SC - A death in the family

[Susan Fox-Davis]

Sue Clemenger wrote:
> 
> Okay....the majority of the recipes I've seen (with the exception of the
> Lucanian recipe, which called for bacon, IIRC) for sausages just say
> "add fat."  This holds true also for the little booklet of suggested
> recipes that came with my food grinder/sausage maker.  What kind of fat
> are we talking about? Commercially rendered lard or something? are there
> alternatives? I need to make some quantity of a beef sausage w/out pork,
> for people at my feast who won't be able to eat pork--any suggestions?

The best fat to add for sausages is a hard back fat or kidney suet. Soft
fat tissue, such as the rubbery stuff found on, say, a pork shoulder
picnic or "arm", doesn't cook well, but translates to grease and rubbery
stuff. The Lucanian sausage calling for bacon probably really requires
pork belly, the stuff which, when cured, gives us the typical
American-style streaky bacon. That's a good fat to use. If, for some
reason, you can't use that for either all or part of your pork, you can
use fatback or kidney suet or leaf lard (unrendered!) to augment the fat
content of leaner meats. Alternately, you can use pork shoulder blade
roast, Boston blade and/or Boston butt (the piggy equivalent of chuck),
the name varies depending on where you are in the country, for all of
your meat. This'll give you a leaner, slightly drier sausage than
Platina probably intended, but it is not unpalatably dry, since it is
generally a well-marbled meat. My local butcher is on a health kick, and
has been using this cut for his Italian sausages. I think they're a bit
too lean, but apparently I'm in the minority.

For beef sausages, I'd suggest using just about any cut of beef (my own
personal preference would be to avoid chuck, which can have a strong,
almost sour flavor if not absolutely fresh), perhaps round (no
gristle!), to which beef kidney suet can be added to from 10-30% of the
total weight.

> Secondly, what should I do if I have no access to any sort of smoking
> facilities? (still investigating)  Could they be made ahead of time and
> refrigerated or frozen, and then cooked "fresh" the day of the event? I
> plan on boiling them for a bit, and then finishing them on a grill.

Sure, you can do this. It's also a good idea to leave the sausages in
some cool place (under 50 degrees F) for a day or so, to blend the
flavors and allow the moisture to equalize and dry out just a bit.  

> Also, if you're making link-style sausages (about the size, say of
> bratwurst), how do you keep the blobs of sausage stuff separate from
> each other inside the casing? Do you have to tie them off with string as
> you're making them or something?

Certainly that's a good idea for portioning purposes, but not strictly
necessary. I've occasionally had the butcher make sausage from my recipe
and I get a plastic bag full of stuffed guts if they're too busy to tie
them off. I then measure off a length roughly equivalent to two or three
pounds (determined in advance depending on the rest of the meal, etc.),
roll them into a spiral, and skewer them crosswise like a Celtic cross.
One per table.

Tying them off isn't difficult, though. The standard plan is to twist
lengths into definite link lengths, until you have a plateful of links.
Twist them in alternating directions so you don't end up with the entire
hank under enormous torsion. It's just easier. Then tie them off like a
roast: tie the end of your string to the end of the gut to seal the end,
run it along the link, wrap it around the first joint, then tuck it
under and through. Continue along the length, tying off each link. Yes,
it uses more string than if you use a separate string for each link, but
it also supplies more support for the length of links, if you're hanging
them up to smoke or dry, or something like that.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com