Portuguese sausage
Smoked pork sausage of Azorean and Madeiran heritage, introduced to Hawaii in the nineteenth century by Portuguese immigrants who came to work in the sugar-cane plantations.
| Lean pork shoulder | 650 g |
| Fatty pork belly | 350 g |
| Fine salt | 22 g |
| Sweet paprika | 15 g |
| Crushed red pepper flakes | 5 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 15 g |
| Ground black pepper | 3 g |
| Sugar | 5 g |
| Cider vinegar | 30 ml |
| Water | 30 ml |
| Hog casing (Ø 32–36 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut the meats into 3 cm cubes. Refrigerate at 0 °C.
- Mincing: Mince through the 6 to 8 mm plate.
- Seasoning: Dissolve the salt, the sugar, the paprika, the chilli, the pepper and the vinegar in the water. Add the crushed garlic. Add to the meat, then knead for 5 minutes.
- Resting: Refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the casings, forming sausages of 15 to 20 cm or a continuous chain.
- Smoking: Smoke over hardwood (kiawe, the Hawaiian mesquite, or any fruit wood) for 3 to 5 hours at 65–75 °C. The sausage should take on a red-brown colour.
- Poaching: Poach at 75 °C for 30 minutes.
- Serving: Slice and pan-fry or grill. Serve at breakfast with eggs, white rice and possibly grilled Spam (the tinned pork meat ubiquitous in Hawaiian culture). Fold into a plate lunch, a musubi (a filled Japanese rice ball) or fried rice.
The term Portuguese sausage is used in Hawaii to refer to a smoked pork sausage derived from the Portuguese linguiça and chouriço. Between 1878 and 1913, about 20,000 Portuguese from the Azores and Madeira emigrated to Hawaii to work on the sugar cane plantations. They brought their charcuterie traditions, their bread (the pão doce, which became the Hawaiian sweet bread) and their festivals (the Holy Ghost Festival, still celebrated).
The sausage evolved in contact with the multicultural Hawaiian cuisine. It is sweeter than the original chouriço, with the addition of sugar, a trait of Hawaiian cooking influenced by Japanese and Chinese cuisines. The chilli is more moderate. Smoking over kiawe (Prosopis pallida), a mesquite imported from South America, became the barbecue tree of Hawaii, replacing the Portuguese oak or beech for smoking and bringing a drier, more resinous note.
It is part of the standard Hawaiian breakfast, alongside eggs, white rice, and grilled Spam (an inheritance from the American military presence during the Second World War). This rice–eggs–sausage–Spam combination is served in all the diners and plate-lunch shops of the archipelago. The Portuguese sausage is also folded into the Hawaiian fried rice and into omelettes. The Redondo’s and Gouvea’s brands, founded by descendants of Azorean immigrants, are ubiquitous in the archipelago’s supermarkets.
This book documents a Portuguese charcuterie transfer to the Pacific, parallel to those towards Brazil, Goa, Angola and Mozambique, but this time via labour migration towards the plantations.
The book
All 144 recipes and their histories, gathered in a single volume.