Polony is a South African bologna product made from fat, salt, and a composite meat paste often referred to as pink slime. Traditional polony is dyed bright pink and is a popular sandwich meat. Due to its low cost, polony is one of the few deli meats accessible to South Africa’s poor.
According to The Butcher, South Africans also use the term “polony” for any deli meat in the bologna family. These meats include Lebanon bologna, rag bologna, German bologna, and kosher/halal bologna.
Bologna Has Ancient Roots as a Delicacy
Variations of Polony
Several variations of polony exist, each with unique characteristics and ingredients:
- German Bologna: Contains more spices than the standard recipe and has a strong garlic flavor. Its South African analogue is called garlic polony. Unlike other bolognas, quality German polony contains no nitrates and is therefore beige, not pink.
- Rag Bologna: Another meat similar to polony, which originated in Tennessee. Like polony, rag bologna has high levels of gristle, fat, and fillers such as flour and ground oats. It is called “rag” bologna because of its cloth packaging. It is popular as a sandwich meat and frequently appears on the breakfast table.
- Kosher/Halal Polony: An important dietary staple among poor Muslims in and around South Africa. This type of polony conforms to Jewish and Islamic dietary regulations. Its ingredients include any combination of beef, lamb, chicken, and turkey.
In England, Ireland and also Western Australia, a "polony" is a finely ground pork-and-beef sausage. The name, likely derived from "Bologna", has been in use since the 17th century. In Scotland, "polony" is a finely ground seasoned pork sausage often eaten in a roll or as part of a full breakfast. It is cooked in a red skin, served in slices by butcher shops, and fried or grilled before eating. In New Zealand, "polony" is a type of cocktail sausage with pink or red artificially-coloured skin similar to, but much smaller than, a saveloy. Miniature polonies in New Zealand are called "Cheerios" and often are eaten boiled with tomato sauce.
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South African "polony" is similar to bologna in constitution and appearance, and is typically inexpensive. Large-diameter (artificially coloured) pink polonies are called "French polony", with thinner rolls referred to simply as "polony". Various vegetarian and vegan versions of bologna are available.
Bologna sausage, informally baloney (bə-LOH-nee),[1] is an American cooked sausage. Its seasonings, which include black pepper, nutmeg, allspice, celery seed, coriander, and myrtle berries, give it its flavor. In North America, a simple and popular use is in the bologna sandwich. Government regulations require American bologna to be finely ground.[7] "Frankfurter, frank, furter, hotdog, weiner, vienna, bologna, garlic bologna, knockwurst, and similar products" all use the same standard of identity defined in 9 CFR 319.180. It is historically and geographically associated with the German-American immigrant community.
Ring bologna is much smaller in diameter than standard bologna. It is better suited for slicing and serving on crackers, either as a snack or hors d'oeuvre. It is generally sold as an entire link rather than sliced.
Rag bologna is a long stick, or "chub", of high-fat bologna native to West Tennessee[10] and its surrounding area, unavailable elsewhere. It is traditionally sold wrapped in a cloth rag, and has a higher content of filler than that of regular bologna. Milk solids, flour, cereal, and spices are added during processing, and the roll of bologna is bathed in lactic acid before being coated in paraffin wax.
A classic bologna sandwich.
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South African Regulations on Ingredients
South African regulations impose specific controls on the ingredients used in polony production. These controls aim to ensure quality and prevent the use of undesirable components.
Edible offal, including heart, liver, tongue, and kidney, is permitted in polony, but its inclusion is strictly limited to a maximum of 5% by mass of the final product. Mechanically recovered meat (MRM) or mechanically deboned meat (MDM) is explicitly prohibited in certain raw processed meat products, such as raw boerewors and raw species/mixed-species sausages. includes MRM unless specifically excluded.
These controls on ingredients, such as the limitation of offal and the prohibition of MRM/MDM in related categories, demonstrate a clear regulatory intention to control the quality and type of meat ingredients, not merely the overall quantity. These components, while technically derived from animals, are often considered lower quality or less desirable than muscle meat.
The regulatory measures aim to prevent the economic adulteration or "dilution" of processed meat products with cheaper, less desirable components that might otherwise allow manufacturers to meet broad "meat content" targets without delivering the expected quality or nutritional profile. This approach safeguards both consumer expectations and fair competition within the industry.
Ingredients used for the manufacture of polony sausages
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Historical Context and Production
The picture is now becoming clear. Polony was made from various meat, fat and lots of spices, filled into casings and bunched together. It was probably placed in another bladder and cooked. As was the case with sausage meat generally at this time, polony, in particular, had a reputation as being made from substandard meat.
Well-salted meat, adding lots of spices and cooking it not only preserved the meat well but also hid sub-spec meat well.
During the court case, the quadrennium of the poor was described as follows. “The cheapness (of such a product) rendered the joint (product) quite irresistible, and when once dressed, a poor family would endeavour to make the best of a bad bargain.”
In court, it was said that this is an “evil against which the affluent could guard themselves, but the poor were left without security, except such as was given by the certainty of punishment in case of offences.”
Be slow to only lump polony in this class of products containing inferior products, because sausages were also part of the category!
The reputation of polonies being made from sub-spec meat nevertheless has a very long historical precedent.
I did a survey of 57 old American bologna recipes to determine their relationship to Polony. Each one called for an internal core temperature during cooking or smoking of either 68 deg C or 68 deg C, like Polony.
The variety of meats used in the recipes is a further clue to the close relationship between it and Polony. It includes a choice of beef trim, beef F. C., beef plate, beef cheeks, beef trim in various ratios, pork cheeks, backfat, pork trim in various ratios, pork hearts, pork jowls, pork diaphragm, pork stomach, pork plate, pork tongue, turkey and turkey fat.
Bologna represents a natural progression from the crude stuffing of casings with whatever meat and fat were available, heavy salting and spicing and cooking.
In terms of spices, they all rely heavily on salt, pepper, corn syrup solids (very American), sugar (sucrose) or dextrose (to break the saltiness), with coriander which also features prominently.
Modern Production and Ingredients
Modern-day polony is an emulsion product. I am interested in understanding the ability of gel formation of different meat proteins, their water holding capacity and the relative protein content of various ingredients used in making fine emulsion sausages.
This is important, especially in South Africa where there is a heavy reliance on MDM/ MRD in emulation sausages.
In making sense of this approach, it is beneficial to understand that we deal with three classes of meat-related products. I call it the pure, the deceptive and the dishonest, thus revealing my personal bias.
- Meat Analogues: are starches and soy, grains and cereals which are made so that it tastes like meat, but contain no part of an animal carcass. This is the dishonest or hypocritical class of products. Why would a vegan, for example, who does not want to eat meat, buy a product disguised as meat, but which, in reality, contains no meat?
- Meat Hybrids: is the middle of the two and combines meat and plant-based protein, essentially to achieve a cheaper product. I call it deceptive because the consumer is most often misled as to the real nature of the products they buy (I say this, despite the label declaration, which is often still enigmatic to consumers). They think it’s meat, but it contains a percentage of non-meat fillers. This is almost always done to reduce the price of the product, which, in a country like South Africa, is not necessarily a bad thing. Affordable food, where “affordable” is relative to the income level of the consumer, is a very important consideration.
- Pure meat products: My personal preference for pure meat products is mainly based on taste and, to a lesser extent, on matters such as allergy which relate to health in that some of the fillers may be allergens.
In evaluating the options for a producer, one must first understand the real cost of protein.
Starch is an interesting ingredient. “Generally starch is insoluble in water. In hot water they dissolve and form colloidal dispersions. “It swells and forms a sticky substance. In cereals about 65 to 80% starch is present. Next to cereals, roots like tapioca, potato and sweet potato are with starch granules. These roots and tubers contain about 22 to 30% amylopectin. Amylose is about 15 to 30% and amylopectin is about 70 to 85%. In different sources of starch it is present in different proportions. Amylose is soluble in water and amylopectin is insoluble in water. On 5% concentration starch forms gels. Among the various sources of starch corn starch is the finest. This property of starch to gel is exploited in cookery. In many preparations, starch is used as a thickening agent. To get a good gel, gelatinisation temperature of different starches must be known. Usually, it starts to gel at 65 deg C to 70 deg C. The enzymes in the starch are the other factors which affect the gelatinisation.
The convention in SA became to use the cheapest protein source available, which is normally seen as MDM/ MRM. Add soy for better binding and pork rind, made of collagen protein, for even greater binding and gel formation.
In South Africa, the minimum Total Meat Equivalent (TME) for different classes of meat products is laid down in legislation.
Total protein % can therefore be derived from an analysis of the nitrogen content of a meat product.
Non-meat binders are often added to meat. Such binders and extenders commonly include flour, starch, breadcrumbs, cereal binders, TVP and rusk. There are legal limits that must be adhered to in terms of protein content for a sausage to be called a meat sausage.
Here there is a major misconception. All animal proteins have the ability to form gels and to hold water. The functional ability of various animal proteins to do this, however, differs significantly.
When considering the amount of water to add with starch, use a 1 : 1 ratio. When using soya isolates, use a ratio of 1 : 4 for isolate to water.
Taste and texture differ considerably between pure meat products and hybrids, which leads to my personal preference of the former.
There are three functional characteristics of meat, important to our study, namely gelation, emulsification and water holding ability. It relates to meat particle binding and adhesion ability.
Processed foods are the result of the combination of several protein functionalities. In mathematics, we will represent it with a polynomial function.
An example of this is a Russian sausage with its firm texture and juiciness which is the result of a composite protein network system which in turn is created by protein-protein interaction (gelation), protein-fat interaction or fat encapsulation (emulsification) and protein-water interaction (water binding).
Even a slight change in ingredient composition and processing conditions are enough to alter the final texture materially.
The key ingredient used in South Africa in producing fine emulsion sausages is MDM/ MRM. It is the cheapest meat product, most often used as the basis for meat hybrids. (see MDM - Not all are created equal!)
MDM is a source of meat protein which is “complete, containing all the nine essential amino acids.” (Mapanda et al., 2015)
MDM is, however, mostly compromised due to the way it is manufactured. The proteins and fibres are denatured/damaged to such an extent that even the protein that it contains is retarded in terms of its ability to form a gel and hold water.
Non-meat extenders, fillers and emulsifiers are, therefore, often used to compensate for this. Such plant products often include soy isolate and soy concentrate. Animal products are also often used such as milk powder, whey powder and egg white. Pork skin or rind emulations provide firmness.
Fillers are usually carbohydrate materials such as carrageenan and various starch materials (Mapanda et al., 2015) depending on the price point that the formulator is targeting.
In the Mapanda study, polony was considered as an emulation-type sausage.
Large manufacturers of soy products aggressively targeted the meat industry to continue the use of soy as a meat extender. Spice companies became the preferred method of distribution and large amounts of money were spent on developing recipes that would include soy and starch.
The industry preached that this inclusion was “beneficial” from an economic perspective and is healthy. They proclaim that soy is a good “replacer of meat due to its essential amino acids, whose composition (though slightly lower in quantity) is no different from that of meat.”
Functionally, they pointed to the fact that soy functions as a binder of fine emulsion-type sausages such as polony where it contributes to the water holding capacity and the emulsification of fat in the gel.
Impact of Rind and Soy on Polony
The replacement of MRM with rind levels of up to 8% and soy levels of up to 4% increased the hardness (firmness) of the polony treatments, while treatments with 8% soy were softer at all levels of rind.
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