All hail Stan our sausage royalty
IN an age when "grandma made the rules", a career as a butcher was a much more desirable way to get funds and food for the family.
IN an age when "grandma made the rules", a career as a butcher was a much more desirable way to get funds and food for the family than to indulge a 13-year-old's dream of becoming a pilot.
Fortunately for young Polish migrant Stan Ciechanowicz, it was also an age when that was that . . . The down-to-earth
lad just got on with the job grandma chose for him and
with becoming king of a smallgoods empire.
More than 50 years later, Standom Smallgoods founder Stan, 64, is an icon in the industry, with enough awards, medals and trophies to
weigh down any family's shopping basket.
The latest, Stan's most prized, was his induction last year into the inaugural AMIC National Sausage King Hall of Fame. It came after a record-breaking streak of national sausage king titles, from 2000-2008.
The crystal trophy tops his pile of accolades, but there's one more achievement that puts an even greater twinkle into Stan's bright eyes Australians at his counters.
"When I started out, ethnic people were my customers," he says of his first shop, which he opened in Royal Park at age 20. Today, Standom acquired recently by the Cormack and Rowe families produces 30-40 tonnes of smallgoods a week, sold in SA and interstate.
At the Hendon headquarters plant and store, Stan, now winding down, rarely missed a day. He says: "It's so nice to watch all the young Australian families drive up and shop here.
"Years ago, they would only buy saveloys and fritz. Now, they are eating all the pork, lamb and beef smallgoods, and plenty of spice products."
Standom continues to try new flavours, letting demand decide if they become stayers. A pork and fresh leek (Macedonian) sausage is the latest number "selling well".
"We used to put in handfuls of spices and flavours, and mix it by hand. Only the master would know how much, to get it just right," Stan says.
"The secrets of those early masters (butchers) died with them. If they didn't like you, they wouldn't tell . . . but I'm lucky they liked me and shared their recipes and skills; and I want to pass them on."
Skills which have been finessed, as thoroughly
modern Stan has embraced giant changes.
He recognises that the stringent health regulations today the two full-time inspectors and the hi-tech, largely German and Swiss sausage equipment that takes the raw product through to the sales counter stage, come at great cost but also have helped supply a consistently good product that is the bedrock of the Standom success.
In the early days, he says, the percentage of fat to meat to spice depended on the light or heavy hand of its maker.
Now, a good sausage is precise "and has only
20-25 per cent fat; and some, such as steak sausages and chevapchichi, have only
5-8 per cent". "It needs a good balance," says Stan. "If
a sausage is too lean, it will
be crumbly.
"Many Australians still think sausages should be cheap. But if you are using proper, good-quality meat and making it into smallgoods, how can it be cheaper?
"Buy good-quality sausages and you won't have to prick them before cooking.
"A good sausage in natural casings shouldn't burst," he says. Only a "low-quality" sausage will split when it
hits the heat.
"Make sure the barbecue is really hot, and don't overcook sausages. Remember that in colder weather, there may be a little more fat even the natural casings are not as strong. Winter is when animals lay on the fat and it shows in the meat; but even then,
skins bursting should not
be an issue."
* Every Sunday, a demonstration, tastings and a sausage sizzle (donations encouraged to aid Flotilla for Kids cancer research) is at the Hendon store from 10am-2pm.