Gyulai Kolbász
The mild version of the Csabai kolbász, smoked over beech wood. The first Hungarian sausage to obtain a European PGI.
| Lean pork shoulder | 650 g |
| Pork belly or hard fatback | 350 g |
| Fine salt | 22 g |
| Sweet Hungarian paprika (from Szeged) | 18 g |
| Medium-hot paprika (félédes) | 7 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 10 g |
| Ground caraway (köménymag) | 2 g |
| Ground black pepper | 2 g |
| Cold water | 40 ml |
| Hog casing (Ø 26–40 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Trim the meats carefully, removing all tendons and connective tissue. Cut into cubes, then chill to 0 °C.
- Mincing: Mince through the 4 to 6 mm plate.
- Seasoning: Mix the paprikas, the caraway and the pepper with the garlic and the water. Add to the meat. Knead vigorously for 4 to 5 minutes, until a uniform red-orange colour is reached.
- Resting: Refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours to let the spices penetrate.
- Stuffing: Stuff in pairs into the pig’s small intestine. Form sausages of 18 to 26 cm, tied in pairs.
- Surface-drying: Hang for 12 to 24 hours in a cool, well-ventilated place.
- Smoking: Cold-smoke (20 °C) over beech wood for 2 to 3 days, at 70–90 % RH.
- Maturing: Dry for 14 to 16 days at 16 to 18 °C, gradually reducing the humidity. A post-maturation evens out the product’s residual moisture.
- Serving: Eat in thin slices, without cooking, or work into a dish.
The Gyulai kolbász is the mild version of the two dried sausages of Békés county, whose shared context is set out in the Csabai kolbász entry. Its blend of sweet Szeged paprika and medium-hot paprika (félédes) produces a rounder, more aromatic profile without the heat of the hot paprika. Its finer calibre (small intestine, 26 to 40 mm, compared with the large intestine of the Csabai) allows for a shorter drying period: fourteen to sixteen days, compared with four to six weeks. The existence of this sausage in Gyula is due to the town’s livestock fair, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was among the most important in Central Europe. Local sources report tens of thousands of pigs being driven on foot to Gyula for sale. Animals injured on the road had to be slaughtered on the spot, which led to the construction of a public abattoir in 1868 and to the formation of a class of butchers able to process large quantities of meat quickly. It was in this context that the master butcher József Balogh Jr developed the recipe and won a gold medal at the Brussels World’s Fair of 1910. His apprentice, András Stéberl, mechanised part of the production and founded the factory that would become the largest in the region. In 1935, Stéberl received the gold diploma at the Brussels World Food Exposition for the ‘small pároskolbász of Gyula’. The PGI, registered in 2010, is the first granted to a Hungarian sausage at the European level.
It is eaten thinly sliced, without cooking, on bread with fresh green pepper and gherkins. It also enters simmered dishes, where its pronounced smokiness infuses during cooking, notably rakott krumpli (a layered potato gratin with hard-boiled eggs and sour cream) and Jókai bableves, a bean soup named after the Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai.
The town of Gyula has a charcuterie museum, housed in the old abattoir, which traces the history of production from its origins through nationalisation under the communist regime to the restructuring of the 1990s. Production today remains smaller in volume than Csabai's.
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