Isterband
Smoked, lightly fermented sausage of Småland, in which barley groats or potatoes are added to the forcemeat to give a distinctive sharpness and texture.
| Lean pork (shoulder) | 500 g |
| Pork belly | 300 g |
| Cooked potatoes, crushed | 150 g |
| Fine salt | 20 g |
| Ground white pepper | 2 g |
| Allspice | 1 g |
| Ground ginger | 1 g |
| Finely chopped onion | 50 g |
| Sugar | 3 g |
| Hog casing (Ø 40–45 mm) | — |
- Preparing the potatoes: Cook them, then crush coarsely. Leave to cool completely.
- Preparing the meats: Cut the meats into cubes, then chill hard.
- Mincing: Mince through the 6 to 8 mm plate to keep a rustic texture.
- Mixing: Add the crushed potatoes, the onion, the salt, the sugar and the spices. Mix well without overworking.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the casings, forming sausages of 12 to 15 cm.
- Fermentation: Leave at room temperature (18–20 °C) for 12–24 hours to develop the characteristic sharpness.
- Smoking: Cold-smoke for 4 to 6 hours over beech or juniper wood.
- Drying: Dry for 24 to 48 hours in the refrigerator.
- Cooking: Pan-fry or grill until well browned. Traditionally served with stuvade makaroner (creamed macaroni).
The name isterband derives from the Old Swedish ister, lard, and band, a tie or a casing. The discreet sharpness that characterises this sausage results from a lactic fermentation of the forcemeat before smoking, a process the other Swedish sausages in this book do not employ.
It comes from Småland, a region of south-eastern Sweden whose poor soils led to a subsistence economy. The potato, a hardy crop suited to thankless ground, enters the composition as a filler, in place of part of the meat. Its use as a whole tuber, cooked and coarsely crushed, is distinct from the potato starch used as a binder in the falukorv or the fläskkorv: here the potato physically structures the sausage and gives it a rustic look visible at the cut.
The fermentation before smoking originally served as a technique of stabilisation without refrigeration. Juniper, an optional smoking wood, releases resinous, camphorated compounds that produce a smoke distinct from that of beech.
It is pan-fried or grilled, then served with stuvade makaroner (creamed macaroni), a pairing recorded in Swedish cookbooks since the nineteenth century and still a classic of Swedish school canteens.
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