Grillpølse
Norwegian barbecue sausage, emulsified, lightly smoked and seasoned with ginger and cardamom. Ginger in a Frankfurt-type sausage is a Scandinavian trait.
| Lean beef | 400 g |
| Lean pork | 400 g |
| Back fat | 200 g |
| Curing salt | 18 g |
| Sugar | 5 g |
| Ground white pepper | 2 g |
| Grated nutmeg | 1.5 g |
| Ground ginger | 1 g |
| Ground cardamom | 0.5 g |
| Potato starch | 30 g |
| Iced water | 100 ml |
| Sheep casing (Ø 22–26 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut all the meats into cubes, then part-freeze at −3 °C.
- Mincing: Mince very finely in a bowl cutter to a perfectly smooth emulsion.
- Seasoning: Add the curing salt, the sugar and all the spices. Gradually add the ice water and the starch, mixing until creamy.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the fine sheep casings. Form sausages 18–20 cm long.
- Smoking: Hot-smoke (70–75 °C) for 30–45 minutes to a light colour.
- Poaching: Poach for 15 to 20 minutes at 75 °C.
- Cooling: Cool quickly and refrigerate.
- Cooking: Grill over high heat on the grill or the plancha until well golden and lightly crisp. Serve in a lompe (potato flatbread) with ketchup, mustard and fried onions.
The grillpølse is a fine emulsion of pork and beef, seasoned with ginger, nutmeg and cardamom, three spices whose presence in Nordic charcuterie dates back to the Hanseatic trading posts that supplied Bergen and the Norwegian ports from the Middle Ages. Potato starch, the common binder of emulsified Scandinavian charcuterie, stabilises the forcemeat and produces a smooth texture. The sugar in the seasoning is a constant of Nordic charcuterie, absent from the German and French traditions.
The grillpølse stands apart from the wienerpølse, the other great category of Norwegian pølse. The wienerpølse, thinner, is poached in hot water and never grilled; the grillpølse, thicker and more strongly seasoned, is cooked exclusively in the pan or on the grill.
The variations on the grillpølse are numerous in mass retail: cheese-filled (ostepølse), bacon-wrapped (baconpølse), chilli-spiced (chilipølse). These industrial variants leave the emulsified base unchanged.
It is served in a lompe, a soft, round, potato flatbread wrapped around the sausage. The lompe is a thinner, smaller version of the lefse, the traditional Norwegian potato flatbread. They replace the hot dog's wheat bun in Norwegian usage, though the sausage may also be served in a classic long roll (brød). The usual garnishes are ketchup, mild mustard, crisp fried onions (sprøstekt løk) and sometimes a prawn salad (rekesalat) or potato salad.
The culture of the sausage kiosk (pølsebod) structured Norwegian street eating for much of the twentieth century. Oslo counted more than forty pølseboder in the 1980s. The decline was rapid: the petrol stations (Circle K, Esso) and kiosk chains (Narvesen, 7-Eleven) progressively absorbed the function. The grillpølse, in its various forms, appeared on the rotating grills of shop windows around 1960. More than twenty million pølser are eaten in Norway each year in May, around Syttende Mai, the national day of 17 May, when the grilled sausage is part of the festivities on the same footing as the parade, the flags, and the ice creams.
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