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Making kielbasa | Check It Out With Chelsea

Newswatch 16's Chelsea Strub checks out how the area's favorite sausage is made.

NANTICOKE, Pa. — Tarnowski's Kielbasa usually walks away from the annual Plymouth Kielbasa Festival with some hardware. We stopped by the shop in Nanticoke to see how their award-winning kielbasa is made. To protect the secret of this shop's success, A few steps were kept hidden.

"It was in an old garage behind my grandpa's old house in Glen Lyon, which, originally, back in the day, it was their smokehouse and my grandpa's garage," said owner John Vishnefski.

It's a little different now on East Main Street in Nanticoke. The first step in Vishnefski's process is to grind the meat. Kielbasa is a mixture of pork and beef, along with some garlic and spices.

"During the holidays when we're doing 900 pounds a day, I think it takes more time to put this casing actually on the horn than it does to actually produce everything else."

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, this shop cranks out close to 10,000 pounds of kielbasa.

"It's just like a constant 45 days of nonstop making 600 to 1,000 pounds a day. Then you get a month and a half, two off, and then it goes back to Easter, and Easter is an over 10,000-pound holiday."

If it's fresh kielbasa, that's it. It's sold this way by the pound.

For smoked kielbasa, Ryan Kenney from Plymouth Township loads it into the smoker.

"It gets a little tricky when you're lifting it up above your head, and your arms definitely get sore after all day," Kenney said. "You just get really tired very fast."

If you want to try some homemade kielbasa, you can find Tarnowski's and many others at the Plymouth Alive Kielbasa Festival in Plymouth on August 11 and 12.

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