Portuguese sausage is the number one in Hawaiʻi.

Everybody knows Portuguese sausage.

Everybody loves Portuguese sausage!

I don't always have it, but when it's there, oh, I'm tearing through it.

My mom better watch out, because I think it's gonna be gone by the end of breakfast.

Hawaiʻi is just a melting pot made of many different cultures.

We just made everything our own and so yeah, we made our own culture, and we made our own type of food ONO!

Hawaiʻi's Food Culture, sponsored by Hawaii Gas and Aloha State Daily.

This is a cold room, so we keep it under 40 degrees.

It's usually about 36 to 37 degrees, and this here is a product that was cooked and it's going to be ready to be sliced and packaged tomorrow.

So this is a sausage in a fibrous casing, so it needs to be peeled and then sliced and packaged to go out to restaurants.

So we are at Pacific sausage Company, Inc.

So we are a locally owned and run family business.

We've been in business since 1970 and the business started by my parents, Itolo and Lucia Holusa.

We make many different types of sausage.

Our main bread and butter is Portuguese sausage.

Portuguese sausage is Hawaiʻi's take on linguica, a spiced pork sausage that originated in Portugal.

They used to make sausage in Brazil.

So there's a lot of Portuguese influence there.

So when they did come here, that was mostly the Portuguese sausage that they had, that they knew how to make.

Just as it is in Hawaiʻi, Portuguese sausage is a staple in Brazil, where many dishes are Portuguese inspired.

It did come from the Portuguese.

Portuguese has has influenced many people.

In Brazil, we do speak Portuguese, so there's a lot of Portuguese influence.

It's very individualized and the recipes that we have are all formulated by my mom.

And like I said, she did have a sausage plant in Brazil, and she brought all her knowledge to here to Hawaiʻi.

Yeah, when I start the biz, Portuguese sausage was always number one.

Everyone loves Portuguese sausage.

They use, you know, to cook inside the vegetables, inside the beans, inside the meat, and also for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Yeah so, if I look at this right, I'm gonna go for for this bit right here, cuz this one has the crispy bits, so to me, that's appealing.

So that's what I'm gonna go for first.

Yup, that is what I want.

Hawaiʻi's Portuguese sausage is often found in Hawaiian style breakfasts alongside eggs and a scoop of rice.

Portuguese sausage is, to me, I grew up thinking of it as more, more a more fancy breakfast meat.

You don't always have I don't always have it, but when it's there, oh, I'm- I'm tearing through it.

As a kid, to have it is pretty special.

You know, if we didn't have too much money with just eggs and rice, then sometimes you would see vienna sausage.

And then you would see spam.

But if you really have some extra money, you see Portuguese sausage.

You want that pork fat.

You want a little bit of that rendering of the of the oil.

It needs to be juicy.

If you don't cook it very long, you're not going to get that juiciness.

You want that.

You want that, um, the paprika to seep out when you're eating, then you want to coat your tongue, right?

But it is overwhelming if you just eat it by itself.

So it does need to be paired with rice, right?

So the rice needs to go with it.

Comp everything out.

Even everything out.

To me, that's how it's best to enjoy Portuguese sausage.

So once the products are stuffed, they go on to the sticks and onto the carts, and then it goes into the oven where it's going to cook to 165 degrees.

In the factory, over 3,000 pounds of sausage is processed daily.

Here, the meat is refined through several machines before it is ready to be packaged.

We use shoulder, boneless picnic meat, and then the flaker makes it into smaller pieces.

So the grinder will grind the sausage down to ground beef, type of texture, and from there it goes into the mixer, where we mix it in with our spices.

Okay, so here we're making a 14 ounce Portuguese sausage, which is the sausage that we sell for our fundraisers for all of the schools.

So the machine automatically puts out the correct weight, and it already twisted.

And so the sausages that we saw on the other side have already been cooked, stayed here overnight, and now we're going to package them.

We'll either slice it or we'll cut it like we saw downstairs, and everything is vacuum sealed.

So everything goes to that vacuum sealed machine that we saw.

So we can, you know, change the labels.

We can change the size of the packaging as well.

We don't do only the size that we saw downstairs, but we also do bulk packaging.

I immigrated here from Brazil in 1968 and we had the same kind of business in Brazil.

We came to Hawaiʻi because of family.

This one, my sister in law, because of her, we came.

Oh yeah.

But when I came, I saw the culture.

Everybody likes Portuguese sausage, and so many Portuguese people, and we say, you know something, we're going to bring our own Portuguese sausage here.

The Holusa family is a perfect example of what makes Hawaiʻi special, a perfect recipe of aloha, combining family, culture and connection.

My parents started this business, and I feel very proud that we're able to continue on, especially since my mom, she came from Brazil, and she made herself part of the Hawaiian culture, part of the Hawaiʻi culture, part of the culture that I said about, you know, the food of the Portuguese sausage, the Portuguese sausage that we do have for the McDonald's platter.

She formulated that herself.

So that is unique.

Nobody has that.

I was born and raised here, and I just so feel so proud that, you know, we were able to make our stamp here.

It's not until you're older that you realize, oh, this is not Hawaiian.

This is Hawaiʻi food.

It's local food.

It is part of who we are through our food, and we're communicating through our food.

It's all about, you know, your childhood and things that you grow up on, because when you smell something, when you eat something, you you have memories of that.

And I think that our Portuguese sausage does that for people.