Prague sausages recipe. Sausages for beer: German, Czech, Caucasian

Finely chopped meat with fat and spices, stuffed into a natural gut and grilled on the grill - the best snack for beer. You can easily make your own, or you can buy in the store, both fresh and frozen. By the way, freezing has practically no effect on high-quality sausages. With proper and slow defrosting, they will not lose their taste. And of course, you need to completely defrost the sausage for frying, it should not be defrosted in a frying pan or coals, this will kill the taste and juiciness of the meat.

Sausages on the grill

Whether you bought your sausages from the store or made your own, our cooking tips will come in handy.

• Sausages are best fried at a low temperature. Therefore, you must wait until the coals are completely burned out, or, if possible, set the grate higher than is set for frying meat.
• The grate must be greased so that the casing of sausages does not stick to it.
• Before putting the sausages on the grate, they need to be dipped in boiling water for a second so that the shell sits tighter, does not release juice and does not burst.
• Do not cut sausages if they are made in a single string. Just lay them in a spiral on the grate. Otherwise, fat will flow out of them, and they will turn out dry.
• When frying on coals, you can prick each sausage in two places with a toothpick. This is done so that the shell does not tear from the heat. You need to do this when laying sausages on the grill.
• Turn the wire rack often while roasting so that the sausages cook evenly.
• Fry sausages for a short time, about 15-20 minutes. If longer, then you will get a dry and burnt snack.

Other frying methods

Sausages can also be fried in a pan, baked in the oven or in an air grill. You can also use a microwave with grill mode.

frying pan it is better to take with a thick bottom, if possible - cast iron. It warms up best and keeps the temperature. Heat the oil in a frying pan, then reduce the fire to a small one, put the sausages, after pricking them from the ends with a toothpick. Fry over low heat, constantly turning over and slowly adding fire. By the middle of frying, it should be medium. So fry on it. Fry for about half an hour, but it depends on the size of the sausage.

oven for frying sausages it is necessary to warm up to 200 degrees. You can put them on a baking sheet greased with oil. And you can wrap it in foil, bake for 15-20 minutes, and then open the foil and pour the remaining 10-15 minutes on the sausages with the fat rendered from them.

IN aerogrill sausages can be cooked without oil, and even with a side dish, which is especially convenient.

Homemade sausage recipes

• The best sausages are those made in your own kitchen. In addition, at home you can cook sausages according to the recipe that you like, and not depend on the chefs of the manufacturer.
• There are a few tricks that are relevant to any recipe.
• The hardest part is the guts. You can clean them yourself, or you can buy ready-made frozen ones in the store. There is another way: ask a butcher you know in the market to prepare sausage casings for you.
• Frozen intestines should be soaked in water, then washed in several waters, before washing, the intestines should be turned out, and after washing, soaked in warm water with vinegar for three hours.
• Meat and fat should ideally be chopped into small pieces with a knife, but you can also pass them through a large meat grinder grate.
• If there is no special attachment for sausages in the meat grinder, then you can use a plastic bottle to stuff the minced meat into the intestine. We cut the bottle across, and pull the intestine over the neck - further on the principle of a culinary syringe.
• If you have prepared sausages in advance, then you need to store them in the coldest section of the refrigerator for no more than two days. They can not be stored in a bag or cling film, they will suffocate and become slippery. It is best to wrap sausages in paper (you can take parchment for baking), experts also advise wrapping them in a cloth napkin. It is necessary that the sausages "breathe".

Kupaty

Kupaty Photo: Shutterstock.com

Recipe for 1 kg of fatty pork

3 onions

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ head of garlic

Ground black pepper

Carnation

Khmeli-suneli

Pork intestines

Step 1. Pass the meat, onion and garlic through a large meat grinder. Mix, salt.

Step 2. Grind the spices in a coffee grinder and add to the minced meat. Add lemon juice. Mix again.

Step 3. Tie the prepared intestine on one side into a knot. Start with stuffing. After each sausage, tie the intestine into a knot.

Step 4. Grill kupaty until golden brown.

Czech sausages

Czech sausages Photo: Shutterstock.com

Recipe 500 g beef

1 kg pork

300 g pork belly

300 ml milk

200 ml cream

200 ml dry white wine

Nutmeg

ground cloves

Step 1. Pass the pork, beef and brisket through a large meat grinder.

Step 2. Add spices and salt. Stir, put in the refrigerator for 8 hours.

Step 3. Soak the loaf crumb in milk for 15 minutes. Then knead and add to minced meat together with milk.

Step 4. Knead the minced meat with a blender or mixer, gradually adding cream.

Step 5. Stuff the intestines with minced meat, twisting them every 15 cm or tying them with a thread.

Step 6. Pierce each sausage with a toothpick in several places.

Step 7. Fry sausages on coals, a pan or in an oven.

Bavarian sausages

Bavarian sausages Photo: Shutterstock.com

Recipe 1 kg pork

250 g beef

1 bulb

80 ml cream

Parsley

Black and white pepper

Pork intestines for casing

Step 1. Chop the meat, chop the onion very finely.

Step 2. Add spices, salt and parsley. Leave in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

Step 3. Add cream, mix and leave the minced meat in the refrigerator for another hour.

Step 4. Fill the intestines with minced meat, twisting the intestine every 15 cm. And again keep the sausages in the refrigerator for a couple more hours.

Step 5. Boil sausages in hot water, but not brought to a boil. Cook for 15 minutes.

What kind of sauce do you need

Almost any hot sauce that we use for meat, for example, tomato sauce, is suitable for sausages. Tkemali or satsebeli goes well with them. Also try mustard, but not sweet Dijon, but spicy Russian mustard.

The beauty of the Czech Republic cannot be fully known without tasting traditional dishes - the national pride of the country. But going into any, even the most modest restaurant, you get lost in front of a huge selection of first and second courses, not to mention the variety of beer snacks, which would be quite enough for a separate menu.

By the way, if you decide to taste all the most delicious and famous dishes of Czech national cuisine, you will have to put up with a couple of extra centimeters on your hips and waist - the food here is very high-calorie, satisfying; Czechs are very fond of meat (poultry, game, pork and beef), cooked in a variety of ways. And the portions in restaurants are so large that it is quite possible to order one dish for two ... it remains only to decide what to order?

We present the TOP 10 most famous and delicious dishes of traditional Czech cuisine, which you should definitely try.

Read in this article

Baked pork knee

The traditional delicious dish (Рečené vepřové koleno) is comparable to spaghetti in Italy or plov in Uzbekistan and is a real gastronomic brand. Fragrant, juicy, ruddy, ready-made pork knee on the bone weighs almost a kilogram and is ordered, as a rule, for 2-4 people. It is cooked in every restaurant and pub, but it is served differently: with horseradish, tomatoes, garlic and spices, not to mention numerous sauces and gravies.

A baked leg with mustard and horseradish with beer will cost 200 crowns. If you order only a knee, its cost will be 150-160 kroons.

Knedliks

Knedliks are the holy of holies of Czech national cuisine. Although, the most interesting thing is that initially this dish belonged to the Austrian and German cuisines, but today it has become the national dish of the Czech Republic, its culinary symbol. In fact, it is an oblong piece of dough boiled in a large amount of water or steamed (kneaded with flour or with the addition of potatoes), which is then cut across like a loaf and served as a side dish, for example, to the same baked knee. Interestingly, the dumplings themselves are inexpressive and do not have a bright taste, but in combination with meat and sauces, they perfectly absorb all the flavors of the main dish.

Well, if you sprinkle dumplings with sweet berry syrup and decorate with fruits, you get a delicious dessert. Dumplings are inexpensive - from 5 to 20 crowns.

Remember! Portions in the Czech Republic are generous, so do not rush to order everything at once, it is better to take main courses at the rate of one for 2-3 people.

Drowners, clobas, tlachenki

Such beer snacks as croutons, chips or nuts simply fade against the backdrop of a real Czech snack - delicious meat sausages! They are usually served grilled with a variety of sauces.

The most popular sausages that you should definitely try in the Czech Republic are:

Drowners, which on the menu look like utopenci - rather vigorous bacon soaked in vinegar marinade, because of their bright taste, they are used only with beer.

Fried sausages, they are also klobasa - a product that tastes less sharp; these mouth-watering sausages are good on their own, and in combination with a foamy drink they become simply divine.

Tlachenka (and in Czech - tlacenka) is a meat dish resembling strong jelly or brawn, made from pork legs, tongue or offal and consumed with vinegar. When serving, it is flavored with pepper, onion and vinegar.

Advice! In pubs and restaurants in the Czech Republic, they always cook in the morning and serve food only freshly prepared. Therefore, if you want to try the most famous dishes, it is better to go to a meal in the morning or closer to dinner, because. by evening, there is no trace left of the local delicacies of the first demand.

Please note: very often sausages are sold right on the streets of Prague. This is an old tradition, so in the Czech capital it is not at all surprising that there are numerous chewing tourists looking at the sights with a sausage in one hand. Among the street assortment, you should try Bavarian, Old Prague, Prague and Wenceslas sausages, the cost of which ranges from 50 to 80 kroons. The price includes dumplings or bread and sauces: mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup.

Vepro-knedlo-zelo

If you decide to conscientiously taste local delicacies, you won’t get off with one pork knee. Be sure to order at the restaurant such a hearty dish as Vepřo-knedlo-zelo, which is fried pork with stewed cabbage, served with dumplings.

Usually, for cooking, portioned parts of the shoulder blade or loin are used, marinated in spices and first fried in a pan, and then baked in the oven. During the roasting process, the pork is poured with broth and the resulting juice, so that as a result the meat is very tender and juicy, literally melting. Czechs are generally very fond of and skillfully cook pork, which, moreover, is much cheaper than lamb or beef meat. Well, stewed cabbage for a side dish is a classic of the genre, just like in Germany.

You can order this legendary dish from the Strahov Monastery for some 140 crowns.

Czech soups

To be in the Czech Republic and not taste the local soups - polevki - is a real crime. The first dishes here are very hearty, rich, home-style delicious. They can rightly be considered the property of the country. Liquid transparent soups are not about Czechs, no. Thick first courses are respected here, and vegetable purees, semolina or flour mash are usually added to create the appropriate consistency. An unusual ingredient used in soups and giving an interesting taste can be called fried yeast.

Note! Soups are often served in a bread loaf - be sure to try it, it's very beautiful, but most importantly - delicious!

The most popular first courses in the Czech Republic are:

Česnečka - fragrant and unusually tasty soup with garlic and smoked meats,

Pivní polévka - an original beer soup served with cheese toasts,

Bramboračka - the famous potato and mushroom soup; by the way, it is this, according to tradition, that is served in bread,

Kulajda - a thick soup with mushrooms and potatoes, flavored with sour cream, served with a boiled egg.

A portion of Czech soup costs from 40 crowns and more.

Goulash

It would seem that what makes the traditional dish of Hungary in the list of the most popular dishes of Czech cuisine? In fact, the Czechs have long borrowed it for themselves and really love and respect it. In catering establishments, you can find a variety of variations of goulash - it is prepared from traditional beef and pork, but also from veal, rabbit, lamb and cold cuts. There are Segedin, rural, hunting, Slovak, Hungarian and other types of goulash. We advise you to try one of its variations in authentic Czech establishments - this is not a tourist dish, so it is easiest to find it in restaurants oriented towards locals.

The cost of 200 gr, for example, Pilsen beef goulash with dumplings, is 100-120 kroons.

Fried carp

Despite the fact that the Czechs are ardent fans of pork in any form, fish is also respected here. It is especially recommended to try fried carp (on the menu - pečený kapr) - this dish is an indispensable element of the Christmas festive table. You should also not refuse baked trout - Pečený pstruh.

It costs 1 fish 110-150 crowns.

Olomouc curds

Cheese is loved in the Czech Republic, especially as a beer snack. Be sure to try the soft Germelin cheese, which resembles Camembert with its white mold, as well as varieties such as Pivni Syr and Zlata Niva.

But the most important cheese dish, which is to be tasted first of all, is Olomuk cheese curds fried in breadcrumbs. By itself, Olomouka cheese is made only in the Czech Republic and has a specific unpleasant smell, which, however, completely disappears when frying. Olomouc curds go especially well with beer and ordinary rye bread with onions.

A portion of fried cheese (150 gr) with Tatar sauce will cost 120-150 kroons.

Trdlo

You can taste trdelnik, or trdlo, he is also a “fool”, basically only on the street. This sweet pastry is made from rich yeast dough, which is wound on a metal rolling pin and fried on the grill or in the oven. The finished trdlo is removed from the rolling pin and sprinkled with sugar, poppy seeds, chopped nuts or fragrant coconut flakes.

Interestingly, similar pastries, though under different names, are baked and sold on the streets of Hungary and Slovakia.

One trdlo costs 45-50 kroons, and if you supplement its taste with nutella, then 60 kroons.

Strudel

Despite the fact that there are many national desserts in the Czech Republic (vanochki, kolache, etc.), the leader in taste and demand is the good old German-Austrian strudel, which you can recognize on the menu by the word “závin”.

It is prepared here at the highest level, wrapping a variety of fillings in thinly rolled unleavened dough: fruits, berries, cottage cheese, etc.

Knedliks

These are Czech dumplings made from wheat or potato flour, boiled in water and formed into balls, then cut into slices and served hot.

Goulash

A very popular dish in bars. It has many variations, but the most common is to cut the beef into large chunks and pour over a thick, slightly spicy sauce. Goulash is usually served with raw chopped onion and horseradish. (It should be noted that the name of the dish comes from the Hungarian word "gulyás", which is more like a soup.

Czech goulash is more similar to the Hungarian dish perkelt.) One type of goulash is savory goulash, which, as the name suggests, is cooked with seasonings, but it is not as spicy. Segedinsky goulash is made from pork, not beef, and cabbage.

Beef Goulash

A classic Czech dish served with sliced ​​bread (Czech. houskovy) dumplings. Fresh onions and peppers are usually served as a side dish.

Pork goulash

The main dish of Czech cuisine. It is served in the same way as beef goulash, with the exception of meat: it is made from pork.

Drowners

A delicacy served with beer. These are sausages that are marinated with vinegar, vegetable oil, onion, red pepper and various spices. Such preparations are usually made in the beer shops themselves or at home.

Svichkova on sour cream

Beef tenderloin in cream. The method of preparing a homemade dish and a dish served in a bar is different. But even the quality and taste depend on the bar. But as a rule, the tenderloin is marinated and then fried with root vegetables and onions. When the meat is ready, you need to take out the vegetables and the shtava (meat juice) and wipe them. The sauce is made from cream and flour.

The meat is cut into slices and served with sauce, bread dumplings, lemon slice with whipped cream and cranberry sauce. Despite the fact that the name comes from a certain type of meat, the word "svickova" can also be attributed to the sauce and served with other meats, such as venison or rabbit.

Svichkova on sour cream is often called the sweet brother of Czech goulash. This is a beef tenderloin that is fried in a pot and served with a creamy sauce. Carrots give it sweetness. Served with cranberries and whipped cream.

Fried pork with dumplings and cabbage

This is truly traditional food in the Czech Republic. The basis of this dish is pork, which is served with dumplings and sauerkraut. It, of course, may seem bland and greasy, but it is one of the most beloved Czech dishes, and in Prague it can be found in many restaurants.

fruit dumplings

There are many variations of this dish. Bread and potato dumplings are also very popular. Bread is often served with gravy in which the dumplings can be dipped. Potato dumplings are served as an additional dish to fried or smoked meat. Shpekove dumplings are made from fatty bacon and are no longer so popular.

The filling of fruit dumplings is made up of various fruits, but most often it is plums, apricots and blueberries. Served with cottage cheese or poppy seeds. Despite the fact that the dish is sweet, it is often eaten instead of the first course.

Kalach

These are delicious Czech pies stuffed with fruit, jam or cottage cheese.

Smazhak

Fried cheese (smažený sýr). It is rolled in breadcrumbs, fried and served with salad.

Fried champignons

Mushrooms are rolled in breadcrumbs and fried.

Payments

One of the Czechs' favorite dishes. It looks like big round waffles. They must be served piping hot. There are payments with chocolate or nut filling, there are many options.

Houska

This is a Czech bun. It is made from wheat flour, water, yeast and salt. Sprinkle with poppy seeds, cumin or salt on top. Such a delicious, sweet yeasty egg bun is found in almost every Eastern European country. As a rule, it is a braided bun with or without raisins. The Czechs and the inhabitants of Bohemia call it "houska".

For Jews, this is challah. This bun is similar to a French brioche. It is incredibly tasty both on its own and with butter or fried. Leftover buns can be used to make bread pudding or popsicles.

Pechena kahna

It's Bohemian roast duck. Served with bread dumplings and stewed red cabbage. Previously, duck or goose dishes were too expensive to afford to eat every day, so such a dish was served only on special days.

Biftek

This is a medium rare steak. If you want to order a fried steak, don't forget to say "baked". It is usually served with french fries and sometimes an egg.

Fried chicken cutlets

Cutlets rolled in breadcrumbs. They are very similar to Wiener Schnitzel, but Czech cuisine does not usually use cheese. This dish is usually served with cold potato salad or boiled potatoes.

Chicken breast

Served with any side dish, but most often with potato pancakes (rubbed on a grater and fried in the form of pancakes).

Fried rabbit

Fried rabbit is a very popular dish, although it is rarely seen in restaurants. This lean meat can be cooked in a variety of ways: in a creamy sauce, fried with garlic, or cooked plain with vegetables and onions.

Czech dishes have many ways of preparation. If you like the dish itself, but don't like the sauce, just order it without the sauce ("bes omachka").

In the Czech menu you can find the following names:

• Směs - for example, "Kuřecí směs". This means that the meat is cut into small pieces.
• Prsa - chicken breasts.
• Piquant, Ďábelský, Pálivý - the dish is served with spicy sauce.

Czechs are famous meat eaters. And Czech sausages of all kinds, complete with unsurpassed in taste and variety of the Czech national drink - beer - this is not only a dish that can be found "at every step" in a cafe or restaurant, but also in the home menu of any Czech family.

Grocery set of cooking ingredients houses of Christmas Czech wine sausages.

1. Boneless beef (small amount of fat is allowed) - 600 g
2. Pork tenderloin - 300 g
3. Pork shoulder, without skin and bones, but with a layer of fat - 500 g
4. Onion turnip - 1 pc.
5. Garlic cloves-cloves - 4 pcs
6. Dried white loaf - 400 g
7. Dry grape wine - 300 g
8. Milk - 250 g
9. Fatty cream (25% and above) - 250 g
10. Spices, including salt, a mixture of peppers and nutmeg powders, and dried cloves, to the taste of the cook
11. Natural sweet cream butter - 50 g

Step by step cooking steps:

1. Rinse all types of meat (beef, pork tenderloin and shoulder) and cut into small pieces so that they can fit in the mincer eye. Transfer to a bowl.
2. In a small but deep bowl, mix the wine with all the spices, including salt, pepper mixture and nutmeg powders, and dried clove buds.
3. Peel the onion and garlic cloves, wash and cut so that they can fit in the meat grinder ear. Transfer to bowl with meat.
4. Grind the meat, onion and garlic cloves with a meat grinder 3 times and transfer the resulting minced meat to the same bowl where they were.
5. Add wine, with spices dissolved in it, to minced meat and mix very thoroughly. For this purpose, you can use a mixer with a stirrer attachment.
6. Stretch and fix a cling film on a bowl of minced meat and send it to the refrigerator to “ripen” for a day.
7. Slightly dried loaf cut into pieces, put in a bowl and pour milk for half an hour.
8. Grind the contents of the bowl with milk and bread with a blender.
9. Add the crushed bread and milk mixture to the minced meat (with wine) and knead, slowly pouring the cream. You should get a thin, but not liquid, homogeneous meat mass.
10. With a confectionery syringe or using a special nozzle for a meat grinder for making sausages, fill clean food plastic bags suitable for freezing with minced meat by no more than 45%.
11. Knock the stuffing down the bag and tie it very tightly. Visually, the blank for the sausage should resemble a sausage in cellophane.
12. Heat (do not boil!) water in a large saucepan.
13. Put the wine sausages in the prepared water in the amount necessary for eating, and put the rest in the freezer. Boil them for half an hour.
14. Prepare a baking sheet and preheat the oven (200 degrees).
15. The tray must be clean and dry. Transfer sausages to it, removing polyethylene from them.
16. Spread each sausage on top with sweet cream natural butter.
17. Place a baking sheet with sausages to cook and brown in the oven for half an hour.
18. Garnish ready-made wine Czech homemade sausages with boiled potatoes, sauerkraut and vegetable pickles harvested in the summer.

And, of course, serve this dish with a pint of wonderful real Czech beer.

1. If it is possible to buy real, cleaned pork or lamb intestines, then sausages should be cooked in them, and not in a plastic bag. In this case, when transferring the sausage to a baking sheet, the casing in which it is put on should not be removed.
2. Sausages can be prepared in advance and stored in the freezer for up to six months. They should be cooked without defrosting.

And if you do not have enough time, desire and culinary talents, then you can try these wonderful sausages in our tours to the Czech Republic: www.bontour.ru/tours/tours-to-europe/bus-tours/tours-to-the-czech-republic/

HOW TO EAT CZECH SAUSAGES IN PRAGUE February 29th, 2016

Branded sausages now made in the Czech Republic are, on the whole, of a higher quality than under socialism. But you need to know how to eat them correctly.

David Farley BBC Travel

Danny Nicholson Euro Tour 2013 Flickr CC BYND 2.0

Branded sausages now made in the Czech Republic are, on the whole, of a higher quality than under socialism. However, as a correspondent who recently visited the Czech capital found out BBC Travel, among local producers and even consumers of these products, some still adhere to old habits.

I had just arrived in Prague and, leaving the subway, I was standing on Wenceslas Square, looking at the dome of the National Museum glittering under the morning sun. Before crossing the Charles Bridge, before drinking Czech beer to my arrival, before even checking into a hotel, I had to do one extremely important thing here in the central point of the city - to eat a fried sausage.

Rumor has it that the authorities want to remove the legendary sausage rows from this boulevard, reminiscent of Parisian, which for some reason is called the square by the Praguers. The prefect of the district said that tents and stalls interfere with the passage and generally spoil the appearance of Wenceslas, and this space, meanwhile, must be made attractive to tourists. Never before, it seems, did the officials get so much sausages... However, I also had a personal reason to go to the central square straight from the airport. Prague is my second home.

Wenceslas Square in Prague at daylight

In the 90s, I lived in the capital of the Czech Republic for three years and since then I have been regularly visiting the city itself and the friends I have found here. Living in Prague, I deliberately avoided all the street sausages there, and tried to explore restaurants with ethnic cuisine that was fashionable at that time. Now, when I return to visit, I prefer to eat in new establishments - to find out how culinary trends have changed in the city.

But then a Czech friend who grew up on the outskirts of Prague told me that when arriving in the capital, the first thing to do is respect the sausage from the stall on Wenceslas Square. This is some kind of national tradition, apparently.

Many Americans, by the way, are also convinced that a visitor who finds himself in New York will not behave comme il faut if he decides to neglect a hot dog from a local hawker immediately upon arrival - food, albeit not very hygienic, but iconic.

And so I ritually ate my first street sausage at Wenceslas. It was the traditional grilled klobása with thick skins; the pork inside was dotted with small bits of fat, making the meat more juicy and oily.

It is believed that when you come to Prague, you can not help but taste the fried sausages from the stalls on its central square, Wenceslas

It's no surprise that sausage has long been a staple food in Central Europe, because long-term storage helps to survive the long winters here.

One day I went to visit a friend in Mikolov, a place on the Czech-Austrian border with a castle on a hill. And when I was getting ready to go back, a friend's family gave me a whole bag of sausages as a present - in order, I believe, so that I would not become emaciated during the winter. According to a common stereotype, the main sausage lovers in Europe are the Germans. But the Czechs have much more diversity in this sense.

What they call parek very much like a hot dog. A utopenec(translated as "drowned") - this is the same parek, only marinated in a brine of vinegar, vegetable oil, paprika and onions.

The most popular variety is klobasa- originally from Poland (in Polish it is called kielbasa). These are long and thick sausages that are usually grilled. It was this "klobasa" that I ate at Wenceslas.

In the Czech Republic there are many different types of sausages.

The next day I met up with two other local friends, Zuzana Dankova and Jan Valenta. The guys are organizing gastronomic walking tours around the city (the project is called "Taste of Prague").

When I mentioned in a conversation with them that I planned to explore the sausage life of the Czech capital on this visit, Zuzana was quick to warn me: “Just don’t try to eat anything [from street food] on Wenceslas!” In bewilderment, I tilted my head to one side and immediately remembered the sausage that I had tasted the day before.

“If you eat sausages in Vatslavka in broad daylight, then during the day you will feel that you have done something wrong,” Zuzana explained. “You can only do this if it is one in the morning and you are drunk.” Then, determined to make sure she wasn't too late with her warning, just in case, she added, "You didn't eat anything like that during the day, did you?" I hesitated: "Uh ... No, what are you! I would never have thought of such a thing ..."

Klobasa sold on the streets of Prague, quite juicy

When I began to inquire from Zuzana and Jan, where in the city, in their opinion, were worthwhile sausages, they recommended me Nase Maso("Our meat"). This is a relatively new butcher shop in the Old Town, which has the same owner as the Michelin-starred restaurant. Le Degustation and at the steakhouse Cestr. I must admit that most of my Prague acquaintances sent me to Naše Maso - I had only to say the cherished word “sausage”.

A few days later I went there and met the head butcher, Frantisek Kshana. "We also opened a butcher's shop, because in our restaurants guests kept asking if it was possible to buy our meat home," the maestro explained to me. I looked around. The shop is like a shop, nothing special, and, moreover, small-sized ... But in the back of the hall there is a special glass showcase where steaks, chops and, yes, sausages flaunt.

In "Our Meat" sausages are served with mustard

And in front of the showcase there are several tables so that visitors can try some of the delicacies on display right on the spot. At the same time, you don’t have to eat dry food - sitting at the table, the taster can easily reach the tap with draft beer.

To begin with, Frantisek offered me a trial klobasa two types: one with beef and the other with pork; to each relies mustard as a seasoning. At beef variety, I found a beautiful taut skin and a deep flavor bouquet, accentuated by a layer of chili pepper, the aroma of which remained in my mouth long after tasting. Pork also had a very dense skin, and notes of cumin and garlic were felt in the taste of the filling. Both had, moreover, a pleasant smoky flavor, which, as Frantisek explained to me, they acquired by smoking on beech wood chips. “From those sold, say, on Wenceslas Square, these sausages differ primarily in quality. [At careful tasting] you can feel the finest nuances of their taste,” Frantisek boasted.

One of the many sausage tents in Prague, Old Town

Then he offered me "parek", for the preparation of which minced meat is stuffed into a casing and boiled for some time in water vapor. These rather simple sausages could be mistaken for a primitive version of the American hot dog, if not for their much more intense meat flavor.

"A person who has eaten a parek has a very pleasant aftertaste in his mouth after a quarter of an hour," Frantisek tells me. Laughing, I dismiss his words as if they were a joke. "No, seriously," he insists. "You'll see for yourself. It's all about aging the meat. Aging makes it not only more palatable, but also easily digestible."

who opened Nase Maso the company has developed a detailed strategy for its work, prescribing the principles of purchasing meat and building relationships with farmers. She communicates her preferred methods of rearing bulls and pigs to potential suppliers, ultimately selecting only those farms that meet her quality standard.

This, however, is not the only sausage place in Prague today with such a responsible approach to business. On the other side of the Old City, there is a shop called the Real Meat Society. Here you can buy organic meat products obtained from cattle raised on open pastures, and not in a stall. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there are still not enough places in the city where they would really care about quality. So there is still much to be done in this direction.

“In order to get better, sometimes it is necessary to first go through degradation,” Frantisek philosophically remarks. “In the 70s and 80s, meat [in Czechoslovakia] was issued on ration cards, and residents could not have it in their daily diet. After the revolution of 1989 year meat abundance came, and the people quickly became accustomed to the absence of shortages. But they were also accustomed to the low quality of the meat with which they were treated.

On the way to the revival of their cuisine, the Czechs have already achieved a lot. To understand the historical context in which it existed under socialism, we will have to mentally go back to 1948, when the so-called February coup took place in the country, and the communists seized power.

It is said that a few years later, by order of the government, a cookbook "Hot Dishes Recipes" was compiled and published, and all restaurants since then were ordered to cook within the culinary limits set by it. If a dish appeared on the menu of a restaurant that was not included in the book, then this institution was threatened with serious sanctions.

Add to this the fact that the consumption of foodstuffs, especially meat, was then strictly rationed in all countries of the socialist camp - and it will become easier for you to imagine how dull and meager the diet of the local population was for several decades of modern history. Frantisek is one of those people who are actively trying to catch up. And, judging by the quality of his products and the stable demand for them, this ambitious Czech is on the right track.

By the end of my week-long visit to Prague, I found myself again on Wenceslas Square. It was about one in the morning, and I was heading for the subway, having already missed a mug or two of beer in the evening. Here I very appropriately remembered the advice of my Prague acquaintance and ... in a few minutes I was already happily eating sausage from a street stall, standing on the same heel as a week ago.

But only now, initiated into the secret urban etiquette, I did it like a real Praguer - at night, slightly drunk.