Špekáček
Short sausage of beef and pork, studded with visible fat dice, smoked over beech wood. It is grilled on a pointed stick over a campfire, then served with strong mustard and rye bread.
| Lean beef (rump) | 500 g |
| Lean pork (shoulder) | 200 g |
| Pork back fat in 8–10 mm dice | 300 g |
| Fine salt | 20 g |
| Curing salt (Prague Powder #1) | 2.5 g |
| Ground black pepper | 3 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 8 g |
| Sweet paprika | 5 g |
| Grated nutmeg | 1 g |
| Iced water | 60 ml |
| Hog casing (Ø 36–40 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut the beef and the pork into 3 cm cubes. Cut the back fat into regular 8-10 mm dice. Refrigerate the meats and the fat separately at −2 °C for 2 hours.
- Mincing: Mince the beef and the pork through the 3 to 5 mm plate to a fine paste. Do not mince the fat: the dice must remain intact in the forcemeat. It is the visible fat mosaic at the cut that characterises the špekáček.
- Seasoning: Dissolve the salt and the curing salt in the iced water. Work this brine into the minced meat with the garlic, paprika, pepper, and nutmeg. Knead for 4 to 5 minutes into a sticky, homogeneous paste.
- Incorporating the fat: Add the cold fat in dice to the forcemeat. Mix gently by hand to distribute them evenly without crushing them.
- Stuffing: Stuff firmly into the hog casings. Form short sausages of 10 to 14 cm, closing both ends with twine or an aluminium clip. The characteristic shape is squat and plump.
- Smoking: Cold-smoke over beech wood for 2 to 4 hours at below 25 °C. The skin should take on a red-brown hue.
- Poaching: Poach in water at 75 °C for 30 to 40 minutes, to 70 °C at the core.
- Cooling: Shower with cold water, then air-dry.
- Cooking: Spear on a wooden stick and grill over embers (no direct flame) for 8 to 12 minutes, turning regularly. The ends may be scored crosswise (rohy, ‘horns’) or lengthwise before grilling, which lets the fat melt and the skin crisp. Serve with strong mustard (hořčice) and rye bread.
The name špekáček derives from špek (fatback, fat). It is sometimes rendered as ‘the little fat one’. Its visual mark is the mosaic of white fat dice visible in the slice, set into a fine red-brown meat paste. This mosaic is not a defect: it is the quality criterion that separates an artisanal špekáček from an industrial imitation.
The špekáček appears in the second half of the nineteenth century in the butchers’ shops of Prague, but its public consecration dates from 1891, at the General Centennial Exhibition held at the Holešovice exhibition grounds. The fair celebrated the centenary of Bohemia’s first industrial exhibition and served as a showcase for Czech craft. Among the two and a half million visitors, many stopped at the stand of the Prague butcher Antonín Chmel, where a sausage machine produced špekáčky smoked on the spot, served on salted rolls with mustard and horseradish. The success was immediate, and the sausage settled into the butchers of Prague, then of the whole country.
In 2011, the špekáček was added to the European Commission’s list of Traditional Specialities Guaranteed (TSG), a status that protects the recipe but not its geographical origin. This registration codified the composition (the proportions of beef, pork and fat, the list of permitted spices) and distinguished the authentic špekáček from its imitations. The lesser sausages, sold under the names buřtík, vuřt or opekáček, use mechanically separated meats, cereal binders and a lower percentage of fat, which gives them a softer texture and a lower price.
The špekáček is inseparable from two Czech social rituals. The first is the summer campfire (táborák), inherited from the tradition of tramping, the Czech outdoor movement born in the 1920s, in which groups of friends camped in the forests of Bohemia. The špekáček was then speared on a hazel stick cut on the spot. The second is Witches’ Night (Čarodějnice, or Pálení čarodějnic), the festival of 30 April, when fires are lit across the country. It is also found at all the Christmas markets in Prague, Brno, and Olomouc, grilled outdoors and sold on a stick.
The špekáček is also eaten pickled, under the name utopenec (the drowned man), a peeled sausage immersed in a jar of vinegar with onions, pepper, bay and chillies. The utopenec is a classic of the hospody (the Czech pubs), served cold, with draught beer. Legend attributes its invention to an innkeeper and miller of Beroun named Šamánek, who sought a way to keep his sausages without refrigeration, and whose pickled sausages made his house's reputation. Šamánek drowned while repairing his mill wheel, and his customers named his sausages ‘the drowned’ in his honour.
Outside Czechia, the špekáček is known to visitors to Prague and to the Czech communities of Germany, Austria and North America.
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