The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 30, The Living Culture, the Roman Vein and the Rose Valley
Mici
Romania
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 24 hours
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Romania, the casing-free grilled sausage born from an 1870s shortage in a Bucharest tavern.
As tradition built it
Makes about 1 kg mixture, serves 4 to 6. Rested 12 to 24 hours, sometimes 2 to 3 days, then grilled.
Ingredients
For the mixture, per kilogram
- 700 g beef
- 300 g fatty pork or lamb, at least 20% fat
- 22 g salt
- 1 tsp thyme
- 5 to 6 juniper berries
- 1/2 tsp coriander
- 1 tsp caraway
- 2 tsp sweet paprika
- 5 to 7 cloves garlic
- at least 3 g sodium bicarbonate, slaked in lemon juice
- 250 to 350 ml very cold concentrated bone broth or mineral water
Method
- Combine roughly seven hundred grams of beef with three hundred grams of fatty pork or lamb, at least twenty per cent fat.
- Season with roughly twenty two grams of salt per kilogram, thyme, five to six juniper berries, coriander, caraway, sweet paprika and five to seven cloves of garlic.
- Slake at least three grams of bicarbonate per kilogram in lemon juice and work it through the mince.
- Work in two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty millilitres of very cold concentrated bone broth or mineral water.
- Rest twelve to twenty four hours, sometimes two to three days, before grilling.
- Shape without casing and grill.
Notes
Legend credits Iordache N. Ionescu's tavern on Covaci Street, Bucharest, operating roughly 1870 to 1890, where a shortage of sausage casings forced the kitchen to grill seasoned minced meat without the gut casing at all, a patron nicknaming the result "mititei." A documented 1902 standard specifies at least three grams of sodium bicarbonate per kilogram of minced meat.
What a modern chef changes
Hand-ground meat, fresh-ground spice and a vacuum-rested mince, per rung four
Rung 4
Method
- Grind the meat coarsely by hand rather than through a fine plate, keeping real texture rather than a smooth paste.
- Grind the paprika, coriander and caraway fresh in a dedicated spice grinder rather than reaching for pre-ground jars.
- Rest the bicarbonate-treated mince under vacuum compression rather than simply refrigerated loose, for a more even distribution through the full resting time, per rung four.
- Grill over genuine live fire on the Big Green Egg rather than a gas grill, closer in spirit to Romania's own grătar tradition.
- Serve with a confit garlic mujdei, the raw garlic sauce gently cooked down first for sweetness and body rather than left sharp and raw.