What is lactose doing in a sausage?

In an artisanal sausage, the ingredients can be counted on one hand, and there are usually some left over. They are meat, salt, and spices. Industrial sausages, let's call them that because the law allows them to be differentiated from artisanal ones, contain more additives, including lactose, which on the ingredient list of the cured meat can be mentioned as whey,milk powder, lactitol or directly lactose, explains dietitian-nutritionist Anna Grífols.

So, lactose is an additive in fuets or sausages, but why is it used exactly? I ask expert Josep Dolcet, and he explains that, first of all, lactose is permitted as an ingredient in both meat and other products. Since it is a sugar that breaks down slowly, "using it allows the sausage not to dry out, to remain tender for much longer." If it didn't have it, "it would wrinkle, and then it wouldn't be visually attractive to the consumer." But it's not just a visual issue, but also about texture, because when we bite into it, the sausage will be tender, and this is because lactose will have prevented the meat from losing water quickly. And, to top it off, the cured meat made with lactose has a slightly acidic taste, and, even better, it can be put on sale more quickly because it doesn't need the drying time of an artisanal one.

Slow production in artisanal

Of course, lactose is not essential for the production of cured sausages. It is for some, the industrial ones. If we go back to artisanal cured sausage, you will see that no related ingredient will appear on the labels, because, in the first place, its production process is slower. Also because it seeks a quality achieved through quality meat with spices and salt. In Osona, it has always been said that the fog was what made the cured sausage unique, because they were dried in the attics, with the windows open, through which the fog seeped. Of course, all this comes from an ancient time, when there was no technology or temperature control. If it were still done this way, drying with fog, in summer there would be no more Vic cured sausage, because the fog lasts only a few months in the plain of Vic, and therefore in summer no more production could be made. All this has changed a lot, and controlled temperature dryers are what both artisanal and industrial producers use.

To continue, the novelty in the world of sausages, and also of meat in general, is that the law has just distinguished between artisanal and industrial products. Finally, the word artisanal

has a regulation, which ensures that the sausage has been made under the direction of a master artisan or an artisan, with small production volumes, certain degrees of mechanization, and that it can be marketed both in its own shop and in other establishments. In an artisanal cured sausage, the use of lactose makes no sense, because it does not seek a standard, identical taste or one that is too tender, as is the case with industrial ones, precisely the properties that the additive provides. And one last detail, in Vic you will find the best cured sausages.