als from which the food is prepared. Pigs must be kept in the open and fed with healthy food (acorns from the Slavonian forests, corn, barley, oats and clover). The recipe for the preparation of kulin is not some special secret: it is based on the good quality of the raw materials and proper stuffing into bags made of pork intestine, for which you need a superb craftsman. Only 10% of the highest quality of meat (ham, pork, shoulder, neck with no fat) of the total weight of pigs aged between 12 and 20 months ends up in kulin: the rest is processed into other products. After the kulin is stuffed, it goes to a smokehouse, where it stays, for short periods, exposed to light smoking for seven to ten days in smoke from burning hornbeam and beech. Next is the process of ripening, in a room where natural ventilation is 66
ensured and optimum humidity reached, which allows the kulin to get coated in noble rot. In the process of ripening, kulin loses about 50% of its original weight. The entire process, from pig slaughter to bringing kulin to market takes six months. Many households in Slavonia produce this most famous Slavonian sausage specialty, which is included in the global culinary heritage and a modern industrialised version of the sausage is produced in Belje. Kulenova seka (literally kulen’s sister) is almost equally as valued as kulin (or kulen). It is of a similar composition as kulin and stuffed into beef intestine, which undergoes the same process of smoking and drying, but because of its thickness, it is slightly shorter. Lovers of meat products will be delighted with crackling (greaves) – bacon cut into small pieces, melted in a