Scan Magazine | Special Theme | A Taste of Norway
Preserving traditional methods Together with her husband and two sons, Linda Håøy lives at Jevnlid Garden, a small farm that dates back to the 1600s. Surrounded by steep mountain sides and fresh air, the family aims to preserve the traditions, producing sausages like they did back in the old days. By Kristin Skolem | Photos: Jevnlid Garden
“We want our products to be natural, and to make sausages with the ingredients of salt and meat only – nothing else,” says Håøy. The process of making the sausages takes about four months, depending on how much time mother nature needs to operate. With the premise of using only cattle from their own farm, the wellbeing of the animals is key. In the summertime, they can pasture outside, and in the winter, they are kept warm inside the barn. Even the slaughtering process is done in a way to calm down the cattle. With only 27 kilometres to the slaughterhouse, they make sure that the quality of the meat is top standard. “If the animals are stressed on their way to the slaughter house, the quality of the meat decreases,” says Håøy. 82 | Issue 97 | February 2017
Sausage making
house for two to three months. Once or twice every day, Håøy throws water on the floor to maintain the humidity in the room. “That is probably the most exhausting part of the process. But the sausages are made with hard work, patience and love, and without it we just would not get the same flavour.”
After getting the meat back from the slaughterhouse, Linda and her husband start making the sausage dough. “In today’s food production, everything is expected to be instant. Because we don’t add any additives to our sausages, we need the lactic acid to come naturally. This way, the natural lactic acid gives flavour to the meat,” Håøy explains. “Every animal is unique, and therefore every sausage will taste differently.” The next step is smoking the meat. “The sausages are placed in our smoking cabin, where we fire up the smoke every other day. This way, the smoke has time to settle in the meat,” says Håøy. The last step of the production process is when the sausages are hanged in the store-
For more information, please visit: www.jevnlidgarden.no