Kranjska Klobasa.
Carniolan Sausage with Sour Turnip
Kranjska klobasa s kislo repo · say it: KRAHN-ska kloh-BAH-sa
Kranjska klobasa is a coarse pork sausage — chunks of shoulder and bacon, salt, pepper and garlic, nothing else — lightly smoked and already cooked when you buy it. Bite it and you get a snap of casing, then meat that is genuinely chopped rather than emulsified, with garlic sitting behind the smoke rather than shouting over it. The cooking is not really cooking: you warm it through in water held below a simmer, because a rolling boil splits the skin and drains the fat and juice into the pot. The rest of the plate is the point. Sour turnip stewed soft with bacon and caraway, a smear of fierce mustard, a mound of raw horseradish, dark bread. That combination of fat, sour and burn is the whole logic of a Slovenian winter lunch.
- Gate
- SloveniaCarniola (Gorenjska and central Slovenia)
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 50 min
- Total time
- 1 hr 5 min
- Serves
- 4
- Status
- Easy
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 690 kcal
- Protein 30 g
- Carbs 19 g
- Fat 55 g
- Fiber 5 g
- Sodium 1900 mg
Why this recipe works.
- The poaching method is the Slovenian one — hot water off the heat, never a boil — so the casing stays sealed and the fat stays inside the sausage.
- Sour turnip is treated as a real dish rather than a garnish, softened slowly with bacon, caraway and a garlic-flour finish.
- Fresh horseradish grated with a tart apple gives the plate the raw heat that mustard alone cannot.
- Honest about sourcing: it explains what the protected sausage actually contains and what to look for if you can only find a substitute.
Ingredients.
15 itemsFor the sausages
For the sour turnip
To serve
Equipment
- Wide pan or pot deep enough to submerge the sausages
- Heavy saucepan with a lid
- Fine grater or microplane
Instructions.
Start the sour turnip
Render the diced bacon in a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat until the fat runs clear and the pieces are pale gold — do not let them crisp. Add the onion and cook for 6–8 minutes, until it is soft and translucent with no raw white left in the centre.
Braise it slowly
Squeeze the sour turnip lightly with your hands and add it to the pan with the caraway and bay leaf. Stir to coat in the fat, pour in the stock so the turnip is just covered, and simmer gently, half-covered, for 35–40 minutes until the shreds bend without resistance and the liquid has reduced by about half.
Tip Taste the raw turnip first. If it is mouth-puckeringly sour, rinse it under cold water and squeeze it dry before it goes in the pot.
Make the horseradish relish
Grate the horseradish and the peeled apple finely into a bowl — do it at arm's length, the fumes are genuinely sharp. Stir in the vinegar and a good pinch of salt, then cover and leave at room temperature while you finish the rest.
Thicken with garlic and flour
Stir the crushed garlic and flour into the turnip and cook for 3–4 minutes, stirring often, until the pot smells of cooked garlic rather than raw and the liquid has turned glossy and lightly clinging. Season with salt and plenty of coarse black pepper, then keep warm over the lowest heat.
Poach the sausages
Bring a wide pan of unsalted water to the boil, then take it off the heat and wait 30 seconds for the bubbling to stop. Lower in the sausages whole, cover, and leave for 10–12 minutes. The water should steam without moving; if it starts to bubble again, slide the pan off the burner.
Tip Do not prick the casings. A whole sausage should feel plump and taut when you lift it out.
Plate it the Slovenian way
Lift the sausages out with tongs, let them drain for a moment, and set each one beside a generous spoonful of the sour turnip. Add a blob of hot mustard and a small heap of the horseradish relish to the side of the plate, and put the bread on the table. Cut the sausage at the plate, not before.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Never pierce the sausage before or during heating. Every hole leaks fat and juice, and you end up with a dry sausage in a greasy pot.
- Water should be around 75–80°C — steaming with a few lazy bubbles at the edge of the pan, not moving. If it boils, pull the pan off the heat entirely and let the residual heat do the work.
- Taste the sour turnip before you cook it. Some jars are aggressively sharp, in which case rinse briefly; others are mild and need a splash of vinegar at the end.
- Grate horseradish just before serving. Its heat is volatile and fades within an hour of being exposed to air, which is why jarred horseradish tastes flat by comparison.
- Save the poaching water. It is lightly smoky and salty, and a ladle of it loosens the turnip beautifully if the pot tightens up.
- If you can only get a substitute sausage, choose a coarse-cut smoked one and skip anything finely emulsified — texture is half the identity of this dish.
Substitutions.
- Kranjska klobasa → Polish kiełbasa wiejska, Czech klobása, or a coarse smoked bratwurst-style sausage
- None of them are the same sausage — kranjska klobasa is more garlicky and coarser than most — but the method and the plate around it still work. Avoid anything smooth and pink.
- Sour turnip (kisla repa) → Sauerkraut, drained, cooked exactly the same way
- Sauerkraut is the standard Slovenian alternative and appears on the same plate all winter. It cooks a little faster than turnip, so start checking at 25 minutes.
- Fresh horseradish → Jarred grated horseradish, drained, refreshed with a squeeze of lemon
- Jarred horseradish loses most of its volatile heat. Adding acid and a grated raw apple brings back some bite and sweetness.
Variations.
- Klobasa z ričetom
- Instead of turnip, drop the poached sausage into a bowl of thick barley and bean ričet. The sausage seasons the pot and the pot stretches the sausage — standard Slovenian home economics.
- Sausage baked with sauerkraut and potatoes
- Layer sauerkraut, sliced boiled potato and the sausages in a dish, moisten with stock and bake covered at 180°C for 30 minutes. A one-tray version for a crowd.
- Käsekrainer, the Austrian offshoot
- The Viennese descendant, studded with cubes of cheese that melt into pockets. It is not kranjska klobasa and Slovenian producers will tell you so, but it is a genuine part of the sausage's afterlife.
Storage & reheating.
Uncooked sausages keep in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze well for three months — thaw fully before heating or the middle stays cold. The braised sour turnip is better on day two and keeps four days refrigerated; reheat it gently with a splash of water. Poached sausages are best eaten immediately, but leftovers are excellent sliced cold into a bean salad, or crisped in a dry pan and folded into scrambled eggs the next morning.
Serve with
Dark rye or sourdough bread, hot mustard, freshly grated horseradish and a glass of cviček or a cold lager — the standard Slovenian sausage plate.
The story behind Kranjska Klobasa.
The sausage takes its name from Kranjska — Carniola, the historic Slovene province whose capital was Ljubljana. Under the Habsburgs it travelled the empire's railways and kitchens, which is why versions of it survive across Central Europe under German names, and why Austria has its own descendant, the cheese-stuffed Käsekrainer sold from Vienna sausage stands. Who owned the original name turned into a long and unusually bitter argument between producers, and it ended in Brussels: kranjska klobasa was registered as an EU protected geographical indication in 2015, with a written specification that reads like a legal document because it is one.
That specification is worth knowing, because it explains the taste. The meat must be pork of defined quality plus bacon fat, coarsely chopped rather than ground to paste; the only seasonings permitted are salt, pepper, garlic and curing salt. No fillers, no rusk, no milk powder, no paprika. The sausages are linked in pairs and traditionally fastened with a small wooden pin rather than a knot, then briefly smoked and heat-treated. If you pick up a pair in a Slovenian butcher shop and the pin is there, you are holding the real thing.
In Slovenia this is everyday food with holiday reach: a hut lunch after a walk in the hills, a fair stand, a plate at a village feast, and the first thing Slovenian families abroad ask visitors to smuggle in their luggage — Cleveland, with one of the largest Slovenian emigrant communities anywhere, has butchers who have been making it for generations. The accompaniments barely change: sour turnip or sauerkraut, mustard, horseradish, bread, and something to drink that is also local. Nobody grills it, nobody sauces it, and nobody, in front of a Slovene, cuts it into coins before it reaches the plate.
Questions, answered.
Why should I not boil the sausage?
Boiling water agitates the sausage and forces the casing to burst along its weakest seam. Once it splits, rendered fat and meat juices escape into the water and the sausage turns dry and grainy. Holding the water below a simmer, around 75–80°C, heats it through in about ten minutes while keeping everything sealed inside.
Is kranjska klobasa raw or already cooked?
It is already cooked. The protected product is lightly smoked and heat-treated during production, so what you do at home is simply reheating it to eating temperature. That is why the timing is short and why overcooking is the only real risk in the recipe.
What is sour turnip and where do I find it?
Sour turnip, kisla repa in Slovenian, is shredded turnip fermented in brine the same way cabbage becomes sauerkraut. It is sold in jars and vacuum packs in Slovenian, Austrian and Croatian shops and in many Central European delis. If you cannot find it, sauerkraut is the accepted stand-in and appears on the same plate throughout Slovenia.
What makes kranjska klobasa different from other smoked sausages?
Its EU specification is unusually strict: coarsely chopped pork and bacon fat seasoned only with salt, pepper, garlic and curing salt, with no fillers, binders or extra spices. That means a visibly chunky cut, a clean pork-and-garlic flavour, and a firmer bite than emulsified sausages like frankfurters or Käsekrainer-style products.
Can I cook the sour turnip in advance?
Yes, and you should. Sour turnip improves after a night in the fridge as the garlic and caraway settle into it, and it reheats without any loss of texture. Make it up to three days ahead, then poach the sausages fresh on the day, since they take barely ten minutes.
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Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 21, 2026 · updated August 21, 2026