Ingredients:

2lbs of good quality pork shoulder

(DO NOT use pork loin or any other lean pork cut and DO NOT use ground pork)

7 cloves of good quality garlic finely minced

15 g of salt

10 g of freshly ground black pepper

3 bay leaves (optional)

Pork casings (1 strip)

Kitchen twine or cotton thread

Several toothpicks

Cooking Instructions:

Kovbasa is made a day before you cook it in order to marinate the meat. Ukrainian food is simple but it relies on high quality ingredients so it’s very important to get the best quality meat and garlic you can find.

The day before you plan to cook kovbasa do the following:

1.       Prep your pork casing.  Pork casings are available at most well stocked grocery stores (e.g. Whole Foods).  Pork casings sold in the grocery stores are already cleaned but they are cured in salt.  It’s important that before you start your kovbasa you wash the casing under the running water and place it in a bowl with water to soak to get rid of extra salt.

2.       While the pork casing is soaking cut the pork shoulder into cubes that are between ½-1”.  You might be tempted to cut out as much fat as possible… DON’T do it!  You need fat to make kovbasa.  You don’t need a lot of fat but you do need some to make sure that meat is moist, otherwise you’ll end up with a pork jerky and not the kovbasa.  As mentioned in the ingredients listing above, DO NOT buy lean pork and DO NOT use ground pork or you will end with pork sausage and not the kovbasa.  Kovbasa needs something to bite into, as such, you do need little chunks of meat in it.

3.       Place the cut meat into a bowl.  Finely mince garlic and it to the bowl along with salt, black pepper, and optionally bay leaves.  You can use dried or fresh bay leaves, but they need to be ground into a powder.  If you have an electric spice grinder you can place bay leaves with black pepper peppercorns and grind them together.

 4.       Mix the meat and ingredients for 7-10 minutes.  It’s important to “massage” the meat so the flavors blend together and the meat is tenderized.  DO NOT skip this step.  Your hard labor will deliciously pay off at the end.

 5.       Once your meat is tenderized and infused with flavors, it’s time to stuff the pork casing.  You can stuff the casing by hand or if you have a food processor with a sausage making attachment, you can use that.  If you are doing it by hand, you need to have a sausage stuffing tube, which is available online for purchase.  

First, you need to get casing onto the stuffing tube.  Tie the end of the stocking with a cotton thread and start stuffing the casing.  Don’t rush and take your time.  If you’re doing it by hand, you will get air inside the casing.  No worries, just use your hand and move the stuffing a little bit inside the casing to get the air out.  The casing needs to be stuffed tight, but the meat inside still needs some breathing room.  See the photos below to get an idea of how the end-product should look like.

Traditional Ukrainian kovbasa is made as one long link. But, if you wish, you can make kovbasa look like sausage links in a store.  All you need to do is tie or twist casing at set intervals to make equally sized kovbasa links.

6.       Once you are done stuffing the casing you need to tie the end of the casing with a cotton thread or a kitchen twine.   You can make a loop with the casing and tie it that way, but kovbasa can sometimes unravel, so we recommend using a cotton thread or a kitchen twine. 

7.       Once kovbasa is stuffed, prepare a baking sheet by lining it with an aluminum foil and greasing the foil with any kind of oil.  Put your kovbasa on the baking sheet by coiling it as if it were a snake.  It should look like this.

Cover up kovbasa with a plastic wrap or an aluminum foil and stick it in the fridge for 12-24 hours.

8.       When you’re ready to cook kovbasa the next day, take it out of the fridge about an hour or hour and a half before you start baking it.  It’s VERY important to bring the meat to a room temperature.  This will ensure that the meat in the kovbasa bakes evenly and the casing doesn’t rip while kovbasa is in the oven.

9.       Before you put your kovbasa into the oven, use a toothpick and poke the casing all around kovbasa at about 5-6” intervals.  This will allow for air to escape and prevent casing from ripping while kovbasa is baking in the oven.

10.   DO NOT preheat the oven.  Put the baking sheet into the oven and turn on the heat to 375.  Once the oven reaches 375, set your timer to 45 minutes.  After 45 minutes check on your kovbasa.  It should look darker and the casing should look dry.  If your kovbasa doesn’t look like in the photos below, stick it back into the over for 10 minutes or until it looks like the kovbasa below.

Once kovbasa is ready, take it out of the oven and let it rest 10-15 minutes. 

Enjoy your kovbasa!  To make a traditional meal, pair kovbasa with mashed or boiled potatoes and a cabbage salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes dressed with the unrefined sunflower oil.

Smachnogo!!!  Смачного!!!