In Mid and Southern Burgenland, and also in some parts of Styria, a procedure called Sautanz - "pig dance" takes place. This is, when a hog is butchered. But well, it is not done in some industrial way of killing. It is a celebration, where all friends and neighbours of the respective peasant, who owns the hog, are invited. Usually, a professional butcher is organised, who does the actual filleting with some better parts of the pig as payment. As a first step, the hog is let out of its cage, then the peasant tries to catch it and set the slaughtering pistol (or sometimes, they use an axe for the same job). You will notice a loud and awful screaming of the hog, until it is caught and shot (or cut). What is called "dance" is the running around before it is killed - poor pig. Well then, you have that hog right there, bleeding. What happens next? And what has all this to do with food?
Blutwurst, Blunz'n
First of all, there will be a LOT of blood. But this is not shed. No. It is collected in a bucket and cooked until it is coagulated, with fat, cream and spices. This will be later filled into the cleaned gut of the hog. This is the Blutwurst, or often just called Blunzn (pronounced: bloontsn). Sounds yummy? It really is, no matter how much you watch it being made.
Grammeln, Schmalz and Grammelschmalz
Then, the fat of the hog is diced and cooked. The fat then starts separating from the tissue. The tissue is fried in the fat which was separated by cooking. The fried tissue itself, which looks like big brown bread crumbs is then called Grammeln (sg. Grammel), the fat itself, which turns white and hard as butter when it is cold, Schmalz. And when the Grammeln are left in the Schmalz, this will be another local speciality called Grammelschmalz. Schmalz is the fat used for much of the traditional cooking in this area.
Schnaps
Together with all that, you will most likely be served a distilled transparent fluid called Schnaps, which has most likely also been made by the owner of the hog. It is made of distilled rotten fruit. You will rarely come to drink something as stiff like that, so don't miss it.
Other products
Of course, not all of the butchered hog is used at that occasion. Most of it is given to friends and neighbours and put into the fridge for the coming year.
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Burgenland Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
