Six of our kielbasa brands received the highest ranking of all Polish kielbasa produced in the USA in the August 2010 issue of prestigious Rosengarten Report. Two of them, Czosnkowa and Zwyczajna, top the list of the grilling kielbasa. Four others were considered the best in the "Eat-As-Is Polish Sausage" category. Please read below about the newsletter as well as fragments of the last issue including detailed reviews of the Five Star delicious products from www.sweetpoland.com that you really need to taste!
Famous food and travel writer David Rosengarten has re-launched his award winning newsletter The Rosengarten Report. His the most recent newsletter is on Polish Sausage, and not just Kielbasa. He really wants to get to the heart of the Polish sausage including the Polish market and butcher, what makes a sausage Polish, and where to find the best of the best.
A bit more about The Rosengarten Report :
It was established in 2001 and quickly won the James Beard Award as best food-and-wine newsletter in America, then zoomed to the top of the charts with 50,000 paid subscribers. The newsletter has always been a way for David to bringing his readers all the gastronomic details of his life: the products tasted, the wines tasted, the gastronomic trips taken, the world-wide restaurants and hotels, the recipes developed in his kitchen, his commentary on global food-and-wine trends--everything given to you in a zestily written, highly opinionated, information-crammed monthly newsletter.
Now please read some excerpts from the Report:
By the time August hits, many of us backyard grillers are starting to tire of the standard chickenhot dogs-burgers routine. A shake-up is what we need! And a shake-up's what you're gonna get, if you follow my lead. Due to my growing realization that Poland is, quietly, one of the greatest sausage countries on earth....and my growing bliss at how well Polish sausage is represented in the U.S. (a fact hidden from many, many foodies).....and my empirical results concerning the brilliance of Polish sausage on the grill.....I am here to tell ya: It is high time to do the polka.
For you will realize that this one style of Polish sausage you know.....what we Americans call kielbasa.....has a ton of relatives. Mind-blowingly delicious relatives! Not only are there scores of kielbasa types in real Kielbasaland out there that we would identify as kielbasa.....but there are scores of other Polish sausages we would never identify as kielbasa..... that are absolutely wonderful too, both for the grill and other uses!
In June and early July, I conducted a massive tasting of approximately 250 Polish sausages culled from sources all over the country, the best places we could find-as long as they were willing to ship to you. Most of the sausages fell into what I call the kielbasa kielbasa category (as determined by me, of course). The following were my favorites in this category, listed in descending order of kielbasa kielbasa bliss. For each entry, you'll find a star rating (FIVE STARS is the highest), the name of the sausage, the producer, and the price per lb. so you can compare.
FIVE STARS
Czosnkowa, Sweet Poland
($6.99 per lb.)
Kielbasa Czosnkowa, no matter who makes it, is garlicsausage. Now garlic, of course, comes with the kielbasa territory; all kielbasa kielbasa is flavored with at least some garlic. But when the producers go out of their way to call the sausage "Kielbasa Czosnkowa".....let the vampires beware! This contest-topping sausage from Sweet Poland, one of the tippy-top producers in the tasting, would have kicked pork butt whether it had the garlic or not. I received a chunk of a long coil, medium-circumference (about 1 1/4"), with a wrinkled orange-copper exterior. Inside, the meat is a fairly coarse whitishpink, with excellent whorl. But the flavor's the thing! Great smokiness (real, and not over the top), with a meat-stock kind of umami character underlying everything. The fat bubbles up beautifully when you grill this guy, and adds a buttery meatiness. Then there's the garlic! Let's not forget the garlic! This sucker actually has big chunks of sweet garlic in it-which play beautifully off all the other flavors! This is not one of those scarydry purist kielbasas; this is an amazing sausage that all kielbasa-lovers can get behind, the ideal post-supermarket extension I was looking for! Don't let your grill go down for the season without sizzling up a few of these!
FIVE STARS
Kielbasa Zwyczajna, Sweet Poland
($4.99 per lb.)
Believe it or not.....kilebasa kielbasa #2 also came from the Sweet Poland company! Zwyczajna means common,or ordinary, in Polish. Used on a kielbasa label, it means a basic, cured, smoked sausage.....the ordinary one. Ha! Ain't nothing ordinary about this Sweet Poland product. It's a little fatter than the one above, and comes tied off at 14". It's a bit darker on the outside, a fairly darkbrown paper-bag color with orange tones. Another pale pink interior, this one with larger globs of pink meat and white fat. But here's the true brotherhood: like the Sweet Poland garlic sausage, this is your dream-upgrade kielbasa, the thing you'd hope to graduate to from supermarket if you wanted to go far, but not necessarily all the way. It's juicy, snappy, beautifully made, with a mild-but-pronounced smoke.....and it picks up a sexy bounciness if you cook it on the grill. The two Sweet Poland kielbasa kielbasas allow you to feel bountifully upgraded, without having to learn too many new tricks. This one's the bargain of the five-star category.

So we took the top 2 places in the kielbasa brands recommended for grilling! By the way: only 3 brands from all the producers received FIVE STAR rating!!!
Next the Critic reviews kielbasa brands very little known by American general public, those which are consumed as cold cuts, usually with rye bread and relishes. In this category our products won in four styles of kielbasa! Below are Mr. Rosengarten's reviews:

STYLE: KABANOSY
These are the predecessors of.....Slim Jims! Now don't get nervous: I've never been fond of Slim Jims (I just looked at their list of ingredients at the market, which includes "mechanically separated chicken meat!"). They always seem nastily smoky (artificially so), with a real dead, industrial quality, and a bizarre texture not reminiscent of real meat. The kabanosy is the anti-Slim Jim Slim Jim. I was surprised by how much I love these....and by my alreadyforming plans to make them regular occupants of my refrigerator. In my tasting, the masterpiece, for me, was Sweet Poland's "kabanosky swojskie," or "smoked links, old country style" ($7.99 per lb.) These babies are on the fat side, about 3/4" in diameter, dark orange outside, light pink inside. Lovely snap before a soft, delightfully fatty chew. Smoky, peppery, porky, even the "b" word..... bacon-y! Excellent lingering taste of meat and fat.
STYLE: MYSLIWSKA
Again, I have seen kielbasa kielbasa called this....but have more often seen it applied to no-cook. The key concept behind the name: this is "hunter's sausage." I assume that means something the hunters could take with them....therefore it's a sausage that stands up a little better unrefrigerated, on the road. It starts with more spicing, more garlic, is typically cured for three days, then smoked for seven hours....a little longer than usual. The one I really loved in my tasting was Sweet Poland's "kielbaski mysliwskie" ($6.99 per lb.) It's 1 1/2" wide, with a copper-colored, wrinkled skin, and a coarse grind. The chew is fatty and bouncy (me like!), and the flavor features ideal amounts of garlic and smoke. Bite as is, or slice for sandwiches.
STYLE: KRAKOWSKA SUCHA
This is a regional reference, obviously: Krakow-style sausage, from the city of Krakow. Add "sucha," and you've got dried Krakow-style sausage. In my tastings, this is as-is sausage, fat (like 2 1/4" diameter, almost bologna-size), with big chunks of ham inside; one source calls it "a blend of Canadian bacon and salami." The big winner in this style was Sweet Poland, with their splendid "krakowska sucha" ($7.99 per lb.) With this expensive, luxurious sausage you get the feeling of a tenderloin, or "tsar-cut" smoked salmon-a thick, lean middle. The idea with this sausage is to contemplate its elegance, not to hunt for complex flavors.
STYLE: DOMOWA
Another sausage, like the Krakowska Sucha, to be cut into big rounds and eaten on a sandwich. I prefer this one, actually; the name translates to "home-made style," and you can sense its rusticity next to the Krakowska Sucha's elegance. It is a strongly smoked sausage, chunky but less chunky than the Krakowska, with a dark-roasted outside. Again, it is Sweet Poland with the big score here. I love their "kielbasa domowa" ($6.99 per lb.). It's 1 1/2" across, with lovely pale pink mixed-meat inside, and a really winning smoky-roasty taste.


All Sweet Poland's kielbasy are made by the Bacik Company of New York located in the Polish neighborhood of Greenpoint. You've read the opinions of the leading American food critic and I guess I know what you are feeling. So just look at the pictures of those amazing kielbasa brands, click on the links and you will taste them yourself in no time!