Babic sausage - spicy, cold smoked, over dried beef/pork

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atomicsmoke

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
Apr 3, 2014
4,313
1,235
Toronto, Canada
It's prononounced ba:beek. Origins of this sausage are unclear (to me). Some say is a Serbian recipe, others Bulgarian. AK1, have you heard about it?

It could be one of those meats, like Canadian bacon. Is only Canadian bacon in US. In Canada is peameal bacon, or backbacon.

It's been a long time since I enjoyed babic - never made it.

Lean beef and pork, equal amounts, sweet and hot paprika. It's a spicy sausage, so hot paprika in abundance. No fat added (what you see in the pictures is little fat that was on pork leg meat). The traditional recipes insist on mixing/resting: the mixing is done in 1kg portions, in a poplar wood bowl (I imagine 1kg was the maximum you could comfortably mix in that bowl). Each porttion, ball shaped rests for a day on poplar wood boards. More mixing, more resting. I assume there was some natural fermentation taking place - same bowl , boards were used every year.

I skipped the poplar part, and made a 2.9kg ball.

Cold smoked for 3 days (with breaks). Dried to 50% weight loss. I went for hardness not weight. It's very hard, you can barely make a dent when you squeeze with two fingers.
Is close to a jerky consistency.
Thinly sliced so it doesn't feel too chewy is a perfect companion for a good plum brandy. Or vodka if plum Brady is not available.
 
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Looks good! Some of the southern and eastern European cuisine uses peppers that aren't very hot, but very rich in red pepper flavor.
 
I think poplar is considered a hard wood.
That said,around here if you sold somebody a cord of poplar for fire wood they would hunt you down.
When it's dry it's surprisingly light,burns like paper.
It grows fast and usually near water or wetland around here. I'll probably try it on a little something one of these days
 
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Beech: I once got a quick informal tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery here in Columbus. Basically every step of the brewing/bottling process has its own big building. Budweiser is billed as "beechwood aged" and yes in fact they do age it in huge casks, beer and beech chips combined. The aroma in that building was a 50/50 mix of beer and wood.

I asked, what to they do with the spent chips? Apparently they just dispose of them. Maybe it's a liability issue? What would it be like to smoke with beer-infused beech? (sounds like Super Bowl hey?)

Tabasco chips their retired oak casks and they sell them as lump wood. When you soak them, the water gets a red tint.
 
Thing is, a lot of these balkan sausage recipes are very similar, but , perhaps because of the political situation at the time... well... names etc change.  It's a bit difficult to get some of the names straight. Hell, it was difficult before the war in 1991. My family made sausages, and they were noticably different from those made 20 miles away, which were different from some made 20 miles further. Very similar ingredients, but slightly different ratios. What I did find in my research was that the amount of salt was consistent. Around 2.5-3% Black pepper varied by region as did garlic. Some added paprika as well. Then you get places that did similar seasoning but used beef or lamb instead of pork. Or even a mix... It's difficult to find a common name for a type of sausage.
 
Hi all, I just joined to add to this old thread.

My wife is from Romania and we are currently visiting her hometown of Buzau. Babic is known here as "Babic de Buzau". According to the locals, this recipe was originally introduced by Bulgarian traders who established themselves in the Romanian city of Buzau and continued to make and sell their sausage. The recipe calls for equal amounts of good quality pork and beef which are mixed with spices (including copious amounts of spicy paprika). The mixture is mixed regularly over a period of 10 days, then pressed, smoked and subsequently air dried. I'm not great with really spicy foods, and this is about at my limit. The spiciness is mostly around the lips, not so much when the food is swallowed. I've seen various grades of harness, defiantly not as hard as some salamis I have seen, but ranging from fairly soft to medium hardness. In the Balkans all food seems to be related, other internet sources claim this came from Serbia (I've been told that the Romanians originally didn't know what language the Bulgarians spoke and thought they were Serb, Romanian is a Latin language and Bulgarian Slavic so they may not have understood much). The sausage is still made in Buzau and Bulgaria. Http://www.tasteatlas.com/babic
 
Hi all, I just joined to add to this old thread.

My wife is from Romania and we are currently visiting her hometown of Buzau. Babic is known here as "Babic de Buzau". According to the locals, this recipe was originally introduced by Bulgarian traders who established themselves in the Romanian city of Buzau and continued to make and sell their sausage. The recipe calls for equal amounts of good quality pork and beef which are mixed with spices (including copious amounts of spicy paprika). The mixture is mixed regularly over a period of 10 days, then pressed, smoked and subsequently air dried. I'm not great with really spicy foods, and this is about at my limit. The spiciness is mostly around the lips, not so much when the food is swallowed. I've seen various grades of harness, defiantly not as hard as some salamis I have seen, but ranging from fairly soft to medium hardness. In the Balkans all food seems to be related, other internet sources claim this came from Serbia (I've been told that the Romanians originally didn't know what language the Bulgarians spoke and thought they were Serb, Romanian is a Latin language and Bulgarian Slavic so they may not have understood much). The sausage is still made in Buzau and Bulgaria. Http://www.tasteatlas.com/babic
I guess the stories have not chnaged since 35 years ago, last time i visited Buzau.
 
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