would be bad, very very bad.
You’ll see my anguished face below (second photo down). That’s the look of a woman who is extremely concerned with maintaining consistent sausage girth, I kid you not, that is a technical term, I did not make it up on my own.
Photos: Kate and Simon Reuterswärd
If you successfully navigate the sausage stuffing process (no air bubbles, no unexpected bursting through the seams), you end up with this one long coil of meat encased in pig intestines. And then you have to turn them into links, as seen below. One link is twisted away from you, then the next is twisted towards you; away, towards, away, towards, away, and so on.
After that, you have to wait 6 hours or so for the flavors to solidify, so fortunately Pete and Lucie had prepared a batch for us to cook and eat ahead of time.
Simon and I had some slight disagreement over who was head chef and who was sous chef, but I think the photo says it all—when Jennifer told us to look busy, Simon started stirring the pot and I held up the piece of sausage I was snacking on.
Photos: Kate Reuterswärd, Jennifer Claesson
The sausage making turned into sausage cooking which eventually turned into a really lovely evening of eating, drinking, and sharing funny stories and experiences.
When Simon and I finally made it back to our own apartment later that night, I was full and happy and a little nostalgic. It had been an adventure, but in many ways, it had also felt like being at home and hanging out with my family.
When I walked in Pete and Lucy’s door at 4pm, the Paul Simon CD I grew up with was playing, and it instantly took me back to running around my family room in Michigan at age 8 or so and climbing on the sofas and chairs like a maniac. Throughout dinner, I could understand all the cultural references, all the political and historical events being referred to, and it was so easy. I didn’t have to concentrate on understanding the language or trying to pair tone of voice or an attitude with the words. It was just comfortable.
My life here in Sweden is so good, better than it’s ever been before, and I’m certainly not isolated from American culture here. Every once in a while, though, it’s nice to feel like I’m back home again.
