In 1945 someone in the newly organized Polish government came up with a brilliant idea of standardizing Polish meat products using traditional time proven recipes. The official list of meat products and sausages was drawn and the Department of the Meat Industry started to work out details. In 1959 the first official guide for making meat products and sausages was issued which was followed in 1960 by a slightly revised version. Then in 1964 the Polish Government issued the final version that covered 84 meat products and 119 sausages. Those manuals reserved for internal use only helped to create the best meat industry that ever existed anywhere and this standardization allowed Poland to produce sausages of high and consistent quality. They were not written by restaurant cooks or college students, but by the best professionals in meat science the country had. The recipes presented in this book come from these manuals and they were never published before. These are recipes and production processes of the products that were really made by Polish meat plants and sold to the public. Most of those sausages are still made and sold in Poland today.
When the war ended in 1945, Poland was in ruin. Some cities were even up to 80% damaged, with every fifth person in a family dead. The Polish currency, zloty, was not fairing too well either. It was not convertible, effectively rendering it unusable. The government could not buy any goods from the rest of the world, and of course nobody offered any credit. Communism was forced on Poland, which had previously been a free country. These events isolated the government from the rest of the world and as a result Poland did not get any assistance from the West. The country had to go back in time and start selling natural and agricultural resources, such as coal, vodka, and meat products. These products had to be of exceptional quality if they were to be accepted in the West, and the Government spared no effort.
In 1945 someone in the newly organized government came up with the brilliant idea of standardizing Polish meat products using traditional time proven recipes. The best professionals in meat science in the country had written a book on the technology of making meat products and it covered sections like meat aging, meat curing, smoking etc. These guides contained specific recipes and were for internal use only, which the general public had no access to.
In 1959 the first official guide for making meat products and sausages was issued. Its name was # 16 Collection of Recipes and Instructions for Making Meat Products and Sausages and it was reserved for internal use only. In 1960 the # 17 version was issued which was a slightly revised version of # 16. Then in 1964 the Polish Government issued an expanded version called # 21 Collection of Recipes and Instructions for Making Meat Products and Sausages which was 760 pages long. In total 200 meat products were covered and.... now comes the best part....ONLY ONE chemical was used. The additive was potassium nitrate which had been used for centuries and is still used even today by all meat processors, although it is replaced by its easier to administer cousin - “sodium nitrite”. In fifty years, millions of pounds of meat products and sausages were made and sold without the use of chemicals, just quality meats and spices.
The recipes presented in this book come from these manuals and they were never published before.
Those government manuals helped to create the best meat industry that ever existed anywhere, although its life was only about 50 years. The project was government funded and no effort or money was spared. This standardization allowed Poland to produce sausages of high and consistent quality. Moreover, it taught people what to expect from a particular brand as its taste, texture, color, and flavor were basically the same in all areas of the country. The meat industry and its distribution were centralized and so important for the government that any deviation in the recipe was punishable by law.
The general consensus in Poland is that Polish meat products, in the years 1950 - 1990 were absolutely the best. When the system fell, the country opened up and capital started to flow in from the West. This brought the latest in meat technology: needle injectors and chemicals to pump up the meat. The once rigid standards were significantly lowered, especially when the country joined the European Common Market. To once again taste those wonderful products, one has to do them oneself. And that is exactly what many people in Poland do, at least for Christmas and Easter holidays, when only the best of the best will do.
About Stanley and Adam Marianski, Miroslaw Gebarowski
All his life Miroslaw Gebarowski born and raised in Poland, was collecting recipes, books and government manuals that were related to making meat products and he became an accomplished sausage maker and an authority on the subject. After the change of the political system in 1989 he became so dissatisfied with the deteriorating state of once great Polish meat products that he started a sausage forum in November 2004 and then in February 2005 he created www.wedlinydomowe.pl the web site dedicated to traditional ways of making meat products without use of chemicals. Little he imagined that he would create one of the most popular sites in Poland and the biggest site of this kind on the Internet. In two years the site has grown to three thousand members and is one of the most trafficked sites in Poland.
Stanley Marianski, also born in Poland, left the country at the age of 20 to start his never ending voyages that took him to countries like South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, the Caribbean and all of Europe. In 1979 he arrived in the USA where as his custom he has been living and working all over the country. Such a lifestyle helped him master five languages and forced him to work in different occupations. There was one hobby, almost an obsession that stayed with him throughout his travels and that was smoking meats and sausages. With his son Adam, they run www.wedlinydomowe.com where they mirror some of the material listed on the main site in Poland.
In 1945 someone in the newly organized Polish government came up with a brilliant idea of standardizing Polish meat products using traditional time proven recipes. The official list of meat products and sausages was drawn and the Department of the Meat Industry started to work out details. In 1959 the first official guide for making meat products and sausages was issued which was followed in 1960 by a slightly revised version. Then in 1964 the Polish Government issued the final version that covered 84 meat products and 119 sausages. Those manuals reserved for internal use only helped to create the best meat industry that ever existed anywhere and this standardization allowed Poland to produce sausages of high and consistent quality. They were not written by restaurant cooks or college students, but by the best professionals in meat science the country had. The recipes presented in this book come from these manuals and they were never published before. These are recipes and production processes of the products that were really made by Polish meat plants and sold to the public. Most of those sausages are still made and sold in Poland today.
All his life Miroslaw Gebarowski born and raised in Poland, was collecting recipes, books and government manuals that were related to making meat products and he became an accomplished sausage maker and an authority on the subject. After the change of the political system in 1989 he became so dissatisfied with the deteriorating state of once great Polish meat products that he started a sausage forum in November 2004 and then in February 2005 he created www.wedlinydomowe.pl the web site dedicated to traditional ways of making meat products without use of chemicals. Little he imagined that he would create one of the most popular sites in Poland and the biggest site of this kind on the Internet. In two years the site has grown to three thousand members and is one of the most trafficked sites in Poland.