Northwind Farms Kabanosy
A food review by Daniel B.
A pork sausage in a sheep casing? Actually there’s beef in there as well. It’s pretty much the whole barn in one delicious package.
Except at Northwind Farm in Tivoli, there are a lot of other critters milling about. After all, it’s a place that made its name on their incredibly tasty free-range chickens and poultry. So they have chickens, turkeys, ducks, and pheasants, not to mention goats, rabbits, and more roaming their 197-acres.
On the package, this sausage calls itself kabanosy kielbasa, yet it looks nothing like the kielbasa made downstate by Rapacki & Sons. While it has the same name, this is an entirely different animal.
Kielbasa is simply the polish word for sausage, but it comes in many forms.
There is krakowska that is typically three to four inches in diameter, and is traditionally sliced like a deli meat and served cold. At my father-in-law’s favorite butcher they sell wiejska which is a long sausage formed in a continuous loop, and cut as needed. This is similar to the mysliwska, which is what I suspect is the official designation of the Rapacki product. And there are many more.
Northwind Farm’s kabanosy are about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and are on average about seven inches long. Some are longer, others are shorter. But they are all dense, cured and smoked inside their black-pepper flaked, shriveled casings.
You could eat these out of the refrigerator or let them come to room temperature. But I enjoy throwing them into a low pan to slightly melt the fat and tighten up the casings. This give them a great snap and a juicy interior. Chef Noah also mentioned that he has rolled segments of these sausages in a rich dough to create an improved version of pigs in a blanket.
My wife who says she hates kielbasa with a passion, actually enjoys these sausages. Again, these are different. It’s not just about the form the sausage takes, but also the flavor.
I love them not just because of the better ratio of crisp casing to fatty filling, but also because they are made from the meat of animals that were raised without antibiotics or added hormones. When Richard Biezynski started raising chickens this way back in 1981 he couldn’t even find feed without antibiotics, so he had to make his own.
It’s great to see a trailblazer like him have success and grow the operation to include more delicious products. I’m going to keep my eyes open for his mini franks, because it would be amazing to create the Capital Region’s famed mini hot dogs with meat sauce, using locally produced, sustainably-raised ingredients.
While you could enjoy these kabanosky kielbasa on a hot dog bun, hot dogs they are not.
About Daniel B.
A west coast transplant now living in Albany, Daniel Berman is applying his communication strategy background to food writing with the ultimate goal of improving the culinary landscape in the Capital Region. He writes the FUSSYlittleBLOG and contributes regularly to All Over Albany.