Sausage, Landjäger (Swiss Gendarme, Beef and Red Wine)

This is the Swiss one, and it is genuinely a different sausage from the German — not a regional accent on the same recipe.

Switzerland calls it Landjäger in the German cantons and Gendarmes in French, and the modern Swiss composition is roughly 80% beef to 20% back fat — where the Swabian version runs about a third beef, a third pork shoulder, a third belly. Eight parts beef changes everything: darker, leaner, firmer, more mineral. And then the seasoning goes somewhere the German version does not — red wine, garlic, coriander, alongside the crushed caraway and pepper.

The other real difference is the press. A German home recipe presses for 12 to 24 hours. Swiss production presses in rectangular molds for up to five days, and the ripening happens in there. That is a long time under boards, and it is why a Swiss Landjäger comes out so squared-off and so dense.

The Swiss eat about 1,300 tonnes of these a year. There is a wonderful old Migros sales van in the photo archives with a two-for-one Landjäger promotion painted on the side — this is not a specialty item over there, it is everyday food.

Raw, never cooked, like all the real ones. UNTESTED as written. Read the safety block in the Swabian recipe — it applies here in full, and I have not repeated all of it.

Ingredients

THE MEAT BLOCK — 2 kg (4 lb 7 oz) total

• 1600 g beef, sinew-rich — chuck, shin or neck (80%)
• 400 g pork back fat, firm and well chilled (20%)

CURE AND SALT — weighed on a 0.01 g scale

• 50 g salt, non-iodized (2.5%)
• 5.0 g Cure #2 / Prague Powder #2 (2.5 g per kg = 156 ppm ingoing nitrite)
• 6 g dextrose (0.3%)
• 0.5 g Bactoferm T-SPX starter culture, in 30 ml distilled water

SPICE AND WINE

• 60 ml dry red wine, cold (3%)
• 5 g black pepper, ground
• 4 g caraway seed, coarsely crushed
• 3 g coriander seed, ground
• 6 g fresh garlic, finely minced
• CASING
• Hog casing 28/30 mm

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper · Salt

1. Read this first: never cooked, no kill step. The full safety argument is written out on Sausage, Landjäger (Swabian, Traditional Raw) — cure, fast acid, weight loss, and smoke that is flavor only. Read it there before you start this one.
2. Wake the culture: T-SPX in 30 ml distilled water, 30 minutes ahead. Distilled — chlorinated tap water kills it.
3. Cold, and colder for the fat: back fat especially. Firm, well-chilled back fat holds its particle; soft fat smears and disappears into the beef. Freeze the grinder parts. Target 28–32°F through the plate.
4. Grind the beef down in stages: Swiss practice takes the beef through the grinder in several successive passes, working it down to a 3–4 mm grain with the spices going in along the way. That repeated working is part of what gives a Gendarme its close, dense texture. Do the fat separately at 4.5 mm and fold it in last so the pieces stay visible.
5. The wine goes in cold: 60 ml of dry red, straight from the refrigerator, with the salt, cure and culture water. It colors the block, it carries the garlic and coriander through it, and it drops the mix temperature rather than raising it. Do not use anything you would not drink; a month of drying concentrates whatever was wrong with it.
6. Mix to the bind: until it turns tacky and strings off your hand. In an 80% beef block this happens faster than in a fatty pork mix — beef gives up its myosin readily. Do not overwork it into a paste.
7. Stuff and pair: tight into hog 28/30, no air pockets. Tie off lengths of about 32 cm, cut apart, twist each at the middle for the pair. 80–125 g a stick.
8. Press — long, this time: into rectangular molds or between boards under 6–7 kg. Swiss production presses for up to five days, and the ripening runs while they are in there. Start at 68–72°F and 90%+ humidity for the first 24 hours to get the ferment going, then step down to 54–60°F for the remainder. Check the pressure after the first day; as they lose water the boards go slack and stop shaping.
9. Verify the ferment: pH 5.3 or below by the end of the first 24 warm hours. Do not go on if it hasn’t dropped.
10. Cold smoke: the Swiss schedule runs 68–77°F for one to five days, stepping the length up with how much smoke you want. That upper figure is warmer than classic cold smoke and it is only acceptable because the acid is already in place — do not copy 77°F onto a sausage that has not fermented. I stay at the bottom of that band, 59–68°F, in 6–8 hour passes with rests between, over beech.
11. Air out: at least a day after the last pass before you judge it.
12. Dry to the number: 54–59°F, 75–80% RH, until it has lost 30–40% of its green weight. Weigh a tagged pair. In 28/30 hog expect 4 to 5 weeks.
13. Eating it: thin slices, on the diagonal, with bread and a hard cheese. In Switzerland it goes in a rucksack.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t

Built on the Swiss national culinary-heritage inventory’s entry for Landjäger / Gendarmes, which documents the modern composition and process, with the cure, culture and verification numbers supplied by me. UNTESTED as written.

The inventory gives: ~80% beef and ~20% back bacon; nitrite curing salt, red wine, crushed caraway, pepper, coriander and garlic; beef ground in five passes to a 3–4 mm grain; pressed in rectangular molds up to five days; cold-smoked at 20–25°C for one to five days.

What I added, and why:

1. Cure #2 rather than plain nitrite curing salt, for the same reason as everywhere else in this family — weeks of raw drying with no cook step needs the nitrate reservoir. Shown at 156 ppm.
2. A live culture and a pH target. The inventory describes a traditional process that acidifies on its own. I want a number.
3. A weight-loss target. Not stated in the source. Nothing European states it.

⚠ One thing the safety spine does NOT cover, added 2026-07-24. The hurdle stack — cure, fast acid, full dry — is validated against botulism, Staph aureus, trichinae in pork and shelf-stability. It is not a validated kill step for Salmonella or STEC; USDA says the typical hurdles “may not be as effective as cooking,” and two 2021 outbreaks sickened 70+ people at plants that met every control. Read the full version on Sausage, Landjäger (Swabian, Traditional Raw) before deciding the stack is complete.

Where the Swiss Landjäger came from

Under this name since the 19th century. The inventory is refreshingly honest that the early-1900s recipes were not what is made today — some were pure pork, some pork and beef, some used veal. The beef-forward version we now think of as definitively Swiss is modern. It spread westward across the country from eastern Switzerland over the 20th century, and today it is made nationwide but concentrated in the German-speaking cantons, at roughly 1,300 tonnes a year.

The name

Gendarmes is the French-Swiss name, and it is the more revealing one: Landjäger was what the rural police were called in German-speaking Europe from the late 1700s. The inventory floats the idea that the sausage is an ironic nod at the officers — red coats, stiff bearing, always out on the road — and then explicitly calls the link speculative. It is one of three competing etymologies; the other two are on Sausage, Landjäger (Swabian, Traditional Raw).

Worth noting what is not true: there is no protected designation for Landjäger anywhere — no AOP, no IGP, no PDO, in Switzerland, Germany or Austria. Anyone can make one and call it that.

Variations

80/20 beef to fat is the modern standard, but the historical range is wide and you are not betraying anything by going to 70/30, or by using a fatty pork shoulder in place of some of the back fat. A few Swiss formulas include pork rind for body.

The red wine is the seasoning I would not drop. It is the clearest single difference from the German recipe.

Sourcing and gear

Sinew-rich beef is correct here, not a compromise — chuck, shin, neck. The German food code specifies it for Landjäger and the connective tissue is part of the texture. Do not buy a premium roast for this.

Back fat needs to be genuinely firm. If it is soft enough to dent with a thumb it will smear.

Everything else — the 0.01 g scale, the pH meter, the press, the 54–59°F space — is on the Swabian recipe.

Still open

I have not found a pre-1950 Swiss household formula, only the inventory’s summary of what the early recipes contained. And the inventory’s 25°C top-of-band cold smoke deserves a better look — I have written it in as “only because the acid is there,” which is my inference, not their statement.