Exploring the bullboar sausages of Central Victoria

Hello there and welcome to Gorey Things. I'm Michael Gorey and today I'm talking about bullboar sausages.

These are a uniquely Central Victorian food that was brought to the region during the gold rush in the 1850s by Italian-speaking Swiss migrants.

As the name suggests, they are a blend of beef and pork mince but they also contain a number of spices which gives them their distinctive character.

The recipe has been handed down through generations and today there are just a small number of butchers in this area who are still making and selling these unique sausages.

Apparently they're endangered in their own native region because of the time taken to make them. It's quite intensive process and in the modern rush of today's world, not many butchers can be bothered creating these distinctive, beautiful, tasty sausages.

They contain spices, wine and garlic including cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. They actually smell like a hot-cross bun. Certainly when I cooked them this morning for breakfast the cinnamon smell broke out immediately that I unwrapped the package. Amazing.

They taste really good, they smell good but they are something of an acquired taste and they can be a little bit sweet. I could only eat one and a half sausages for breakfast and I'd normally eat two or even three; it's almost overwhelming but in a in a positive way. I really enjoyed them.

Don't expect to be eating a normal sausage when you cook these things because the cinnamon and the cloves make them sweet and savoury at the same time. They're also a little bit spicy but in a positive way.

The Swiss-Italian settlers who came to this area were among thousands of others who came here looking to make their fortunes and not everyone did of course.

My own ancestors came here in the 1850s from Scotland and Germany and my German ancestors actually established a vineyard near Castlemaine which is not far from where I'm staying at the moment in Newstead.

Newstead is a small town which was in its day part of the Gold Rush heritage but today it's about 820 people according to the 2021 census.

The only reason I found out about the bullboar sausages was I was talking to the owners of the next place that I'm going to for house sitting which is over at Creswick near Ballarat.

That's about 60 kilometres from here. I was talking to the owner during the week and told him that I was staying at Newstead and he said gee they've got the best bullboar sausages. He said they drive over here sometimes just to buy the sausages and I thought that's a great testament isn't it because if someone's prepared to drive over half an hour to buy sausages they must be pretty good sausages.

I googled it after that and found there are just a small number of butchers around Daylesford, Hepburn Springs and the central Victorian area that actually make these sausages today and they've been family recipes that have been handed down over the generations.

So I went to the Newstead Meats butcher during the week and bought four of these babies and today I cooked them for the first time.

I googled it first to see the recommended cooking method and some people who live in this area had told me they just grill them or fry them like ordinary sausages.

But upon further reading I found that there was a suggestion that you poach them for about 10 minutes. You put them into a pot of cold water, bring it to simmering point and then let them poach for about 10 minutes.

I think the logic to that is you retain the flavours of the cinnamon and the cloves and the nutmeg without them breaking out of the casing and losing all that wonderful good flavour.

And then the suggestion was that after you've poached them you take them out of the pot, let them cool a little bit, then you slice them and I just sliced them lengthwise and put them in the pan for a few minutes just to give the texture of a traditional fried sausage.

And I found that to be a really wonderful way to enjoy these unique sausages.

I used the water from the poaching to poach the eggs, giving them some of that cinnamon, clove, nutmeg flavour as well and I picked fresh parsley from the greenhouse garden at the place that I'm staying in Newstead.

I had a lovely breakfast of bullboar sausages, poached eggs and parsley. It was really delightful to think that I'm participating in a tradition that has been unique to this region of Australia for over 170 years.

And to think that they're still available from family recipes that have been handed down, I think that's a really great thing, and a wonderful way to preserve and celebrate a tradition that is unique to this region.

Come to central Victoria and enjoy bullboar sausages.

This is Michael Gorey from Gorey Things.