[Sca-cooks] Happiness is a plate of sausages

[Sue Clemenger]

I dunno...I've always cooked them until they were done <g> (how medieval
of me! <g>), but not over done.  Basically, until the juices ran clear
when I poked a sample one pretty good with a fork.  (and then we ate it,
of course, to make sure ;-P)
I was lucky enough to snag my dad's old electric grinder with sausage
attachments when we were cleaning out the house after Mom died.  It
hadn't been used hardly at all.  I've since used it quite successfully
to make snausages for SCA events (okay, well, mostly, I've handed the
actual stuffing chore to willing kitchen helpers--Caointiarn is pretty
good at them! <g>).  And the equipment's been loaned to other feast
stewards, too.
My best ones used a combination of beef and pork--I bought relatively
cheap cuts of meat that had some visually-obvious fat in them,
supplementing them with bacon (bought cheap ends in 3-lb. packages) to
get the fat percentage up, but not too high, as I despise greasy
sausage.  I've found it helps with the grinding if the meat's really
cold, so we usually chunk it up, and then partially freeze it, and
*then* run it through the grinder, adding all the necessary spices and
other ingredients.  They're then run through a 2nd time, this time using
the stuffing attachment, and the fresh casings.  It always seems to take
a while to develop a rhythm to adding fresh meat, so the first few
snausages tend to have air pockets or are oddly shaped.  I imagine you'd
have to watch out for air pocket problems if you were making them to be
smoked (which process I know nothing about).
We just do these fresh (the morning of the feast), and then cook them up
for lunches/dayboards.  We make them about the size of commercial
bratwursts, and they do cook up relatively quickly, which I don't think
larger ones would.  They've proved very popular, and relatively
inexpensive (although this would depend on the meat you made them with,
of course).  Not only are they tasty, and fresh, but they are
recognizable as food to those people who tend to assume that all
medieval food is weird-tasting, or made from peculiar ingredients, etc.,
etc.
The only ones I've had that weren't completely successful were ones in
which the cook was trying for a 100% beef sausage, without any added
fat.  They were tasty, if a bit peppery, but very, very dry.
I've never tried to make any with poultry, although it sure should be
possible.  And there's all those recipes......mmmmm.
--Maire

Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
>

> A few questions:
>
> The instructions I've seen on the web say to cook sausages to a
> certain internal temperature.  How, exactly do I determine this?  I
> have a meat thermometer -- do I thrust it crosswise into a
> sausage?  Lengthwise?
>
> For feast purposes, can I make one or two big sausages per table,
> or will smaller ones cook better?