Onion Sausage (Zwiebelwurst) – Spreadable Or Sliceable Always Delicious

In this article you will learn how to make your own onion sausage. 

You’ll get a complete list of ingredients, materials and a simple recipe that you can copy immediately.

Onion sausage is easy and quick to make. Depending on whether you use a casing, a can or a jar, the preparation takes between 2 – 3.5 hours.

But first let’s answer the question: What is onion sausage?

Onion sausage (Zwiebelwurst in German) often gets mistaken with Zwiebelmettwurst.

The difference between those two is that Zwiebelmettwurst is a raw sausage and the onion sausage in this article is precooked and thus belongs to the category of cooked sausages. 

You can watch the complete onion sausage recipe as video or read it here.

I wish you a lot of fun and success!

Making onion sausage at home – What do you need

Ingredients for a classic onion sausage:

Meat for 1 kg onion sausage:

• 75 % pork belly (750 g)
• 25 % lean pork meat (250 g)

Spices per kg of meat:

• 22 g salt
• 2 g white pepper
• 1 g paprika, sweet
• 1 g sugar
• 0.5 g mace
• 0,5 g marjoram
• 150g caramelized onions

Equipment needed to make onion sausage

Meat Grinder

You need a meat grinder to “grind” the meat. The meat is chopped into small chunks with it.

Thermometer & Cooking Pot

Use a saucepan and heat the water. To reach the exact temperature, you will need a thermometer.

Preserving jars / casings

Since I fill the liver sausage into jars, I used jars for this purpose. Alternatively you can fill the mixture into a casing or a can. You can find more information about this in this article.

Homemade onion sausage – Step-By-Step Instruction

1. Cut the meat and fat into pieces. The size varies depending on how big your meat grinder is. The bigger the grinder, the bigger your pieces of meat can be. Store the belly and lean meat seperately

2. Put the pork belly pieces in a pot with water. The water should just about cover the pork belly.

3. Cook the pork belly pieces at around 80 degrees Celsius (176 Fahrenheit) for 60 – 90 minutes. 

4. Grind the spices into a fine powder.

5. Cut the onions into strips and slowly simmer in a  buttered pan until golden brown for up to 10 min.

6. When the belly is cooked through, you can take it out of the water. The easiest way to do this is with a sieve. Be careful not to pour away the broth. You will need it later.

7. Add the onions to the meat.

8. Now it’s time to grind the cooked meat, onions and uncooked lean meat. I used the smallest perforated disc for this.

9. Add the spices to the mixture.

10. Mix and knead the mass for a few minutes, so it has a nice  binding. 

11. Now gradually add some leftover broth to the mixture. The consistency should be a little thinner than you might think. It will continue to thicken as it cooks. The more broth you add the more spreadable it becomes afterwards. Less broth means sliceable sausage afterwards.

12. Fill the mass into jars or natural casings (caliber 38 for example). Make sure that as little air as possible gets into the jars. 

13. Close the jars, put them in your pot with water and boil them for about 2 hours. In the casing you can alternatively poach them at 80 degrees Celsius (176 Fahrenheit) for 45 minutes.

14. Your onion sausage is ready. I wish you good luck and have fun making it 🙂 . 

How long does the onion sausage keep?

In theory, the preserved onion sausage can be kept up to a year in a jar. However, I do not think it will last so long, because it tastes so good.

It is best to store the liver sausage in a cool and dark place. 

When opening, the rule is: 

See it, smell it, taste it! If you use a casing, you should store the liver sausage in the refrigerator and consume it within a maximum of 10 days.