Jadgwurst / Jagerwurst / Jaegerwurst

[Chris Hennes]

I was working on the WikiGullet Project article on jagerwurst this afternoon and was unable to find any good information on it under that name: the only stuff in Wikipedia is called "Jadgwurst" but it sounds like the same thing. Does anyone know for sure if that is the case? Also, in the Ruhlman Charcuterie book it's a pork sausage, but the Wikipedia article seems to indicate it's beef and pork. Naturally, neither the WP article nor Ruhlman cite any sources for this info. Does anyone know anything about it? Have you ever made it? What are the seasonings you think exemplify it?

[mkayahara]

I think you'll find that's spelled "Jagdwurst." Etymologically speaking, they mean the same thing (hunter's sausage vs. hunting sausage).

The Wikipedia article calls it a "cooked" sausage, but the ones my local sausage-maker makes are dried. I think he's actually Polish, but I can ask him on Saturday what kind of meat he puts in it...

[catdaddy]

My memory is of pork and kirschwasser. Fresh but hung a couple days.

[heidih]

I think Dad the butcher is taking his afternoon nap but I will ask him in a while. He made then in Austria years ago. The ones I buy here seem almost like a beef jerky sausage. About 6 inches or so, flat, rectangular and chewy. We use the term Jaegerwurst (hunter sausage)

ETA: oops I am thinking of Landjaeger- gamekeeper sausage I think.

Will ask Dad when he wakes up

[rooftop1000]

Well I found this going through Yahoo.de

http://www.landmetzger-schiessl.de/Bruehwurst/Jaegerwurst::55.html

which translated looks like this

Our hunter sausage - one heartful, delicate sausage sort. For the production of our hunter sausage we use 40 per cent vorgesalzene ham cube insert. This is lean-meat-roasted with as well as mixed with cut up pig belly carefully. For that heartful, delicate taste of our hunter sausage noble nature spices provide, refined with whole dried green pepper grains.

tracey

[OliverB]

I don't think there's "the one" Jagdwurst, I just checked two of my German books and one is mostly beef with maybe 10% pork and backfat, the other is more pork than beef and adds pistachios to the mix. It's boiled at 75 degree centigrade for 90 min to two hours, depending on how thick it is.

Generally I'd expect a cooked but not aged sausage under that name. The little dry ones, usually made in a mold, are the above mentioned landjaeger.

But my guess would be that you can find a lot of different recipes in the different regions if not even in between butchers. But in general you're talking about lean beef and pork with pork fat and spices. Some of the meat is ground up really fine, some is more cut into cubes.

Oh, and it's quite tasty! One of the first things I do in Germany is go to the baker and the butcher

Edit to add: yet an other recipe in a book about home slaughtering makes it from pork only, lean shoulder meat, half ground up really fine, half cut into larger pieces, and adds the pistachios to the meat grinder towards the end.

Edited February 15, 2011 by OliverB (log)

[Chris Hennes]

Ah, excellent info all (Ruhlman's book spells them "Jagerwurst" in the recipe and "Jaegerwurst" in the index. Doh!). Oliver, what are the two books you are looking at? I don't suppose you want to give the article an editing pass?

[OliverB]

3 books actually:

Hausschlachten by Baernhard Gahm (home slaughter) very interesting, lots of gory pictures though, be warned ;-)

Würste, Sülzen, Pasteten selbst gemacht by Gahm also

Räuchern, Pökeln, Wursten by Franz Siegfried Wanger

All little books, maybe half an inch thick, but all quite good. There's a great sausage book in German (have to look up the title) but it's more of a pro text book and rather expensive, so I don't own it (yet).

I just looked at your entry, I'd definitely add the pistachios, to the recipe, they are rather common in use, at least in Bavaria where I'm from. That's how you can recognize them right away, nice bright green spots in them.

Let me know if you come across other German foods where you need info, I have several books, including a reprint of a very old book from 1795, all the medieval time re enactors use that in their field or home kitchens. Supposedly even here in the US. Printed in a somewhat hard to read font from way back when. It's called Handbuch für Frauenzimmer, which I'd somewhat translate as Handbook for Womenkind.

Fun :-)

[andiesenji]

Jagdwurst

is also made by a few local butcher shops still operating in rural areas of Wisconsin.

When I lived there in the mid-'50s, the village butcher made jagdwurst with a mixture of pork and venison, sometimes including beef, and it was called simply "hunter's sausage" and some was a thinner sausage, longer and slimmer than brats and some was made into a larger "log" shape and cooked - I think it was boiled - and this was sliced like other lunch meats and as I recall had lots of whole peppercorns in it.

He also made the best blutwurst I have ever tasted.

[heidih]

I spoke to dad the "Old World" sausage maker and much as others have noted it is a pretty general term. His take was that it was a lean dry sausage the hunters could take with them for a few days. The casing was tied off into 6 to 8 inch lengths probably to make it a portable in your pocket size. The meat was beef with some pork, salt, pepper and saltpeter.

[Mjx]

I plugged both 'Jagdwurst' and 'Jägerwurst' into a German-restricted image search, and, as pretty much everyone says, these don't seem to be hard-and-fast designations, but the former appears to be a larger and more finely textured product than the latter. I had a run of German boyfriends, and I can recall getting one or the other (both?) for breakfast sometimes, which was seemed a needlessly harsh way to begin the day.

[Mjx]

For whatever it's worth, I plugged a German recipe for Jagdwurst into babelfish: http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.praxis-lexikon.de%2Fdiy%2Fdiy-bauplan%2Fj%2Fjagdwurst.php&lp=de_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

Vogon poetry, more or less (fifth step: 'Everything into intestines rackings.').

If the link goes a bit odd, this is the original: http://www.praxis-lexikon.de/diy/diy-bauplan/j/jagdwurst.php. If nothing else, it does give an idea of general ingredient parameters. 'Spice blend' is a fairly opaque term, and other sources are more specific (and mention spices such as pepper, mace, and ginger), but things like 'Nitritpökelsalz' and 'Farbstabilisator' don't strike me as likely to have been used in the original iterations.

Edited February 16, 2011 by Mjx (log)

[Chris Hennes]

Vogon poetry indeed: "(caution: with to high Brühen blatzen the sausages)." Priceless.

That recipe has eggs in it, and "1 EL of the Green pepper": anyone have any idea what's going on here?

[Mjx]

Apparently, EL stands for 'Esslöffel'(= 'tablespoon'), and is equal to about 15 ml (about a tablespoon measure, in fact): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EL, under the second grouping ('sowie eine Abkürzung für:'), second item down ('Esslöffel, in Kochrezepten als Maßeinheit angegeben, wobei 1 EL ca. 15 ml entspricht. Siehe auch: Essbesteck').

According to Lebensmittel-Lexikon, traditional seasonings for Jagdwurst are mace, cardamom, garlic, and mustard seed (left column, towards the bottom, p. 2072).

Edited February 16, 2011 by Mjx (log)

[andiesenji]

I found this site that has a long list of "sausage" formulations, including Jadgwurst, which they list as "German Ham Sausage" which I think is like the larger form of lunch meat I had back in the '50s.

It's in 90mm casings and steamed or poached.

There is lots of interesting information in these Adobe format documents, even if the Jadgwurst is not the dry variety.

[naguere]

As a soldier in Germany , a long time ago, it was perfect at the bar after a couple of beers.

Oblong, pressed flat , chewy, garlicky and a grease on your chin kind of thing.

You had to tear at it, grind a bite off.

Ideal when you are out hunting.

or ordering another beer.

Edited February 16, 2011 by naguere (log)