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andouille without pork?


Dante

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Would like to know if anyone out there has any ideas on how to make andouille without beef or pork (housemate allergic to such). Not only looking for flavour but also the all-important texture.

Anyone have any ideas on how to go about doing this?

Sincerely,

Dante

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Would like to know if anyone out there has any ideas on how to make andouille without beef or pork (housemate allergic to such).  Not only looking for flavour but also the all-important texture.

It it's just beef and pork I think lamb would be a reasonable substitute, though you will need to be careful to make sure you get enough fat in there. And since you can't use pork fat to fill, and I am not familiar with the properties of lamb fat, I don't know how well this will work. The same goes for doing it as a venison sausage, or a poultry sausage: I don't know how to best go about getting enough fat in there, since I use pork fat as the extra fat in any sausages I make. The flavor should not pose much of a problem: Andouille is so heavily seasoned that the underlying meat is very much a secondary flavor.

Chris Hennes
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chennes@egullet.org

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You can make a very good chicken sausage using schmaltz to up the fat content. But the texture is going to be different from that of andouille. Lamb fat is closer to the texture you want, but lamb fat is very strongly flavored. When I've made merguez, for example, it really tastes like lamb: a good thing in that case, but not so much if you want andouille...

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Assuming that you're talking about cajun andouille (and not the french stuff), try using turkey. Turkey andouille is a widely available pork alternative in south Louisiana, made commercially by any number of sausage makers. The key to cajun andouille (besides seasonings and smoking) is the rather coarse textured meat. I'd hand chop some dark-meat turkey and coarsely grind a mix of white & dark meat to use in the sausages. Render your own turkey fat or buy prepared schmaltz---andouille isn't as fatty as chaurice or other pork sausages, but it will still need a little fat to keep from being crumbly in texture.

Since you'll have to use synthetic casings, try to get the largest diameter you can find. Traditionally, andouille is stuffed into the large intestine, making it substantially bigger than the usual pork sausages. A small-diameter casing won't accomodate the larger chunks of meat.

Or you could ljust buy some Comeaux's turkey andouille and be done with it.

http://www.cajungrocer.com/comeauxs-turkey...lle-p-1500.html

Or call up Bourgeois' Meat Market in Thibodaux, LA and mail-order some:

http://local.yahoo.com/info-18172665-bourg...arket-thibodaux

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I'm not sure about adding schmaltz to poultry sausage. Schmaltz liquefies fairly easily and could smear in mixing... also, you don't necessarily need it.

I make chicken sausage without schmaltz simply by using 100% chicken thighs with their skin. I got the idea from an Aidells recipe, and Len Poli also goes this route. This gives you an acceptable fat ratio (ok, sometimes I do throw in a little extra skin...), and I assume the same would work for turkey. I don't use drumsticks (too many tendons) or breast (don't like the texture when ground, and it dilutes the fat % too much) in chicken sausage, but others do.

Hong Kong Dave

O que nao mata engorda.

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