Wow... I’m not of Polish descent (although a few cousins of mine have some Polish in the mix), but if I ever make it to Philadelphia, I’ll make sure to buy some of these ethnic foods. Where I am, one supermarket has commercial kielbasa, but I’m sure the stuff mentioned in this article is much better.
There is nothing quite like having a good butcher shop. My five years in Cincinnati proved that proposition to me.
And, now, we have a good butcher in my small Texas town. He's German -- butchers really need to be Central European. He smokes his own bacon, makes his own sausages, stuffs peppers, makes custom meat loaf mix, wraps chicken cordon bleu, marinates and cuts fajitas, will cut roasts to order and the steaks...ah, yes, the strips, filets and ribeyes...are usually prime. His ground chuck is superior, yet no costlier, than any supermarket's.
Find yourself a good butcher...and support him.
This isn’t something totally unique to Philly. I pretty much grew up in Baltimore and lived a good part of my formative years in a neighborhood with a lot of ethnically Polish folk. My best friends during high school where twin sisters - “The Golembeski Twins” and you don’t get much more Polish than that. :), IIRC, their dad was a 2nd generation American and their mom was 3nd generation. And they were good, honest, hard working people.
At Easter every year their dad and his many brothers would go together to buy fresh pork shoulder and veal, pig casings and all the necessary spices in bulk to make homemade, honest to goodness old world kielbasa using traditional family recipes passed on from generation to generation in their family kitchen for their family and their friends.
What they made BTW wasn’t the smoked type of kielbasa but more like a fresh “German” sausage, i.e. a biała kiełbasa (a white sausage) often served with cabbage or sauerkraut along with homemade pierogi which is nothing like the pierogi you find in the frozen foods section of your local grocery store.
http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/polishsausages/tp/Types-of-Polish-Sausage-Kielbasa.htm
FWIW, my mom was from and grew up in central PA and thus knew how to make fastnachts for Shrove Tuesday which she made and introduced to our Polish neighbors along with her famous and delicious homemade chicken pot pie. Then one of our neighbors who was Jewish, introduced us to homemade chicken matzo ball soup, something I still make this time of year. I am all for the “melting pot” when it comes to food. : )
What you get in the supermarket labeled as kielbasa is really nothing like the “real” thing. It is sort of analogous to going to Taco Bell and thinking that is “real” Mexican food.