Kasekrainer: Austrian Cheese Sausage Recipe
Prep Time - 12 Hrs
Cook Time - 1 Hr
Difficulty - 6/10
This recipe suits home cooks who enjoy traditional sausage styles and want to explore classic regional flavors. While the ingredient list is straightforward, the technique reflects time-tested sausage-making methods that reward careful preparation and patience.
If you’re new to sausage making, it helps to understand the fundamentals first, including meat selection, seasoning balance, and proper handling. Our Beginner’s Guide to Making Sausage at Home is a helpful place to start before trying more traditional recipes like this one.
Käsekrainer is an Austrian sausage stuffed with small chunks of cheese. It is typically made using pork or a mixture of pork, beef, and various spices. Generally, Swiss Emmental is the cheese used to stuff the sausage. Although käsekrainer can be boiled, baked, or grilled, it is typically lightly smoked over Applewood.
Traditional Austrian Käsekrainer leans heavily on pork. This version runs 60% beef chuck to 40% fatty pork trim, which gives a firmer bite and a slightly deeper flavor than the classic. If you want something closer to what you'd get at a Viennese Würstelstand, flip the ratio — 600 g fatty pork trim to 400 g beef chuck — and keep everything else the same.
In many parts of the English-speaking world, the terms "Emmentaler" and "Swiss cheese" refer to any cheese of the Emmental type, whether produced in Switzerland or elsewhere.
Why the Viennese Call It "the Eitrige"
Käsekrainer has one of the least appetizing nicknames in European food. Order one at a Viennese Würstelstand, and you might hear it called a Eitrige — from eitrig, meaning ulcerous or pus-filled. Unpleasant, but hard to argue with once you see molten Emmental seeping out of a sliced sausage.
The full order runs "a Eitrige mit an Bugl und an 16er-Blech" — a Käsekrainer, the heel of a dark bread loaf, and a can of Ottakringer beer, named for Vienna's 16th district where it's brewed. Fair warning: locals will tell you the phrase mostly gets used by tourists who read it in a guidebook. One well-known stand owner has said as much publicly.
The sausage itself is younger than most people assume — an Austrian invention from the late 1960s, not a centuries-old tradition. It's a variation on the Carniolan sausage, or Krainer Wurst, which comes from the Krain region in what is now Slovenia. That heritage nearly cost Austria the sausage: when Slovenia won protected geographical status for Kranjska klobasa, the Käsekrainer technically fell under the ruling.
Ingredients
- 600 grams Beef chuck
- 400 grams Fatty pork trim
- 28 grams Salt
- 2.5 grams InstaCure #1
- 4.0 grams Paprika
- 2.0 grams White pepper
- 2.0 grams Allspice
- 1.0 gram Ground nutmeg
- 3.0 grams Garlic powder
- 2.0 grams Sugar
- 10 milliliters Milk
- 100 grams Emmental Cheese in 1/4 cubes
Steps
- Cube meats and weigh. Then add spices, sugar, and cure.
- Grind meats through ¼” plate. Add milk and grind again after cooling.
- Mix meat and cheese together.
- Stuff into 32 mm pork casings forming 15 cm (6″) links.
- Hang sausages overnight in a cooler.
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Smoke at 60° C (140° F) for 60 minutes.
Poach at 75° C (167° F) for 25 minutes.
Getting the Cheese Right
A traditional Käsekrainer runs 10 to 20 percent cheese by weight. This recipe sits at the low end — 100 g of Emmental to 1,000 g of meat. Push toward 150 g if you want the cheese more prominent.
Two rules matter more than the ratio. Keep the heat low to medium; if it's too hot, the casing burns before the center warms. And never cut or pierce the sausage while it's cooking — the melted cheese will run straight out. Grilling slowly on a flat-top is how the Viennese do it, and the cheese that escapes onto the iron caramelizes into a crisp edge that's half the appeal.
Let it rest a minute before biting in. The cheese holds heat far longer than the meat does.
One note on cheese choice: this recipe wants real Emmental precisely because it melts. High temp cheese is engineered to hold its shape through heat, which makes it right for summer sausage and snack sticks where you want defined cheese pockets — and wrong here, where the melt is the whole point.
Recipes like this highlight how versatile homemade sausage can be. Once you’re comfortable with traditional sausage recipes, many home cooks choose to expand their skills by experimenting with different cooking methods, smoking techniques, or regional variations.
For those ready to take the next step, learning to smoke sausage or trying a beginner-friendly recipe like breakfast sausage patties can be a natural progression.
