[Sca-cooks] Pork fat

[Nick Sasso]

My sausage making experience has taken me through the Costco meat market
as well.  It's really hard to pass up pre-ground pork for 99 cents for
huge batches of sausages.  I recommend asking the meat guys at Costco
what their fat ratio is.  The guys here in Atlanta said no more than 20%
fat.  Well, I went ahead with the sausages as they were, figuring it was
a slight exaggeration for sale . . . had to be more like 25%, and they
were tasty, yet dry.  I concluded that they were absolutely right about
the fat content.

I will use the rest of the Costco pork in my freezer for sausages and
will add ground fresh pork belly to raise the fat to around 40%.  The
recipes in LeMenagier and a couple other sources say something about
half meat and half lard/pork fat.  Armour Lard in the green box will
simply melt and be greasy, while the belly will give you some collagen
as well as fat.  That bonus tissue will gelatinize and hold moisture as
well as add a rich mouth feel.  I aim for 40% to 50% "quality" fat
content in fresh grilling sausages.  Dried sausages will most likely
take less fat to make them preserve easier and have less greasy mouth
feel to them; I would aim more toward the 25% neighborhood for those.  I
believe a good Charcuterie book will give good sausage fat content
guidelines.  At home I have the one Master A recommended a couple of
years back.  Got it used off eBay of all places, for about $2.00 US.

pacem et bonum,
fra niccolo difrancesco

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <rcmann4 at earthlink.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2002 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Pork fat


On 14 Sep 2002, at 6:57, Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamant wrote:
> The deal is that sausages seem to require an absolute minimum of
> 10-15% fat, and can even go as high as 30% or more without serious
> character flaws. One way to do this is to mix certain fatty cuts of
> pork with lean ones to get the mix you want.
[snip]
> By meat standards, though, it's still fairly cheap
> (ranging, around here, from $1.29-$1.79/lb, at the most; shoulder
butt
> is about the same, as I recall), so if you have time and the
> inclination to trim and grind this meat yourself, it has more fat
than
> shoulder meat, and so provides a moister sausage.

I can get ground pork at Costco for $.99 a pound, so adding more
fat to it seems to be my easier and cheapest option.

The other possibility is that it doesn't need more fat, but that the
cooking method was at fault.  I brought my first and only batch of
this sausage recipe to a populace meeting in a park, and grilled it
over charcoal.  Because I am not experience with grilling, and am
nervous about undercooked pork, I may have overcooked it.  My
only previous taste had been a small amount of the loose mixture,
hastily microwaved, to be sure that it wasn't horrible.  Another cook
in my barony suggested parboiling the sausages, then grilling them
briefly.  I also understand that sausages can be frozen after
parboiling.

Thank you for the information and advice.  I have very little
experience cooking pork, other than the usual smoked/cured
products.


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann