Totally Tubular Hawaii Sausages: A Stash of Sausage Stories and Recipes

He Leo Mahalo no ka Naʻaukake (A Voice of Gratitude for the Sausage): Every path in life, no matter how winding, eventually brings us to what truly nourishes the soul. In this world of words, especially those penned about food, we often touch upon many subjects that say what's coming out from the inside– some can come from what we eat and it can spark the heart, others merely passing through like a cool breeze, but some have a resonance about them. There are moments, rare and precious, when a topic rises up, calling to you, and that call can be about something triggered from passion, maybe a love for, or even a urge for a food. It doesn't have to be loud, but it could be homely, a comforting essence of naʻaukake – sausage comes to mind. 

Sausage Get Action: A big tubular meat, a long lengthy sausage, a breakfast of confessions that you yearn for something bad for your health. No matter what the fat that goes inside the sausage can't be good for the body, but you are going to come back to it, because the salt, spices, and herbs make the mind forget about the fat and only how good it tastes. Wishing to be rich is what people have to do to get a good sausage made by some gourmet super store, but it forgets about the people who first made it, so instead of crying its best to do something about it. Make sausage, have a sausage party, celebrate sausage by making and doing, because there is no time for just sitting around being cry baby on the lanai. There is nothing stopping sausage from being something that is still eaten as all the other food, so it is time to look at the gourmet meat and take it down a level or two until it is home food again.

Hale Comfort Sausage: Talking about making it for home the home is about a place to return to and that is sort of like comfort foods. There can be all kinds of great feasts that have fresh poke or a prime rib on the table with all the wine of the greatest vineyards, but sometimes its just good to have simple food instead of the finest gourmet fare. No need be high showing or high status or in Hawaii "High Maka Maka", but make use of what he have from the offal, to the intestines, to the cuts of the meats, and find a place for it, because the animal is a blessing. If there is a get together and should the simple elegance of a sausage appear, eyes are going to drawn to them, guarantee. It would be a whisper that says "eat me", a promise of succulent sausage satisfaction.

The Art of the Sausage: Think of it, gangy, this humble creation. The true artistry of preparing meat often seeks to infuse flavor – through patient marination, delicate rubs, or careful injection. Yet, what if the flavor and the meat became one, inseparable, bonded together, merged from separate complexities into a single thing? What if the very essence of salt, the selected spices, and the earthly herbs were ground directly into the flesh itself? That's what happens when the flesh of the animal goes through a process from its natural raw state to become a sausage. It is done by the hands of the creator of the sausage with their choice of richness, saltiness, season selection, the grind, the coarseness or smoothness, its all in the mind of what the maker sees. It is a carefully handled act that is wrapped up and completed when it fills up the casing at the end. 

All Parts in the Grind are Honored: And what of the pieces less honored, the cuts that demand a greater understanding? Sausage embraces them all. The ʻiʻo (meat) and the momona (fat), the offal and the paʻakikī (tougher parts) – normally there are only the best parts that are used and the left is not looked at in the same light. In a person who believes in making the most of the life that has given its all to the person eating it the goal of giving meaning to all parts its a nice goal. While its nice it takes knowledge to make sure each part, all parts, are all given a new life, transformed, merged together.

Sausage History

The boats that sailed brought a link to the links of sausage that would settle on the shores of Hawaii's history with it being born of necessity to make use and not make waste. As a culinary dish it makes all kinds of things out of meet, the weird bits, the yumm bits, and the leftover cuttings all become integral to one sausage or another dish. Sausages really started developing after the boats had come from Madeira and the Azores where sausage making was already a culinary tradition with linguica (portuguese sausage) from the Portuguese Laborers. These became important parts of surviving in the conditions and limitations of plantation life and eventually spread throughout Hawaii.

An extended good thank you is from the life extending salt, preservation, and playing a major role in sustaining life through the flavor of the sausage can't be overlooked. The salt from the sea when applied dissolves myosin and redistributes it, the protein in muscle fiber acts as a binding agent, and it is further enhanced. But, the evil sausage is what cynics may see with the endorsement of meat-o-matic torture, confinement, and slaughtering of animals as a digestible commodity of convenience packed in its own corpse, the intestines. The Hawaiian Olelo word naʻaukake, means sausage, and it is made up of several words. The word "naʻau" that means "guts" that can involve intestines, bowels, guts, entrails. What it also means is ones own "inner being" of gut feeling, mindfulness, the heart, affections, or disposition – thought itself. 

Sausages have been documented from the post-contact times of Hawaii where evidence points towards dried-sausage was the norm, until there were more places where meat was more regularly available. When colonialism and trade had come from Hawaii's ports with ships from all over the world would be when it was a much more familiar topic with hunting game being part of the discussion. The multitude of sausage varieties was not as plentiful as the modern day with variations in multiple categories, since it was mostly three types: fresh, dried, or fermented.

Meating Tubular Heroes: Equally as important as how sausage had arrived thumping on to tables is the butchers that provided them. They are the ones who lead this movement of artistry of the tube and they are important to acknowledge figures, such as: Henry "Hank" Adaniya (Hank's Haute Dogs) who brought Hawaii into the world of Crustacean Sausages. Robert McGee (The Whole Ox) who popularized eating Gourmet Sausages that used the whole-animal philosophy, which opened a lot of doors. And the Chuck Wakeman (Butcher & Bird) who brought Hawaii Sausage many more documented selections. And Mills Stovall (Waimea Butcher Shop) who made sure that passing on mo'olelo (stories) and techniques are imbued into the community. These are just a few names to remember of the heroes of the sausage.

Organized Sausage

In this canoe there will be different destinations of the voyage that share sections of knowledge. In order to choose to unveil truths one layer at a time the explorations will look into – the fresh, the raw, the perishable sausages, those that whisper of eat soon or else risk spoilage. The arts of salumi and charcuterie are in a league of its own that needs further exploration as they harden from the time put into it and deeper understanding of salt, smoke, and the fermentation. Of course, being passionate about sausage of all shapes and sizes is important, the cured, need to be respected with their own pages of knowledge.  

The Sausage Voyage – The heart of this curated sausage atlas as a voyage that unfolds from the carefully chosen collection of sausages. It is a voyage divided into four distinct regions [Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Big Island] across the beautiful Hawaiian Island Archipelago, from which they have gathered as a family delectable sausages. The selection was guided not by strict rules, but by a simple calling of the heart of the families and people they come from, by those who went on to make sausage part of their way of life. This Voyage is paddling through personal narratives and enriched by the places that make sausages as well as the writing of others who have gone on this path from all the islands. It is handed down knowledge of their homeland's treasured offerings for those seeking sausage filled truths.  It’s divided into six geographic regions from which we selected a group of sausages with no rhyme or reason other than they tickled our fancy. The Quest is sprinkled with in-depth contributions from our writerly friends from around the globe who have firsthand knowledge of their local offerings.

Then, we embark upon – The Tubular Pilgrimages: expansive tales of travel, documenting the encased meats of five special places. These are from the experiences of dedicated Tubesteak Kahunas – shamans and guardians of the casing, seeking culinary, meaty truths. (A.) The Sausage Voyage- Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Big Island. (B.) Ali'i Sausage Cruise Line [International sausage]: Chorizo (Spain), Beer Bratwurst (Germany), Vienna Sausage (Austria), Cajun Andouille (United States), Italian Sausage (Italy), Linguiça (Portugal), Longanisa (Philippines), Arabiki Sausage (Japan). (C.) Meating at the Grinder- The Meat Grinds- uncased sausage (Sausage Me Tender), The Meat Sausages- cased sausage (Fully Tubed Sausage), The Artisan Sausages (All Meat and a Bag o' Sausage) - regional sausage. Hot and Clever Sausage- hot dogs, soups, and other sausage based dishes. 

These truths, profound yet simple, secure sausage's honored place that we can return to – high among the things we want to eat in the morning, perhaps just beside the gentle falling of rain on lehua blossoms, and with a lot of shoyu all over the rice and eggs, only a breath in a sensory goodness of meat while hearing the laughter of egg munching children. This search would be born of curiosity and respect, as it would be envisioned that such a sausage investigation would serve both the hand in the kitchen and with hands on ideas.  

This is not a definitive encyclopedia, nor the final word on every sausage known to hawaii as there are most likely people making new sausages as these words are being read. Rather, it is a journey into the sausages that have captivated us – by their taste, by the way they are crafted with intention, or by the stories of how they are shared. So, with this brief unfolding of why things like this are collected, the sausage files, let us now delve into the meat of the matter – the very essence of the cylindrical vessel, and the stories it unloads, with touching upon all parts through its thorough inspection. This aims to be a vibrant, comprehensive guide to Hawaii sausage.

Hot Dogs are considered really unhealthy as it is a processed-meat that's really broad term that could make it sound really bad, but the questions of what is processed and what makes it bad is still unanswered. The real question is what is classified as processed meat and what are the actual health risks, even if a really good sausage would be hard for anyone to say no to, especially for those who like meat. The World Health Organization (WHO) has an arm called the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) are classified as "Carcinogenic" (Cancer-causing) like tobacco smoking and asbestos. Bacon, Hot Dogs, Salami, and an assortment of sausages only takes 50 grams of meat to increase colorectal cancer by 18%. The reason why? high sodium, the infamous pink curing-salt that is sodium-nitrite, so eating too much of something with that sort of salt people can overdose on it.

The Pink salt is a crucial ingredient for making cured meats, salami, canned meats, and preserved meats and it almost always has pink salt to prevent harmful bacteria. It also gives a unique flavor that is in the aftertaste of the meats and to mimic that flavor without it can be hard, because it is part of the aging process that adds all sorts of flavors on their own. The enhanced flavor is almost like magic and it is able to maintain its bright color from the meat. Sausages, Hot Dogs, and Aged Meats in the culinary world fall under the category of not a Processed-Food, but an Ultra-Processed Food (UPF) where it is associated with ingredients that are usually not natural and has preservatives or artificial flavors that are seen as highly unhealthy. Things are less processed when there are more fresh things with low-shelf life, natural ingredients, and has much less culinary science involved. They are linked to increased risks of chronic diseases when consumed regularly, but most of the time what is brought to Hawaii isn't fresh, so there is a lot of pink salt out there in foods that come from ships dropping off goods.

Fresh Sausage (Not Ultra-Processed) is made to be cooked and consumed relatively soon after production and has what is called minimal processing. That means the meat is ground, mixed with seasonings, stuffed into natural animal intestinal-casings where its either raw, already cooked, or flash-frozen. While most sausages use salt of some kind there is no long-shelf life curing agent like pink-salt and is known to have limited-shelf life and it tends to look ugly, but it is still good to eat as it remains delicious, just without the bright artificial coloring. It requires refrigeration and/or cooking before consumption. Other things to look out for that make for unhealthy sausage is: corn syrup solids, dextrose, sodium nitrite, artificial phosphates, for consistency and consumer appeal for those that don't know better of what's fresh and ugly versus convenient and bright for a really long time. Fresh butchered meats and sausages is overall healthier as a person knows what is actually inside of what they are eating and the process involved as something transparent.