Ready for a Balkan BBQ feast? It’s time to make your own super easy beef sausages. These Cevapi are stuffed full of garlic, parsley and paprika for a huge flavour kick. Pair with shopska salad for the ultimate Mediterranean lunch.
Why We Love This
You only need simple ingredients that are easy to mix together so you’ll have tasty homemade sausages in no time.
We love that Cevapi can be made as a big batch – you can double or even triple the recipe and freeze them to cook when you need. This is perfect if you’re entertaining for a large crowd.
What is Cevapi?
Cevapi (pronounced Che-Vah-Pee) are small finger-sized Serbian / Balkan sausages that are usually made from ground beef (and sometimes ground pork or ground lamb… or a mix of all three!) before being grilled over charcoal for the ultimate melding of flavours. They often have spices such as paprika, salt and black pepper added and are similar to Kofta Kebabs found in other parts of Europe.
You’ll most likely find these simple Balkan sausages in Bosnia, Macedonia and Serbia. We love that they’re so easy to replicate at home.
Where We Learnt This Recipe:
It was a massively hot day in Ohrid, Macedonia. We’d just watched a traditional Macedonian wedding parade in the street before heading into town for lunch. The huge red umbrellas caught our eye (hello street food!), with men standing around charcoal grills and the smell of spices and meats drifting along the road.
Lunch was served in less than 10 minutes – a huge bowl of shopska salad was plonked down first before two huge plates of cevapi were cast alongside it. The grilled meat plate was a simple pile of the little sausages, with some freshly sliced tomato, cucumber and raw chopped onions. To add an extra kick, it also came with salt and chilli flakes to up the ante.
What You’ll Need
The meat is the star of the dish in the recipe, then we vamp it up with a few seasonings and spices and you’re good to go.
The Meat: We used 100% minced / ground beef. It’s common to have combinations of beef, pork and lamb though, so feel free to experiment with the ratios and mixture.
Baking Soda: You might be tempted to skip on this simple ingredient, wondering why it’s even necessary, but you’d be surprised how important it is! Baking soda actually helps to tenderise the meat and give you good springy texture.
For Cooking: It’s best to cook your cevapi over a charcoal grill, however, we understand not everyone has one available, so a large frying pan on the stove is also fine. If you have no cooktop, you can cook Cevapi in the oven. Set to 180C / 360F and place the sausages on a lined baking tray. Turn them every 10-15 minutes until browned, and cut one in half to check if they’re cooked through. If they get a little dry, baste them with a touch of olive oil. They should take around 30-45 minutes.
To serve: Grab some fresh bread – lapinja is the most common, and spread with Ajvar, a popular Balkan hot red pepper spread. Then if you like you can also load it with raw chopped onion and sliced cucumber and tomato. To make it a little creamy, you can add sour cream.
Wandercook’s Tips
- Take your time ‘massaging’ the meat together with the spices and baking soda mix to both tenderise the meat and make sure the flavour mixes through entirely.
- Make sure your heat isn’t too high, otherwise it will burn the outside and the middle will be raw.
FAQs
We’ve used beef in our sausages, but it’s also very common to use pork or lamb.
Cevapi is traditionally served with chopped onion, fresh lepinja bread (sub with focaccia or pita bread) and ajvar spread. To add some freshness, you can also add some freshly sliced tomato and cucumber, or make a shopska salad.
It would also be amazing served up with a batch of cheesy potato bake!
You can cook Cevapi in the oven. Set to 180C / 360F and place the sausages on a lined baking tray. Turn them every 10-15 minutes until browned, and cut one in half to check if they’re cooked through. If they get a little dry, baste them with a touch of olive oil. They should take around 30-45 minutes.
Variations & Substitutes
- Mix up the protein! If you don’t want pure beef sausages, try 50% beef and 50% pork, or 50% beef, 25% pork and 25% lamb.
- Can’t find lepinja bread? Serve it with focaccia or pita bread instead.
- Make meatballs! Instead of sausages, you can make them into meatballs and pop them in a pasta such as our Creamy Italian Sausage Pasta.
- For extra texture, add a chopped onion to the mix.
Got more mince meat to use up? Cook up these next:
★ Did you make this recipe? Please leave a star rating below!
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 kg beef mince
- 4 cloves garlic
- ½ bunch parsley finely chopped
- 50 ml water
- 1 tsp sweet paprika
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Instructions
- In a large bowl, pop in the minced beef, garlic, parsley, sweet paprika, salt and pepper. Mix by hand until roughly combined.1 kg beef mince, 4 cloves garlic, ½ bunch parsley, 1 tsp sweet paprika, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper
- Next grab a small dish and mix the water and baking soda together until it dissolves a little bit (it won't mix entirely, this is fine).50 ml water, 1 tsp baking soda
- Add the baking soda mixture into the meat mix and massage together for a good 5 minutes until it's all combined.
- Get out a large plate – it's time to make the sausages! Get a small handful of the mixture and first roll it into a ball then into a small sausage shape. Pat each end to flatten and pop it on the plate. The length should be around the width of your hand.
- Set a large grill pan or frying pan on medium heat and drizzle in the olive oil. Once heated, cook the sausages in batches (don't overfill the pan). Let them cook a few minutes each side, until they're browned. Chop one in half to check if they're cooked in the middle. A slight pink is okay for beef sausages.1 tbsp olive oil
- Once cooked, we recommend serving with hot with fresh lapinja bread, chopped raw onion and ajvar spread.
Recipe Notes
- The Meat: We used 100% minced / ground beef. It’s common to have combinations of beef, pork and lamb though, so feel free to experiment with the ratios and mixture.
- Baking Soda: You might be tempted to skip on this simple ingredient, wondering why it’s even necessary, but you’d be surprised how important it is! Baking soda actually helps to tenderise the meat and give you good springy texture.
- For Cooking: It’s best to cook your cevapi over a charcoal grill, however, we understand not everyone has one available, so a large frying pan on the stove is also fine. If you have no cooktop, you can cook Cevapi in the oven. Set to 180C / 360F and place the sausages on a lined baking tray. Turn them every 10-15 minutes until browned, and cut one in half to check if they’re cooked through. If they get a little dry, baste them with a touch of olive oil. They should take around 30-45 minutes.
- To serve: Grab some fresh bread – lapinja is the most common, and spread with Ajvar, a popular Balkan hot red pepper spread. Then if you like you can also load it with raw chopped onion and sliced cucumber and tomato. To make it a little creamy, you can add sour cream.
- Mix up the protein! If you don’t want pure beef sausages, try 50% beef and 50% pork, or 50% beef, 25% pork and 25% lamb.
- Can’t find lepinja bread? Serve it with focaccia or pita bread instead.
- Make meatballs! Instead of sausages, you can make them into meatballs and pop them in a pasta such as our Creamy Italian Sausage Pasta.
- For extra texture, add a chopped onion to the mix.
- Take your time ‘massaging’ the meat together with the spices and baking soda mix to both tenderise the meat and make sure the flavour mixes through entirely.
- Make sure your heat isn’t too high, otherwise it will burn the outside and the middle will be raw.
16 Comments
stefani
21/10/2019 at 2:55 pmHi,
Can’t wait to try this recipe.
Great post, amazing pictures.
Thank you.
Wandercooks
22/10/2019 at 12:45 pmThanks so much Stefani. Thanks for the note about the lepinja too. 😉 Hope you enjoy!
Vlatko Zuvic
12/06/2021 at 8:09 amWhen did Serbia become a mediterranean country?
Wandercooks
15/06/2021 at 2:48 pmHey Vlatko, Serbia isn’t, but the other Balkan countries where we first came across this recipe are Mediterranean, for example Croatia and Montenegro.
Alex
18/05/2022 at 6:06 pmExcellent recipe thank you very easy to follow, I world probably add an extra half a teaspoon or 1 teaspoon of salt. My Macedonian hubby said it was a bit plain but still good!
Wandercooks
19/05/2022 at 3:11 pmAwesome Alex! You can infuse more flavour cooking these over charcoal for a more traditional result. Otherwise, we love adding flavour by pairing it with ajvar etc.
Danielle
20/10/2019 at 7:26 pmWow, these look so tasty! I love that you can make a huge batch and freeze them for later!
Wandercooks
22/10/2019 at 12:36 pmSammmmme. Makes things so much easier for meal planning.
Dannii
20/10/2019 at 6:05 pmI would love to try making my on sausages. These look really simple
Wandercooks
22/10/2019 at 12:35 pmThey are! You can even pop them on a stick and grill them on the bbq as another way to cook them. 🙂
Jamie
20/10/2019 at 2:46 pmI love all the herbs and spices you added to this, especially the sweet paprika! My family would love to have this for dinner!
Wandercooks
22/10/2019 at 12:35 pmAwesome Jamie, thanks for letting us know and stopping by! 😀
Irina
20/10/2019 at 2:19 pmWOW! I would really like to learn how to make sausages at home. The recipe sounds delicious! Pinning for later. Thanks for sharing.
Wandercooks
22/10/2019 at 12:34 pmYou’re welcome Irina. These sausages are super easy – especially as you don’t need to put them in cases. 🙂
Anita
20/10/2019 at 9:48 amI’ve never heard of cevapi before, but I am a big fan or anything meatballs, so this is right up my alley. And would you believe it that I have everything to make this? I even have some frozen naan bread in my freezer! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Wandercooks
22/10/2019 at 12:34 pmOh bonus! We did end up eating half in bread, then turned the leftovers into meatballs for a pasta dinner with our friends. 😀 So handy!