Anyone make their own sausages?
Discussion
I've just bought a shiny new meat mincer which apparently you can get a sausage making attachment for.
I've been looking at this site http://www.designasausage.com/ which looks OK, but I'm not really a fan of "kits" of any type, I really like to know what's going into my food.
Anyone have any tips or experiences to share?
I've been looking at this site http://www.designasausage.com/ which looks OK, but I'm not really a fan of "kits" of any type, I really like to know what's going into my food.
Anyone have any tips or experiences to share?
I use pork beely for my sausages, trimming off most of the fat and leaving a fair bit on meat on the bone for spare ribs. I find I use a good volume of breadcrumbs and herbs to get the texture right - can be a bit trial and error.
I mince the meat first, then mix with the breadcrumbs and any flavourings and then a 2nd time through the mincer into the skins. I find this can be done on my own by putting the mix in the hopper and then controling the skins with one hand whilst turning the handle with the other.
I mince the meat first, then mix with the breadcrumbs and any flavourings and then a 2nd time through the mincer into the skins. I find this can be done on my own by putting the mix in the hopper and then controling the skins with one hand whilst turning the handle with the other.
Bob the Planner said:
I use pork beely for my sausages, trimming off most of the fat and leaving a fair bit on meat on the bone for spare ribs. I find I use a good volume of breadcrumbs and herbs to get the texture right - can be a bit trial and error.
I mince the meat first, then mix with the breadcrumbs and any flavourings and then a 2nd time through the mincer into the skins. I find this can be done on my own by putting the mix in the hopper and then controling the skins with one hand whilst turning the handle with the other.
I really fancy giving this a go. What did you spend on your mincer, Bob?I mince the meat first, then mix with the breadcrumbs and any flavourings and then a 2nd time through the mincer into the skins. I find this can be done on my own by putting the mix in the hopper and then controling the skins with one hand whilst turning the handle with the other.
I've got a mincer, with a sausage nozzle on it.
Only used it once and made some beef, plain pork, apple and pork and some pork with herbs.
All of them were really dry. Not sure if it was the wrong sort of cut of meat, not enough fat, wrong sort of mincing before hand or if the machine stuffs the meat in too tightly. (Or all of the above)
More or less given up as my butcher does some excellent sausages that are cheaper than the meat I used.
Only used it once and made some beef, plain pork, apple and pork and some pork with herbs.
All of them were really dry. Not sure if it was the wrong sort of cut of meat, not enough fat, wrong sort of mincing before hand or if the machine stuffs the meat in too tightly. (Or all of the above)
More or less given up as my butcher does some excellent sausages that are cheaper than the meat I used.
mechsympathy said:
I'm (apparently) getting one of these for my birthday. Can't wait. A friend has one and the sausages he turns out are 
OK, I have a Porkert mincer / sausage making kit. It came from these guys:
http://www.sausagemaking.org/
and is the £59 complete sausage making kit from this page:
http://www.sausagemaking.org/acatalog/Sausage_Maki...
Works fine, and you can just buy nozzles and attachments if that's what you need. You'll need two other odd ingredients:
Hog casings - yup, it's real intestine. You can buy it from the site above, or I guess you might persuade your local butcher to sell you some. 1kg of meat translates into about 3 metres of hog casings. You can get narrower, sheeps casings for things like chipolatas and merguez as well.
Rusk - try to get this if you can. Breadcrumbs just don't seem to taste the same to me. Mail order will cost you a fortune, but your local butcher might help you out: mine will give me a kilo or two in a carrier bag for a quid into the charity box, so it's not a major expense. A kilo of rusk will make 7 - 10 kilos of sausages, so you don't need that much.
Recipes? Google's your friend on this one. My kit came with a couple of different seasoning mixtures, which aren't bad, but the real fun is in playing around with your own sausage ideas, no?
The recipe Mechsympathy liked was this one:
500g pork - those cheap boneless shoulders you get in Sainsburys are fine. Somerfield have a half price offer on them at the mo. Cut it into chunks, fat and all, and put it once through the mincer if you like a coarse sausage.
50g rusk
50g water, or enough to give you the consistency of, well, sausagemeat.
Spices - f
k knows how you measure these quantities without a chemists scales. You'll have to guess like I did, or talk to your local drug dealer:7g salt
5g each of black pepper, nutmeg, sage, thyme and marjoram
Mix all the ingredients together and stuff your sausage skins. That's it! It's not a quick activity - if you costed your time then shop bought ones would be far cheaper, but it passes a wet Sunday afternoon very pleasingly and if you do it with SWMBO there are plenty of opportunities for s
t innuendo and other such japes.As I say, there are plenty of recipes on the net, but this one works well for starters. Anyone got any others they've tried? I'm about ready for another batch, and still want to crack the perfect Merguez!
eta some of these look interesting:
http://www.panix.com/~clay/cookbook/bin/table_of_c...
Edited by N Dentressangle on Tuesday 19th August 18:38
madbadger said:
I've got a mincer, with a sausage nozzle on it.
Only used it once and made some beef, plain pork, apple and pork and some pork with herbs.
All of them were really dry. Not sure if it was the wrong sort of cut of meat, not enough fat, wrong sort of mincing before hand or if the machine stuffs the meat in too tightly. (Or all of the above)
More or less given up as my butcher does some excellent sausages that are cheaper than the meat I used.
Have another go - you'll get it right!Only used it once and made some beef, plain pork, apple and pork and some pork with herbs.
All of them were really dry. Not sure if it was the wrong sort of cut of meat, not enough fat, wrong sort of mincing before hand or if the machine stuffs the meat in too tightly. (Or all of the above)
More or less given up as my butcher does some excellent sausages that are cheaper than the meat I used.
I reckon you probably need to:
1. Use fattier meat, or add some pieces of lard to the mixture
2. Use rusk - it soaks up and retains the moisture/fat, giving you a nice moist sausage
3. Play around with the rusk / water content, getting the consistency right before you stuff the skins
Good luck
Sausage making is fun and as you say you get to know what goes in the damn things.
A few things I have discovered are:
1) that you do need some decent fat in the sausage of it will be dry and tasteless. Fat, although we are scared of it, is a transporter of flavours! This is why a lot of recipes call for "belly pork" or "shoulder and pork fat" as shoulder itself does not contain quite enough fat. It also melts during the cooking process and moves about inside the casing making the cooking process more even.
2) you do need some amount of rusk / breadcrumbs. It is not there for cheapness but it helps bind the sausage and absorbs some of the juices keeping the flavour and succulence in. Do not think it is there to bulk out the sausage and make it cheaper, this is not the case.
3) water is added to many sausages in SMALLish quantities and again this is not added to bulk out the sausage or make it cheaper but to help the consistancy for the stuffing process. SOMe sausages would be impossible to stuff without the addition of water to their recipes.
4) Stuffing can be a bit tricky but as already suggested it easier if you get a friend/wife/girlfriend/mistress to help. Given practice it gets easier.
5) Course ground meat always seems to work best but some might prefer a finer course.
6) you must be scrupulously clean when making sausages to avoid any outbreaks of botulism in your kitchen!!
I have found that the worst sausages I have made have always been the weird highly spiced ones. The best ones have always been the ones which showcase the quality meat that you have bought (please don't buy crappy meat - you will end up with crappy sausages!). It is a bit like the old "if it 'aint good enough to drink it 'aint good enough to cook with" - same philosophy with the sausage meat.
There is a book called "the sausage book" by paul peacock which is a great book with many recipes and goes into the science behind the sausage a little bit.
My fave recipe is the traditional Cambridge Sausage which was invented at the university years and years back. You don't often see it but it is a recipe that you should try. Fantastic!
Recipe is as follows:
1kg belly pork
75g breadcrumbs
150ml water
10g salt
5g black pepper
5g nutmeg
1) mix dry ingredients thoroughly
2) roughly mince the meat (I cut off the skin and mince that really finely)
3) mix with dry ingredients and stuff into hog casings (soaked for at least an hour and washed inside and out)
A few things I have discovered are:
1) that you do need some decent fat in the sausage of it will be dry and tasteless. Fat, although we are scared of it, is a transporter of flavours! This is why a lot of recipes call for "belly pork" or "shoulder and pork fat" as shoulder itself does not contain quite enough fat. It also melts during the cooking process and moves about inside the casing making the cooking process more even.
2) you do need some amount of rusk / breadcrumbs. It is not there for cheapness but it helps bind the sausage and absorbs some of the juices keeping the flavour and succulence in. Do not think it is there to bulk out the sausage and make it cheaper, this is not the case.
3) water is added to many sausages in SMALLish quantities and again this is not added to bulk out the sausage or make it cheaper but to help the consistancy for the stuffing process. SOMe sausages would be impossible to stuff without the addition of water to their recipes.
4) Stuffing can be a bit tricky but as already suggested it easier if you get a friend/wife/girlfriend/mistress to help. Given practice it gets easier.
5) Course ground meat always seems to work best but some might prefer a finer course.
6) you must be scrupulously clean when making sausages to avoid any outbreaks of botulism in your kitchen!!
I have found that the worst sausages I have made have always been the weird highly spiced ones. The best ones have always been the ones which showcase the quality meat that you have bought (please don't buy crappy meat - you will end up with crappy sausages!). It is a bit like the old "if it 'aint good enough to drink it 'aint good enough to cook with" - same philosophy with the sausage meat.
There is a book called "the sausage book" by paul peacock which is a great book with many recipes and goes into the science behind the sausage a little bit.
My fave recipe is the traditional Cambridge Sausage which was invented at the university years and years back. You don't often see it but it is a recipe that you should try. Fantastic!
Recipe is as follows:
1kg belly pork
75g breadcrumbs
150ml water
10g salt
5g black pepper
5g nutmeg
1) mix dry ingredients thoroughly
2) roughly mince the meat (I cut off the skin and mince that really finely)
3) mix with dry ingredients and stuff into hog casings (soaked for at least an hour and washed inside and out)
thanks guys, will have to take a trip back to the kitchen shop to get the sausage maker that fits my mincer and have a go. 
There is some good advice from N Dentressangle, sausages aren't that hard to make but are one of those things which are easier to make in bulk when I used to make them as a butcher, we would do 30kg at a time.
Generally it's easy to do a coarse mince first and then do your mixing. Usually a big mechanical mixer is used for this to get good distribution but a cake mixer (not whisk!) can be OK for small batches, as can hand mixing, as long as you spend plenty of time. If you are adding stuff like apples or peppers then mincing them with the pork is useful so you have a uniform size.
Using breadcrumbs or rusk is good for most sasusages but don't worry if you don't have it as there are plenty that you can make without. An easy one is pork, apple & cider with plenty of pepper. Just chop up plenty of apples & add in a dash of cider. The extra liquid in the apples/cider means you can use slightly less fatty meat without it getting really dry, but there is flavour in the fat! They can be a bit sloppy and a bit harder to trace (that's when you tie them in bunches of 3) but are really tasty IMO!
Doing the same with red peppers and cayenne pepper can be nice (if spicy). When using breadcrumbs or rusk, I find about 5% of meat weight to be OK for my taste & add water to give the consistency I'm after.
There's also nothing wrong with buying mixes to get started. A lot of butchers use commercially sold mixes & produce very nice sausages by adding in a few of their own ingredients. If you are playing about with mixes then a good way to test is to make a little burger with your mix & fry that up & use that to see if it needs anything else adding. It's not 100% accurate but a nice burger will = a nice banger.
When you are making small batches, tying is a simple affair, either use string or pinch and twist at the appropriate length. Pinching also helps stop the casing tearing. The ultimate in tying is tracing or linking. This is usually part of a 2 person team, one feeding the sausage into the casing & the other person wrestling with a writhing snake of porky goodness (oo er) and tying the sausages into bunches of 3 until you have a long chain a few feet long - there is a good video here: http://www.sausagemaking.org/linkingSausages.html
Generally it's easy to do a coarse mince first and then do your mixing. Usually a big mechanical mixer is used for this to get good distribution but a cake mixer (not whisk!) can be OK for small batches, as can hand mixing, as long as you spend plenty of time. If you are adding stuff like apples or peppers then mincing them with the pork is useful so you have a uniform size.
Using breadcrumbs or rusk is good for most sasusages but don't worry if you don't have it as there are plenty that you can make without. An easy one is pork, apple & cider with plenty of pepper. Just chop up plenty of apples & add in a dash of cider. The extra liquid in the apples/cider means you can use slightly less fatty meat without it getting really dry, but there is flavour in the fat! They can be a bit sloppy and a bit harder to trace (that's when you tie them in bunches of 3) but are really tasty IMO!
Doing the same with red peppers and cayenne pepper can be nice (if spicy). When using breadcrumbs or rusk, I find about 5% of meat weight to be OK for my taste & add water to give the consistency I'm after.
There's also nothing wrong with buying mixes to get started. A lot of butchers use commercially sold mixes & produce very nice sausages by adding in a few of their own ingredients. If you are playing about with mixes then a good way to test is to make a little burger with your mix & fry that up & use that to see if it needs anything else adding. It's not 100% accurate but a nice burger will = a nice banger.
When you are making small batches, tying is a simple affair, either use string or pinch and twist at the appropriate length. Pinching also helps stop the casing tearing. The ultimate in tying is tracing or linking. This is usually part of a 2 person team, one feeding the sausage into the casing & the other person wrestling with a writhing snake of porky goodness (oo er) and tying the sausages into bunches of 3 until you have a long chain a few feet long - there is a good video here: http://www.sausagemaking.org/linkingSausages.html
Holy thread resurrection Batman!
I got a mincer with a sausage stuffing attachment for my birthday, so have been trying it out today. For a first attempt we got a pack of mix (breadcrumbs and herbs for a lincolnshire sausage) and half and half pork belly and pork shoulder. Advice seems to be leave them in the fridge for a day to late the flavours marinade properly so not tried them yet.
Anyone else here in to sausage making? A couple of recipes earlier in this thread look good.
I got a mincer with a sausage stuffing attachment for my birthday, so have been trying it out today. For a first attempt we got a pack of mix (breadcrumbs and herbs for a lincolnshire sausage) and half and half pork belly and pork shoulder. Advice seems to be leave them in the fridge for a day to late the flavours marinade properly so not tried them yet.
Anyone else here in to sausage making? A couple of recipes earlier in this thread look good.
Well they tasted good, but due to lack of instructions on the mincer it looked like the best fit for the sausage nozzle was with the mincing blade still attached, so the meat went through the minters twice resulting in too fine a mince. As we did the sausages in a couple of batches I meant to try the second batch without the blades in but forgot. We've got another few meals worth of sausages to scoff before trying again though.
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