[Sca-cooks] sausage report

[grizly at mindspring.com]

My experience and reading sugguests that a really good sausage needs at minimum 30% fat, and really needs 40% to 50% to stay moist and flavorful.  For pork, I buy fresh belly to grind up for boosting fat.  For beef, I go to local meat market and ask for trimmings.  Dense fat works better than the looser stuff . . . viscosity counts in avoiding the fat just running all over.  the breadcrumb, or nonfat dry milk in modern recipes, will help hold it all together, and hold the moisture when cooked.

niccolo


On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 14:25:27 -0700 Maggie MacDonald <maggie5 at cox.net> wrote:

Hello! Here's a report on the progress of that feast I'm doing around sausages.

This has been a learning experience.

I had to do a small amount of all beef sausages for those that had
restrictions on eating pork. Lesson one: beef sausage made from chuck that
has no fat tastes _nasty_.  Luckily i have some super cheap hamburger in
the freezer (part of a super pack bought in desperation), so I'm going to
remake those.  Lesson two: collagen sausage casings act really nicely after
they've been parboiled.

On to the bratwurst.  The Sabine Welserin recipe tastes great. Lesson
three: when transferring salt/pepper quantities from another recipe, do NOT
start off with 3/4 of S&P quantities.  The bratwurst was just a touch too
salty, but it mellowed out nicely once it was parboiled in beer.

On to the Andouille. I started off with even less salt with this one than I
had put in the bratwurst, and this one tasted even saltier. but, it evened
out. Lesson four: UNDERFILL natural hog casings. Those nasty suckers will
explode on you if you try to retwist the casings later. (my first run
through we had very erratic sizing, so I was trying to even them out).

Lesson five: Someone will have to give me the solution to this one later.
When I went to parboil both the bratwurst and the andouille, they
untwisted.  I now have whole sausages that are as long as 20 inches.

I'm off now to go find a decent beef sausage recipe, the one that I had
faked was just flat out nasty.  And I'm hoping that the 30% fat hamburger
will have enough 'oomph' to hold together.

Regards,
Maggie MacD.

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