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Meat from Turkey

Sucuksucuk

Sucuk is Turkey's dry fermented sausage. Minced beef and fat are mixed with salt, garlic, cumin, red and black pepper and a curing salt, stuffed into casings and ripened for one to three weeks while the temperature and humidity are stepped down. Under Turkish food law it is not heat-treated and must reach pH 5.4 or lower.

Fully documentedMeat9 days – 23 days

Recipe

Sucuk, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Rainer Zenz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceOne kilogram of meat and fat (4:1), from a university study that made sucuk to a standard formulation (Kaya and Kaban 2024).
Lean beef800 gShoulder, chilled at 4 °C for 24 h[kaya2024]
Fat200 gBeef fat, sheep tail fat, or half of each[kaya2024]
Salt25 g[kaya2024]
Garlic10 g[kaya2024]
Cumin9 g[kaya2024]
Red pepper7 g[kaya2024]
Black pepper5 g[kaya2024]
Pimento2.5 g[kaya2024]
Sucrose4 g[kaya2024]
Sodium nitrite (fast ripening) or potassium nitrate (slow ripening)150 mg/kgThat is 0.15 g per kg of meat and fat, as the pure chemical. Too much is poisonous.[kaya2024]
Starterdefined culture (industrial) or spontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 9 days – 23 days

Start
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What changes: Lean beef and fat are minced together

Step 1 of 5
Mince the meat and fat
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Lean beef and fat in a 4:1 ratio are chopped in a bowl cutter.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Sucuk is Turkey's dry fermented sausage. Minced beef and fat are mixed with salt, garlic, cumin, red and black pepper and a curing salt, stuffed into casings and ripened for one to three weeks while the temperature and humidity are stepped down. Under Turkish food law it is not heat-treated and must reach pH 5.4 or lower. Made in 5 steps over 9 days – 23 days. The longest step, ripen and dry, takes 6–20 days (Kaya M 2024) and runs at 15–17 °C (Kaya M 2024). Salt is 2.5 % (Kaya M 2024). Lactic acid bacteria (Lactiplantibacillus plantarum) and coagulase-negative staphylococci (Staphylococcus xylosus); local strains tested as starters and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (60 of 95 lactic isolates), L. paraplantarum (18) and Latilactobacillus sakei (13); Staphylococcus xylosus (24 of 50 staphylococcal isolates) and S. saprophyticus (10), isolated from traditionally produced sucuk do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step6–20 daysReported[kaya2024]Ripen and dry
Temperature15–17 °CReported[kaya2024]Ripen and dry
Salt2.5 %Reported[kaya2024]Mix with salt, garlic, spices, sugar and curing salt
AciditypH 5.4Set[tgk2018]Ripen and dry

What makes this one different

Sucuk is a beef sausage seasoned with garlic and cumin, and Turkish law defines it as a fermented and dried product with no heat treatment. Heat-treated sucuk is a separate product with a pH limit of 5.6.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Heat-treated sucuk (ısıl işlem görmüş sucuk)Fermented, then heat-treated; pH up to 5.6 and meat protein at least 14 %.

Safety

Turkish food law sets a pH of at most 5.4 for sucuk and at most 5.6 for heat-treated sucuk, and limits the moisture relative to the meat protein. These are product limits, and meeting them does not make raw meat safe. Sucuk gets no heat treatment while it is made, and a survey of 132 samples found Salmonella in 2 and Listeria monocytogenes in 2. CDC advises anyone pregnant, aged 65 or older or with a weakened immune system to heat fermented or dry sausage until steaming hot. Nitrite is poisonous in excess. Too much stops the blood carrying oxygen and can kill. The study used 0.15 g per kg, so this amount cannot be judged by eye. The recipe is from a university trial and was not tested as a home method.

Hazards the sources name: Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes (each in 2 of 132 sucuk samples from Turkish producers and retailers; E. coli O157 in none).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The oldest known Turkish dictionary, the Divânü Lugâti't-Türk of 1072, holds the first record of sucuk.

  1. [tgk2018] Turkish Food Codex Communiqué on Meat, Prepared Meat Mixtures and Meat Products (Türk Gıda Kodeksi Et, Hazırlanmış Et Karışımları ve Et Ürünleri Tebliği, No. 2018/52), Resmî Gazete 30670, 29 January 2019, Articles 4 and 9gov
  2. [kaya2024] Kaya M., Kaban G. 2024, Volatile compounds of sucuk, a dry fermented sausage, the effects of ripening rate, autochthonous starter cultures and fat type, Foods 13(23):3839paper
  3. [kaya2025] Kaya M., Sayın B., Çinar Topçu K., Karadayı M., Kamiloğlu A., Güllüce M., Kaban G. 2025, Genotypic and technological characterization of lactic acid bacteria and coagulase-negative staphylococci isolated from sucuk, a preliminary screening of potential starter cultures, Foods 14(20):3495paper
  4. [buyukunal2016] Büyükünal S.K., Şakar F.Ş., Turhan İ., Erginbaş Ç., Sandıkçı Altunatmaz S., Yılmaz Aksu F., Yılmaz Eker F., Kahraman T. 2016, Presence of Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli O157 and nitrate-nitrite residue levels in Turkish traditional fermented meat products (sucuk and pastırma), Kafkas Universitesi Veteriner Fakultesi Dergisi 22(2):233–236paper
  5. [cdc-listeria] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Preventing Listeria Infectiongov
  6. [cdc-nitrite] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2002, Methemoglobinemia following unintentional ingestion of sodium nitrite, New York, 2002, MMWR 51(29)gov