How the legendary Mydland sausage is made
- This sausage is the heart of the business.
If you are from Tromsø, the Mydland sausage is iconic and stands for part of Tromsø's identity. It is wrapped in myth and full of flavour, and it is one of the first things the city's tourists and visitors want to taste when they come to see us.
-The Mydland sausage is the heart of our business. It was how the business started, and it is the core of the business, says Sandra Mydland – operations manager at Mydland and a fifth-generation meat producer.
But how is it made – and how does it turn out so good?
The most essential things in our sausage production are good raw materials, a happy workplace and skilled people who know what they are doing!
Sausages from Mydland contain meat and fat, and are made in essentially the same way they always have been. The meat is minced and chopped into a forcemeat before it is stuffed into a cleaned and prepared casing from pig or sheep.
The challenge of making traditional sausages is mixing ingredients that do not mix easily: water, fat and protein.
To get a mixture that holds together and can become sausages, we have to add salt and work the protein in the meat.
Proteins emulsify fat and water so that they bind. That is why the meat is minced and chopped into a smooth forcemeat, just as you could do in a food processor on the kitchen counter.
During the process, spices, potato flour and a few necessary additives are mixed in. Their job is to prevent unwanted bacteria from growing. The result is a high-quality sausage that keeps until the use-by date.
Once the meat mixture has been filled into casings and twisted into perfect sausages, they are hung on racks and wheeled into large smoke rooms. The sausages are then cooked and cooled before they are packed – either vacuum-packed or in a controlled atmosphere with a gas.
-Smoking is an ancient way of preserving food, but today the sausages are smoked first and foremost for taste and appearance. Norwegians have always preferred smoked sausages to sausages that are only boiled, setting Christmas sausages aside.
After smoking, the sausages are heat-treated at 80 degrees and then cooled quickly. This is done to ensure a flavourful quality product that is completely safe to eat, including beyond the shelf life. Sausages are a fresh product, and from the time the meat goes into production until the sausages are on their way to the shops, it takes about 1–2 days.
So what does Sandra serve if the King and Queen come to visit?
-The Mydland sausage, of course!
