WHEN YOU SLICE the city's cultural identity into tidbits, Denver emerges as a "sausage town" equal to its legacy for cows, the oil patch, sports franchises and cable TV companies. The mixture of recent European immigrants has helped generate a superb local industry for that ancient convenience food - the sausage.

Wherever man has used animals for food, sausages have been part of his menu. Easily made from non-prime cuts and processed membranes of viscera, the resulting product was preserved with salt, spices or smoke, or dried, and provided a convenient meal while traveling or hunting.

Today, sausage, or its linguistic equivalent in other languages, is made the world over in profuse variety depending on ethnic geography and recipe.

The three categories of sausage are fresh, cooked and dry. Fresh sausage must be used immediately, or depending on temperature within a few days, while dry sausages can keep almost indefinitely.

Basic ingredients can be meat, poultry, seafood or even vegetarian.

However, Denver's sausage-makers follow the European tradition of pork and beef as principal ingredients. Proximity to packing plants in Greeley, Nebraska and Iowa ensures a fresh supply of meat cuttings for the city's producers. Visit almost any specialty meat store in the metro area and chances are it produces its own sausage on the premises.

Some examples:
Oliver's Meat Market, on East Sixth Avenue just east of Marion Street, has been at it since 1923, said Barry Oliver, the third generation of what is now a five-generation market. "We have one person working full time on sausage," he said. Oliver's makes bulk and link sausages based on pork and turkey that include Italian, Cajun, Mediterranean, German and Scandinavian recipes.

In Bonnie Brae, the Nickless family has operated the Esquire Market and produced its own specialty breakfast sausage since 1949.

Across town in Lakewood, Marian Balaz specializes in sausages at his European Delights deli at 8440 W. Colfax Ave. A Slovakian, he personally makes fresh, cooked and dried sausages and weiners from classic European recipes, and always has some samples on the counter to taste.

Up north, at 3206 Wadsworth Blvd. in Wheat Ridge, is newcomer Paul Plonski's Sawa Meat & Sausage Co., with a traditional variety of exotically named sausages from Poland, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Gold's Market at 26th Avenue and Kipling Street produces its own pork sausages in Italian, brat and German varieties, and during the holidays hundreds of pounds of Swedish potato sausage.

Canino's Sausage Co., 4414 Jason St. in Denver, and Boulder Sausage Co., 513 S. Pierce Ave. in Louisville, are two old-line and respected wholesale producers of natural, no-preservative sausages. Both ship varieties of German, Italian, Cajun and Spanish sausages, which are distributed in major grocery stores along the Front Range. They've been cultivating and refining their recipes since 1925 and 1961, respectively.

It's the generations-old recipes that define the ethnic origin of sausages. Most recipes have been handed down for literally hundreds of years by sausage makers. Key ingredients follow ethnic patterns. Fennel for Italian, paprika for Hungarian, garlic for Polish, with German "wursts" noted for an absence of strong spices. Ethnic names for sausages can be confusing. "Wurst" and "kolbosa" or "kielbasa" are just foreign words for the English "sausage" and don't necessarily define a specific sausage type.

Unlike large commercial producers, Denver's boutique sausage producers don't use artificial preservatives or any chemical colorings or flavorings in their products. That includes the "casings," or cleaned and processed viscera, used to encase the sausage. Natural hog, sheep and beef casings are the preferred material for gourmet natural sausages.

They are digestible, and allow the smoking process to permeate the sausage mixture. A naturally derived collagen casing, also digestible, is used for larger-diameter salamis, bolognas and liverwursts.

The Swiss-German Gutknecht family's Continental Sausage plant at 911 E. 75th Ave. is probably the largest local producer of all-natural sausages in town. It makes more than 100 specialty sausages and meat products, and has a retail outlet, the Continental Deli, 250 Steele St. in Cherry Creek North.

The Gutknechts ship to all states, and supply many of the finest local Denver restaurants, said Eric Gutknecht, production manager of the modern plant with state-of-the-art European mixing, cooking, smoking and drying equipment.

"We insist our suppliers furnish us with meat no more than a day or two old," he said. "The freshness of the meat is the key to excellent sausage."

A tour of the plant's receiving and shipping area includes a spice room with books of proprietary recipes, some of whose ingredients can be gleaned from looking at the containers labeled cayenne, pistachio and a host of others.

As with other makers, Continental's cutting and mixing equipment can be set to produce finely emulsified sausage mixtures, such as liverwurst, to the more coarsely cut dried sausages. Reflecting the Gutknecht family's own Swiss and German roots, its subtly flavored German bratwurst and veal brat is considered the "very finest" by German customer Manfred Georg of Cherry Creek's Chinook Tavern. "Flavor is everything in a bratwurst, and we can't buy a better one in Denver," he said.

Start by sampling the variety from these fine local makers, and then visit the cookbook section of your favorite bookstore or library, or do an Internet search for "sausage making." A plethora of sources will be at your disposal.

Then conjure up your own secret recipes.

October 10, 2001
Section: FOD
Page: F-01
Story by Bill Boas Special to The Denver Post