Swedish Potato Sausage – Our Family Christmas Tradition
Our family has a life-long tradition of making Swedish potato sausage for our Christmas Eve dinner. We always make it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
This post isn’t about pretty pictures, above all it’s about family, making memories, and what we do at this small house for the holidays.
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It was such a nostalgic post to write. I filtered through hundreds of pictures. Years and years of family memories!
I even found a picture of my sister on the computer the first year that she moved away from Illinois. We were zooming before Zoom!
The Potato Sausage Story
I have only missed a few potato sausage events in my whole life. Once when “Handy” was in the hospital, once because a snowstorm kept us away from my parents, and the last couple of years (2020 and 2021), when we didn’t make sausage because of Covid. It’s a process and most of the fun is being with my family. The pandemic made it too risky to gather and make food, in close quarters with even my family.
While I have a lot of photos, we certainly weren’t focused on good photography when we were having potato sausage fun 🙂 If you look closely you can see my style evolution in some of the pictures. Can you see My cranberry walls and my sage green walls? We’ve held potato sausage pretty much at my house, my brother’s house, and one time at our dear friends Barb and Dennis’s home. They are like family to us! Prior to that, it was always at my Mom and Dad’s house. My brother Scott lives in NY and my sister Laurie lives in TN. They both make potato sausage at their own homes. It’s just not Christmas Eve without potato sausage!
We will be at my brother’s once again this coming weekend to make potato sausage!
Potato Sausage
Värmlandskorv (also called Potatis korv) is a Swedish potato sausage made by combining ground pork, ground beef, potatoes, onions, and a few basic seasonings. This traditional sausage is typically often served to celebrate different holidays, like Christmas!
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Traditions………
The earliest photo I could find was when I was a teenager and it’s a photo of my mom, me, and my two younger brothers. I’m guessing my Dad was taking the picture.
How no one has gotten sick because of our process, over the years is truly amazing! We would never pass any FDA inspections.
The Mixing Process
- Peel potatoes and cut them into quarters. Put them in large bowls with cold water until ready to use so they don’t discolor.
- Peel the onions and cut them into quarters
- Potatoes and onions are ground up with an old-fashioned grinder. Ours is truly an antique!
- We press the potatoes and onions in colanders to get out the water from the potatoes
- Return the potato mixer back to the table and add the meat.
- The kids start to mix – After they thoroughly wash their hands, nails, and arms
- We add salt and pepper to taste (my Mom was very heavy-handed with the salt. Now that my brother and I are the taste testers, we seem to have much more pepper)
Stuffing the Sausage
After the meat and potatoes are well mixed (sometimes too much) then typically the couples will start the sausage stuffing process. Again we use an old grinder with a handmade horn that I believe belonged to my grandparents and it’s well over 100 years old. It’s actually starting to crack and we are always afraid that this will be the last year. We keep a modern equivalent on standby just in case.
You can also use a Kitchen-Aid mixer with a grinder attachment.
My Mom and Dad always cranked out the first sausage when they were still alive. I think the bottom picture may very well be the last year that my Mom made sausage.
The first few potato rings of sausages go into the oven and we eat those on Potato Sausage Night. We don’t eat it again until Christmas Eve.
We pretty much snack on heavy appetizers throughout the whole night and then end it with our delicious Swedish potato sausage.
Swedish Potato Sausage Recipe
Equipment
- Large Bowl We use several
- inexpensive plastic tablecloth, use to cover table to mix and then we throw it away
Ingredients
- 10 lbs ground chuck Have your butcher grind the chuck and pork together
- 5 lbs ground pork
- 30 lbs potatoes peeled and quartered
- 5 lbs sweet onions peeled and quartered – you can also use a white onion
- pork sausage casings
Instructions
- Peel and quarter potatoes and onions
- Grind potatoes and onions together
- Drain the potato mixture in colanders, using your hands for pressure to release the water and potato starch from the potato mixture.
- Thoroughly mix the potato mixture and meat together
- Season with kosher salt and black pepper
- Use sausage stuffer to put meat/potato mixture into casings
- Bake at 350° in the oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Put some water in the bottom of the pan. Add more if it bakes out of the pan. It's done when the meat is cooked through and the casings are starting to split just a little bit.
Notes
My Mom’s Recipe
My sweet niece found a copy of my Mom’s recipe that is in her handwriting and framed it for her and her sister. I did the same for my girls. What a great keepsake to have hanging in their kitchens.
What Are Your Family Traditions
Does your family have a fun holiday tradition? Is it important to you to pass your traditions on to your kids? I’m so thankful that my kids have this connection with their past (my parents and grandparents). I’m also thrilled that they have such a strong connection that I am sure will continue into their future (close cousin bond).
If you don’t have holiday traditions, there is no time like the present to start creating them. It can be anything from a cookie exchange to making many pounds of potato sausage.
Peace and Love,
If you want my recipe for Swedish Meatballs, head over HERE
Other Christmas Posts
How to Make the Perfect Holiday Cocktail
A great way to remember this is to save it to your Pinterest boards. You can find the pin button in the top right corner of the photo below. Also, don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest
Oh my goodness! This looks amazing. I love how the styles changed over the years, but the process remained virtually identical. I love all gathering around the table with a messy, fun job to do.
It’s so messy and so much fun. When I was younger and did the mixing, my hands and arms would smell like onions for days!
I LOVED this post. The pics were awesome. The tradition is great. The sausage sounds amazing!
Truth be told, I’m not crazy about the sausage, its the process and the tradition that is the fun part for me!
I welled up as I read this post, Lynn. You have so many beautiful memories connected to this family tradition. May your family continue this tradition for years to come. ???? Pinned!
It’s a pretty cool tradition and the fact that all the kids will carry this on is pretty amazing.
Just loved this blog post. I smiled through the whole thing. The family pictures were the best. Happy Holiday’s to you Lynn 😉 Cindy
This is the exact same recipe we use in our family. I’ve got very similar pictures from making the sausage with my grandparents, parents and now with kids and grandkids! Love it. I live in Minnesota and can find it at christmas time but it always has allspice added, which we don’t like! If we can’t get it made at home, I run to Milbank, South Dakota to pick up same made without allspice.
Hi Karen –
I just love hearing from all the people who eat potato sausage. My Mom did say that some people used allspice but I can’t even imagine. So glad to hear from you and I hope you have the most amazing Christmas!
Oh my gosh….. Those pictures could’ve been straight out of our family albums, We do a Swedish Smorgasbord every Christmas, that is what makes it my favorite Holiday. My grandfather DeJerf has passed but he left us with a great family tradition, with all his recipes. A tradition that will last for generation after genration.
Hi Sally –
I have had so many people reach out to me about potato sausage and their Swedish traditions. Us Sweds know how to party 🙂
My boyfriend introduced me to Potato Sausage. I am looking for recipes to serve this in new ways instead of cooking the potatoe sausage and serving with veggies on the side. I suggested cutting it up and adding it to spaghetti sauce, but that was vetoed. He believes the spices would conflict between the sauce and potatoe sausage.
Any helpful hints?
Hi Krista –
I can see why you might think it wouldn’t work with spaghetti sauce but I’m someone who is willing to try pretty much anything. You might be pleasantly surprised. We typically eat it plain with what ever else we are having for dinner – Unlike the rest of my family, I dip it in mustard??. I actually have cut it into little disks and served it with dipping sauces like mustard, ketchup, and ranch as a snack. You have me thinking now on how else you can serve potato sausage.
I have a ring from Christmas in my freezer still. I may experiment with it!