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How to Make Sausages

By dr rocker

 

Some of the sausages you buy in the shops are decent. Some of them are filth. It depends on what you pay. A year or two ago a supermarket in the UK advertised the launch of a ‘sausage’ that contained 15% meat products and over 80% breadcrumb filler. In the UK, you can try to be safe in what you eat as things are labelled pretty well to let you know what is in them and not only is organic controlled by associations but by national and european law, it is consistent and if some thing is labelled organic we know it is, rather than in other countries of the world where organic certification of food can be some what hit and miss.

The reason for thinking these things over before you start to create a piece of art is the fact that the pig is the most widely mistreated farm animal – in the food and medications it is given, the unnatural conditions in which it is forced to live, breed, farrow and eat – away from soil, away from sunlight and away from things to root out to keep themselves naturally amused.

The pigs only flaw – even though it is nearly as intelligent as a dog is the fact a dog has a lot loss meat on it and its stringy.

Anyway, on to the sausages.

You are going to need some equipment – a mincer, a stuffer, a freezer, knives, chopping board, scales accurate to 0.01 g

You will also need sheep intestine skins, meat, water and ice and the flavour mix you will be using. I always make my own but you can buy ‘generic’ mixes. Always make your own. If you do not, you will forever eating a generic sausage. You want to make sausages to find the perfect one, and this comes with changing things around flavour wise, which is a good thing.

For my equipment, I have a Kenwood Chef classic food mixer – it does a shit ton of things for me but the real reason I bought it was for sausage making. Although it is a machine that is designed to do many things, it has a very good mincing / sausage stuffing attachment.

You could however chop the meat by hand to your desired texture and use a stuffer, but that would take for ever.

For meat, I use a mix of pork leg and pork shoulder, varying amounts depending on the cost of the meat and its fat/meat/gristle %. I am looking for as little to no gristle as possible, and fatted muscle, rather than a meaty bit with some fat on it. If you are into pigs, you want the legs and the shoulders from at least a baconer, preferably a slow growing one.

I get the meat whole and remove any skin and bones – I do not put the skin in the sausages. I also cube the meat to ¾ inch cubes, some bits of meat slightly bigger, some slightly smaller it makes no odds. Before I cut the meat I put in the freezer for a couple of hours – I do not want it frozen, I get it to the point where it is still flexible but on the way to being frozen. The reason for this is that when working with the meat, if it is warm, the fat will separate – probably into fatty acids and glycerol – and the fat smears – you just end up with nasty greasy sausages.

I also put the grinder and grinding plates in the freezer. Care is needed when handling these when they are very cold – cold metal sticks to wet skin no problems and this will cause you issues.

The Ingredients
 

  • 4lb cubed shoulder of pork – 1.814 kg
  • 4lb belly pork – 1.814 kg

Mix

  • 15 grams freshly ground black pepper
  • 50 grams salt
  • 5 grams of nutmeg
  • 5 grams of mace
  • 5 grams dried marjoram
  • 5 grams sage
  • pinch cayenne pepper
  • 100g Ice

 

First, grind the meat with a large mincing plate. I use a 8mm plate for the first mincing. Mince all the meat and let the grinder do the work. The more you force it, the warmer the mix will get.

After the first mincing, I put the mix in with the meat, give it a good mix through and put it in the fridge for half an hour or so.

I then thread the sausage skins onto the stuffer. I always use lamb intestine, but pork intestine can be used but this makes a much thicker sausage. Make sure you soak the intestine for 24 hours before you want to use it – they come packed in salt and you want this to soak out. Ensure you change the water a few times.

Mince the meat again, with a smaller plate – I use a 5mm. When performing the second mincing, add the ice. This will keep the mix cool and add water when it melts.

When the meat has its second mincing, give a good mix by hand. You are looking to mix the meat into a good paste so the proteins in the meat begin to bond to each other. Once this is done, it goes in the stuffer.

Tie a knot in the open end of the sausage skin and turn the stuffer on. Stuffing a sausage is a skill that can only be learned by doing it – its a thing that takes a bit of feel to do it right – if you mess it up, split the casing and start again. As long as the meat is not getting warm, have as many goes as you like.

Make sure you have a container to catch the sausage. The above mix will make around 16 feet of sausage. When you get to the end of the skin, pull it off the stuffer and tie it.

Leave the sausage for an hour or two to develop. You can then fold it into links – simply twist the sausage, with each twist being the opposite of the other. You can then package and refrigerate or freeze.

Once you have the basics, mess around with the ingredients in the mix to find something unique.

There we have it. That is all that goes in my sausages no nitrates or nitrites.

 

Discuss

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