211 replies to this topic

[Magictofu]

I froze my casings you think they will be ok?

Did the same with mine and they were fine.

[Magictofu]

If you want something a little unusual, why not make fish sausage?

[Peter the eater]

If you want something a little unusual, why not make fish sausage?

I made salmon sausages last summer. Fresh farmed Atlantic salmon trimmings seasoned with dill, stuffed in collagen casings. They were a six out of ten.

[Magictofu]

Six out of ten is not great but I did have some outstanding arctic char sausage in a restaurant a while ago.

[hummingbirdkiss]

LOOK AN OUTDOOR FRIDGE LOLOL!!!!!


OH you guys I am so going to try some fish and perhaps seafood sausage???

this sounds a little sick but dont you think a clam sausage with a little salt pork may be good?

we had a ton of thundersnow yesterday and I spent it elbow deep in ground meat kind of gross actually but productive as hell

I made some lamb sausage that was very much like kofta (the darker ones in the picture) and served it last night with babaganoosh radishes and celery ..what a great dinner!


the breakfast sausage that was a combo of the Sage Ginger one in the charcuterie thread and New Mexican red along with extra herbs and cranberries ...freaking awesome! Perfect breakfast sausage if you ask me and really really easy to make!

the cranberries/chile were the thing that recipe needed I swear it evened out the ginger and sage perfectly! now the flavors are equally loud and enjoyable!

Edited by hummingbirdkiss, 19 December 2008 - 08:09 AM.

[MarkinHouston]

Questions about your tweaks: Did you add 1 Tbsp of NM red chile to the breakfast sausage recipe? Were the cranberries dried? Did you macerate them beforehand?
Fresh or dried rosemary? Thanks for your response--pork butts are 67 cents per pound this weekend.

[Magictofu]

"clam sausage with a little salt pork may be good"

This is one of my favourite combination... never seen it in a sausage form but I assume you would need some breadcrumbs to absorb the extra moisture from the clams. These would be expensive sausages too!

[hummingbirdkiss]

Questions about your tweaks:  Did you add 1 Tbsp of NM red chile to the breakfast sausage recipe? Were the cranberries dried? Did you macerate them beforehand?
Fresh or dried rosemary? Thanks for your response--pork butts are 67 cents per pound this weekend.

I used half dried garden herbs, and just ground a few handfuls of whole frozen cranberries with the meat .. so they blended but are still distinct in the mix

and yes I added 1 big heaping tbl of NM red (Xtra hot)

everything matched perfectly if you like a lot of excitment in your mouth then you have to try this! it is really good!

Edited by hummingbirdkiss, 19 December 2008 - 10:39 AM.

[hummingbirdkiss]

"clam sausage with a little salt pork may be good"

This is one of my favourite combination... never seen it in a sausage form but I assume you would need some breadcrumbs to absorb the extra moisture from the clams. These would be expensive sausages too!

you are right clams are way to much a luxury right now to even be thinking about grinding them into a sausage

I think I was having a little fantasy there for a moment !

[MarkinHouston]

Questions about your tweaks:  Did you add 1 Tbsp of NM red chile to the breakfast sausage recipe? Were the cranberries dried? Did you macerate them beforehand?
Fresh or dried rosemary? Thanks for your response--pork butts are 67 cents per pound this weekend.

I used half dried garden herbs, and just ground a few handfuls of whole frozen cranberries with the meat .. so they blended but are still distinct in the mix

and yes I added 1 big heaping tbl of NM red (Xtra hot)

everything matched perfectly if you like a lot of excitment in your mouth then you have to try this! it is really good!

Thanks for your quick response. I have all of those on hand and just returned from the store with the pork.

[Chris Hennes]

Today I made the Bavarian Bratwurst from the CIA's Garde Manger: they were more or less successful, though of course there are some things I will change next time.

I'm using scraps from the pig I bought last year, so the fat content is a little higher than shoulder, but not by too much. The seasonings are primarily marjoram and mace, with a bit of black pepper and lemon zest, as well as a bit of granulated sugar.


As usual, I monitored the temp a lot and tried to keep things very cold. I added the water in ice form, as recommended by the CIA book. I first crushed it in the blender so that I didn't have a lot of chunks of ice flying around in the mixing bowl: that worked quite well.


One of the things I did differently this time was to try to do a "minimal" bind, where I stopped the mixer as soon as the meat came together and was starting to look sticky.


As you can see from the definition, the meat was ground on a medium plate, which is not my favorite texture for brats. Also, unfortunately, using the very light bind created problems with the final stuffed texture of the sausage. It did not hold together as well as I prefer, and left far more air pockets than usual.


The flavor is very good: exactly what you would expect a brat to taste like if you grew up in the Midwest (i.e. Johnsonville brat country). This is nice for when you serve homemade brats at a picnic: when you tell people they are brats, this is the flavor profile they are expecting. I think the addition of the lemon zest adds an interesting component, but it is too far in the background, IMO; next time I am going to add much more zest.

[Ross Boyce]

So, my meat grinder/sausage stuffer has arrived. I've got my hog casings, curing salts and dextrose and there's a lovely rare-breed pig breeder in the next village.

But, erm... I'm not sure what to do now.

Does anyone have any advice or recipe recomendations? I'd rather try small batches 'till I know what I'm doing.

[Dave Hatfield]

So, my meat grinder/sausage stuffer has arrived. I've got my hog casings, curing salts and dextrose and there's a lovely rare-breed pig breeder in the next village.

But, erm... I'm not sure what to do now.  

Does anyone have any advice or recipe recomendations? I'd rather try small batches 'till I know what I'm doing.

Here's a simple start:

-grind your pork adding no more than 10% fat.

- Mix well with a modicum of salt plus coarse ground pepper plus fennel seeds (about 1 tablespoon per 1 lb of meat) plus finely chopped fresh garlic to taste (you can also use garlic granules if preferred, but NOT garlic salt.) plus herbs de Provence (about 1 teaspoon per pound). Make sure the mixture is well kneaded by hand.

- Fill your grinder, mount your casing (making sure it is well rinsed and free of salt) and away you go. Be sure to hold the casing back a bit to ensure good full filling. Don't be tempted to do very long sausages at first, a foot or so is plenty until you get used to the process.

- Tie off you sausages into convenient lengths and you're ready to fry.

As a note to those who don't have a grinder/ stuffer you can buy the ground pork from a butcher/ market then mix as above. Then take a handful of the mixture, not too large & roll between your hand into a rough sausage shape. Place this on a piece of cling film & wrap the cling film around it. Now roll the cling film back & forth on a smooth surface pressing from the center. Unwrap and you have a reasonably shaped sausage.
Not quite the real thing, but they fry up pretty well.

[nickrey]

So, my meat grinder/sausage stuffer has arrived. I've got my hog casings, curing salts and dextrose and there's a lovely rare-breed pig breeder in the next village.

But, erm... I'm not sure what to do now.  

Does anyone have any advice or recipe recomendations? I'd rather try small batches 'till I know what I'm doing.

Here's a simple start:

-grind your pork adding no more than 10% fat.

- Mix well with a modicum of salt plus coarse ground pepper plus fennel seeds (about 1 tablespoon per 1 lb of meat) plus finely chopped fresh garlic to taste (you can also use garlic granules if preferred, but NOT garlic salt.) plus herbs de Provence (about 1 teaspoon per pound). Make sure the mixture is well kneaded by hand.

- Fill your grinder, mount your casing (making sure it is well rinsed and free of salt) and away you go. Be sure to hold the casing back a bit to ensure good full filling. Don't be tempted to do very long sausages at first, a foot or so is plenty until you get used to the process.

- Tie off you sausages into convenient lengths and you're ready to fry.

As a note to those who don't have a grinder/ stuffer you can buy the ground pork from a butcher/ market then mix as above. Then take a handful of the mixture, not too large & roll between your hand into a rough sausage shape. Place this on a piece of cling film & wrap the cling film around it. Now roll the cling film back & forth on a smooth surface pressing from the center. Unwrap and you have a reasonably shaped sausage.
Not quite the real thing, but they fry up pretty well.

One additional but vital point. Make sure the meat/mixture is cold throughout the process. If it heats up too much, the fat splits from the meat. When cooked the fat leaches off leaving behind most unpleasant chewy mince in bags.

[OliverB]

funny, an other rather timely thread to pop up, as I hope to get around to making my first ones this weekend - finally.

Now, for the whole temp thing, how long does the grinder thing stay cold if it's from the freezer? At least mine is made from aluminum, which warms up pretty quick. I'm kind of thinking about making some kind of ice sleeve wrapper thing for it. They sell those plastic bubble things for wine bottles, look like a bunch of sausages next to each other forming a tube. I think it should be possible to cut that open and modify it a bit to add more cooling to the machine.

My freezer is tiny, for some reason the former owner of our relatively large house had only an apartment size fridge planned for the kitchen. I don't have an ice maker nor do I have room for making cubes, but I can always get a bag at Safeway. Just takes more planning.

Do you semi freeze your meat after cutting but before grinding? I'm going to make some Nuremberg brats, the one and only, the king of brats. And I got a recipe from a Nuremberg area butcher and I can't wait! Have to make some Bavarian Brezeln to go along with them :-)

Now I just hope that I actually find the time to make them......

[ilikefood]

Do you semi freeze your meat after cutting but before grinding?

Yes, I semi freeze after cutting and mixing with the salt and seasonings. Then I grind.

I'm going to make some Nuremberg brats, the one and only, the king of brats. And I got a recipe from a Nuremberg area butcher

Sounds wonderful! I have never had a Nuremberg brat. How are they different from regular brats? Please let us know how they turn out. Could you share the recipe with another brat lover? - Thanks!

[Chris Amirault]

Does anyone have any advice or recipe recomendations? I'd rather try small batches 'till I know what I'm doing.

There's a handy summary of Society members' advice in this post.

[OliverB]

Sounds wonderful! I have never had a Nuremberg brat. How are they different from regular brats? Please let us know how they turn out. Could you share the recipe with another brat lover? - Thanks!

How do they differ, well, they just are different. Best brats IMO, but I'm biased as I grew up outside Nuremberg :-) Of course the recipes are a plenty, but here's what I'll be using, give to me from a person that comes from a long line of butchers in Nuremberg:

For one kg of sausages:

400g pork shoulder
600g pork belly, not too lean (or you might have to add some fatback)
16g salt
2g pepper
0.5 g mace
0.5g ginger (dried I'm sure)
1.5g majoram

You can increase mace and ginger to 1g if you like

run all this through the grinder (Fleischwolf in German, meat wolf) with a disk that has 3-4.5mm holes. Add one egg and a couple spritzes of lemon juice (important to bring the taste together). Knead until it all comes together nicely and then stuff into cases. In Germany they are rated by caliber, so here a caliber 22/24 casing is used, I have no idea what that means in English though. He ties them into 10cm long sausages, I will most likely use the smallest casing I have and the small funnel thing on my stuffer. The traditional way I know for these is the size of about a finger, a bit like breakfast links, maybe a bit larger. He also says that you can increase the salt to 18g, depending on taste.

Roast them that day or freeze. They work great on the bbq. If you can find any locally, get either some Bavarian Brezeln (which have little in common with the US kind of pretzel) or nice crunchy rolls, cut in half, add two links, yellow mustard and a beer :-) Safeway here makes nice little rolls called Dutch Crunch, they would be just about perfect IMO.

I have the meat, not sure if I'll get to it today though, if you (or anybody else here) makes these, please share pictures and stories!

Oliver

[OliverB]

by the way, I don have one question, would I take the skin off the belly and shoulder parts? My guess is yes, but as I've never made this nor ever ground any meat with a grinder, I have no idea if the skin would just be ground up fine enough to stay in there?

Thanks!

oliver

[ilikefood]

OliverB - thanks for the recipe! The ingredients you list are similar to the brat recipe in Charcuterie, minus the majoram and lemon (and nutmeg instead of mace). Let us know how they turn out! I just might have to try the recipe :)

My thought is to remove the skin from the belly and shoulder. Although it will be ground up, I would think it would create little hard "bits" within the soft texture of the sausage. You can always save the skin and use for body in soups/stews/beans.

[OliverB]

thanks!
Yes, most of the recipes are relatively similar for the brats. I was surprised by the mace, not something I'd have expected and while I have it, I've hardly ever used it. Comes from the same nut as nutmeg, some red webbing that's around the nut I think. And the source for mace in a spray can, the one you don't want to come across. Oddly enough.

I'll take the skin off and use them for a bean dish or something, I think you're right, they'll just add some odd grittiness to the end product.

Oliver

PS: once I made these and a couple where I just got ready made sets from butcher packer I can't wait to experiment, I see no reason not to pack things in a casing that work well together on the plate in other ways. No, not kobe beef, but I'm brewing up some ideas. See how that goes. Weather seems finally to settle into bbq time around here and there's meat to be ground!

[ilikefood]

When I made my brats a couple weeks ago I threw in some Pabst beer and stuffed them into the larger hog casings. I am not sure if I would want to stuff all that brat mixture into such small casings. I had enough "fun" with putting the hog casings onto my stuffing nozzle, I can't image having to put more casings on there.

For fun, here is a side by side picture of an unbroken primary bind (left) and a broken primary bind (right). Both are brats, I made the left and my uncle made the right. I think I had some really large casings in that batch which is why it looks so large. The broken sausage had a crumbly mouth feel and leaked all of the fat while cooking on the grill. The unbroken sausage, although very mild flavor, was juicy and seemed to retain most liquids during cooking. We used different recipes when making these brats (my recipe came from Charcuterie, while my uncle used a premixed season packet) which is why they have different colors.

Edited by ilikefood, 19 April 2009 - 12:39 PM.

[OliverB]

hmm, interesting point. I've never done this, so you might be right, using a larger casing might be easier for this first timer.

edit: thanks for the pix, interesting! Now I want a brat! Right now!

;-)

Edited by OliverB, 19 April 2009 - 01:42 PM.

[HKDave]

In Germany they are rated by caliber, so here a caliber 22/24 casing is used, I have no idea what that means in English though.

It means 22-24mm diameter, which means they're sheep casings, not hog (the smallest hog casings are about 30mm). The use of sheep casings, with links about 75mm long, and the distinct marjoram flavour are the signatures of Nuremburg bratwurst. They sometimes have caraway as well.

Because they're so small, in Germany they're usually grilled and plated 6 or 12 per serving.

Re the question about skin: you can't just grind in raw skin; it'll give you an inedible product. But there are a couple of specific sausages that use pre-cooked skin - traditional cotechino comes to mind, and Bertolli uses some in his lucanica recipe. I'd avoid just randomly adding it to any recipe, as it changes the texture quite a bit. Here's a link to Bertolli's recipe:
http://www.latimes.c...ack=1&cset=true

[Chris Amirault]

A year ago I nailed kielbasa using the CIA Garde Manger recipe on p 290 of the third edition, called "Kielbasa (Polish-Style Sausage)," more or less:

That recipe calls for 2.26 kg of pork butt and 860 kg of fatback -- but because the butt was very fatty, I didn't add the fat. This time, with what I thought was a leaner shoulder, I made another excellent batch, but I added about 450 g of fat into the mix. It's also excellent, but the texture is quite different, more like a summer sausage. No big mystery to solve there.

It prompts me to ask: how do you measure the ratio of meat to fat? Do you trim your shoulders, chucks, and butts beforehand and weigh it all out? Or what?

[jmolinari]

This is one of hte reasons i've moved to using ham steaks. They have little intramuscular fat, which makesthe fat ratio easier to work out, and they don't have nearly as much sinew/connective tissue that has to be carved out.

Try them...they're so much easier to work with.

[Baron d'Apcher]

I'm going to make some Nuremberg brats...

For a party celebrating my sister's 18-month move to Berlin, a German tubesteak primer was in order. After some research 3 non-smoked varieties were chosen due to a flawed file cabinet smoker that smoked the apartment more than anything else. Prototypes were made.
Clockwise from the top: Bierschinken, beef rindswurst and Nürnbergen rostbratwurst.



The emulsified bierschinken was twice ground pork shoulder puréed in a food processor with onions cooked in lard and iced water. Pistachios, raw chunks of pork (forgot to put enough aside), salt, and #1 were added as well as a small amount of paprika to ensure a rosy color. Stuffed into 2 beef middles and poached in a fish poacher until an internal temp of 150F was attained. Good results but need more chunks of pork. Served at room temperature. Tender, moist and properly seasoned.

Beef rindswurst required twice ground beef (chuck and rib-eye erroneously sold as chuck at a Latino market)puréed with iced water and onions cooked in veal tallow with caraway seeds. Emulsified as well, not unlike the Frankfurter. Salt and #1 were added though in hindsight the iced water should have been supplemented by paprika and tomato paste to maintain a deeper red color rather than the drabbish brown. The meat was stuffed into hog casings and poached, cooled then grilled the next day. The casings provided a nice "snap" and the rindswurst texture was pleasant with a whisper of caraway.

Nürnbergen rostbratwurst consisted simply of pork shoulder ground with some more of the onions cooked in lard (for moisture). The forcemeat was seasoned with the appropriate caraway and marjoram along with traces of cardamom and mace, salt and #1. Grilled from raw and not too shabby tastewise.

The lot was accompanied by a jar of repollo curtido (Salvadoran pickled cabbage in lieu of sauerkraut which would not have been ready in time), whole grain mustard and pickled cauliflower (romanesco, yellow and purple) using 24% Swedish ättiksprit since the 25% German essig was not readily available.

[nakji]

Oh, those cauliflower pickles are nothing short of beautiful. Are they a traditional sausage side dish? They're pickled in spirits?

[ilikefood]

All of those sausages look wonderful!! I wish I could have tried them :D Great job!

[Chris Hennes]

I got a load of wild duck breasts from one of my wife's coworkers: they were skin off, since they were cut out in the field, so I couldn't really think of anything to do with them besides sausage. Starting from a recipe in Bruce Aidells' Complete Sausage Book I made these:



I made a few rather major modifications, however, so I can't really comment on the quality of the recipe. First, he calls for 1 part dark meat and 1 part duck trim and fat, plus a small amount of bacon. I used 2 parts duck breast to 1 part pork shoulder and 1 part pork belly fat, and no bacon. He also calls for what seems like a lot of liquid to me, a half cup water and a half cup Gran Marnier to five pounds meat. I cut that in half out of concern that the liquor would be too overt, but I think in retrospect that was not necessary, it's all but undetectable in the final product. Finally, I hot smoked the finished sausages for an hour or so over apple, because smoke and duck are a great combination and I had omitted the bacon. Wow, the finished sausage is excellent: in particular, the gaminess of the wild duck serves as an excellent flavor note on the finish without being overwhelming.