Romanian Soured Cream Meat Sausage (Mici Littles)

How good do these Romanian Soured Cream Meat Sausage (Mici Littles) look and sound? Another fantastic recipe from Irina Georgescu’s cookbook, Carpathia: Food from the Heart of Romania to add to the Romanian Stuffed Courgette Soup With Soured Cream that we shared yesterday.

These garlicky little sausages are a popular street food staple in Romania, and we can certainly see why!

Romanian Soured Cream Meat Sausages

Read our review of Carpathia: Food from the Heart of Romania for more about this lovely book.

Romanian Soured Cream Meat Sausage (Mici Littles)

These little meaty, garlicky, juicy, melt-in-the-mouth rolls are a Romanian street food staple. So much so that we even eat them while waiting for the bus to arrive. When the weather turns warm it’s impossible to resist the smoky aromas rising from the mici cooked on huge barbecues set-up along the streets. They are usually served on paper plates with a generous dollop of mustard and a slice of crusty white bread to mop up the juices.
Author Irina Georgescu

Ingredients

  • 300 g (11oz) minced beef
  • 500 g (1lb 2oz) minced pork
  • 200 g (7oz) pork back fat or lardo, diced and briefly minced in a food processor
  • 3 slices of white bread, soaked in milk
  • 1 garlic bulb, peeled and cloves crushed to a paste
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tsp sweet paprika
  • 1 tsp dried thyme
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp soured cream
  • 75 ml (3 fl oz) cold concentrated beef stock made from ½ stock cube dissolved in 75ml (3fl oz) hot water
  • 2 tbsp vegetable or sunflower oil for frying

Instructions

  • Ask your butcher to mince the meat together with the pork back fat for you, so you won’t have to mince it separately at home. The fat is key to the juiciness and texture of the mici – it can be made with less but the texture will be slightly drier.
  • Combine all the ingredients, except for the oil, together in a bowl. Knead by hand to an almost bread-like dough which resembles a paste. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. With wet hands shape 60–70g (2 ½ –3oz) of the mixture into a chunky little sausage, about 10cm (4in) long and 3cm (1in) thick. Place on a greased tray. Repeat with the remaining mixture, then cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or, ideally, overnight.
  • Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium to high heat and cook the mici on all sides, turning them 6 times in total, until browned on the outside and soft and juicy in the middle. Alternatively, cook on a hot barbecue, brushing with a little oil first.
  • Serve with bread and mustard, if liked.

 

Romanian Soured Cream Meat Sausages

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Recipe extracted from Carpathia: Food from the Heart of Romania by Irina Georgescu with permission from publisher Frances Lincoln. Book photography by Jamie Orlando Smith. The book is currently available from Amazon UK (at time of publication) for £15.99 (RRP £22.00). 

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4 Comments to "Romanian Soured Cream Meat Sausage (Mici Littles)"

  1. Emma

    I’ve seen a couple of posts on your blog from this cookbook now and you’ve totally got me sold on Romanian food!

    Reply
  2. Jackie

    Oh, yes. These would fast become my favorite! It’s easy to see why these soured cream meat sausages are a street food delicacy. Great tip to ask the butcher to mince the meat together with the pork back fat. I wouldn’t have thought of that but understand how it could really affect the texture and blending. These look fairly simple for a beginner too, so I’ll give them a try!

    Reply

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