homemade sausages (merged)

Badrick

You would need to add around 10% iced water and work the mixture until sticky (I use a Kenwood Chef with dough hook) then cook a small patty of mix to check seasoning.

I'd have a read of this Adobe pdf document available via this webpage.
Sausagemaker's beginner's guide to sausage making

Also sausagemaking.org is a mine of information for recipes and advice.

Fyi, I don't bother with the phosphate used in many of the above site recipes, it's mainly a preservative and to help keep the meat pink.

Cottage_Economy

Meadows wrote: »

Not sure I would have thought the meat needed to be quite fine?

According to the site below ↓ ratio of binder to primary meat is 15 to 20%. Most sausage recipes will call for two or more types of meat. The primary meat type is the one we most associate with a sausage style. The second meat is used for flavour and as a binder. The binder is ground very fine, almost into a sticky paste. It holds, or binds, the sausage together. 10 to 15% fat as binder is a good place to start. The primary meat in a recipe should be coarse ground in order to provide meatiness and firm texture to the sausage.
http://www.leeners.com/meat/how-to/sausage-making-tips.shtml

That would make sense. I might try and get some pork belly and try different levels of coarse grinding to see what difference it makes.

Pink. wrote: »

This thread has lots of tips and advice which may help:


homemade sausages (merged)


I'll add this thread to that one later.

Thanks Pink! Just out of interest, I've never quite got the hang of searching the forums when it comes to phrases. When I searched for homemade sausages earlier it brought up just about every thread that have ever been written! How do I do a search for a specific combination of words on the forums?

flea72 wrote: »

You need to grind the meat a bit more, so its smoother and add more fat and not breadcrumbs.

My standard pork sausage is about 1lb pork, 1/2lb fat. Usually buy pork shoulder that i mince myself, as that contains the meat and layer of fat. you just need to remove the skin (or get butcher to do it). Then just add seasoning/herbs.

Although i will say a good quality sausage, will be quite firm in texture, compared to sausages you can buy in the supermarket

My ones were past the point of firm and had ventured into boot leather territory :rotfl: Defo going to buy the meat from scratch and try grinding it myself and I'll ask the butcher for additional pork fat so I can try different ratios.

Why do you use shoulder instead of belly? Is there a lot of difference?

Cottage_Economy

Badrick wrote: »

You would need to add around 10% iced water and work the mixture until sticky (I use a Kenwood Chef with dough hook) then cook a small patty of mix to check seasoning.

I'd have a read of this Adobe pdf document available via this webpage.
Sausagemaker's beginner's guide to sausage making

Also sausagemaking.org is a mine of information for recipes and advice.

Fyi, I don't bother with the phosphate used in many of the above site recipes, it's mainly a preservative and to help keep the meat pink.

That is fantastic thank you! I did wonder why my sausages were a bit grey and now I know - no phosphates.

I hadn't thought about trying a small patty first. I just made a batch of sausages and then cooked them. Do you tend to under-season first then adjust up to personal preferences after a taste test?

Some of the seasoning recipes I've come across look very salty and often has masses of spices in, and I'm worrying about taking the plunge and putting in the quantities suggested in case I ruin a batch of meat.

flea72

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

Why do you use shoulder instead of belly? Is there a lot of difference?

Because its a different type of fat. For sausages you need a hard lard, such as back fat. Belly fat is too gelatinous and lean to be used on its own in sausages. Adding water will loosen up the mix, if using belly pork, but i just find it easier to use a shoulder as the fat/water content is inherent in the joint

Badrick

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

I hadn't thought about trying a small patty first. I just made a batch of sausages and then cooked them. Do you tend to under-season first then adjust up to personal preferences after a taste test?

Some of the seasoning recipes I've come across look very salty and often has masses of spices in, and I'm worrying about taking the plunge and putting in the quantities suggested in case I ruin a batch of meat.

I use a set of scales that measure to a tenth of a gram and I've never come across a recipe that's been too salty on the Sausagemakers website, but it's all down to personal taste and if you feel more comfortable using less salt and then adjusting seasoning, then go for it.

If you like Cumberland sausage, then I highly recommend [FONT=&quot]Oddley’s Cumberland sausage.
Please note the quantities are for a 100gram batch, so multiply by 10 to make a kilo, also the dextrose can be replaced with sugar.

I've re-read your original post and noticed you used a slice of bread, whereas most British style sausage recipes use 8-10% breadcrumbs/rusk, which would further explain the hard texture.
[/FONT]

cavework

I found using a cheap sage and onion stuffing mix instead of breadcrumbs really kept the sausages moist. Also used other stuffing mixes for different types of meat and they all came out really well (even tried Turkey) .
My butcher sorts out the fat to lean meat ratio as he makes his own sausages. He also swears by natural skins
Please also try making your own faggotts ..you will never buy ready made again,,
xx

anniemf2508

The recipe we use is 3:1 ratio...so if you use 900g pork, you add an extra 300g of fat. We use pork shoulder and back fat, our local butcher usually does us a good deal and chucks in the skins for free.Mince the meat twice.
Ours have to be gluten free, we found a site that does an all in one seasoning/rusk which works quite well, always make sure you fry a little off before making a batch to check seasoning.

That ratio makes quite a good juicy sausage without the need to add any liquid.

Cottage_Economy

Ok...I'm going for it again tonight to use up 500g of pork mince that's a couple of days before its use by date. I don't have any extra fat in the house (apart from leftover clarified beef dripping from Christmas and some suet) but I will try the tip about 10% iced water and 8-10% breadcrumb/rusk and see if that helps. I'm also going to add leeks to it on hubby's request as there are a few in the garden ready to eat now.

I also have 400g of lamb mince in the freezer, so I'm thinking maybe lamb and redcurrant or some kind of Moroccan lamb effort in a couple of days time if I can get some extra fat in.

I have both beef and veggie suet coming out of my ears for some reason, but not sure if that could be substituted?

Badrick

Cottage_Economy wrote: »

I have both beef and veggie suet coming out of my ears for some reason, but not sure if that could be substituted?

Here's a recipe for Oxford Sausage that uses beef suet. NB they've specified fresh herbs in the recipes. If you substitute dried, halve the quantities.
Looking around the web, the general consensus seems to be you can use beef suet in place of pork back fat and appears to have been the sausage makers fat of choice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

If you're adding leeks, you may want to reduce the water a little bit to offset the liquid in the leeks.

Cottage_Economy

Badrick wrote: »

Here's a recipe for Oxford Sausage that uses beef suet. NB they've specified fresh herbs in the recipes. If you substitute dried, halve the quantities.
Looking around the web, the general consensus seems to be you can use beef suet in place of pork back fat and appears to have been the sausage makers fat of choice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

If you're adding leeks, you may want to reduce the water a little bit to offset the liquid in the leeks.

Thanks Badrick. In the end I held off on adding extra fat but did add the correct amount of filler and the water, plus some all purpose seasoning, salt and sage. The test patties were certainly very tasty. However I didn't think about the leek adding extra fluid though, so I may be viciously spat at by the sausages as they cook.

Hubby and I are testing them this afternoon when he gets home from work so I will report back. They look fat and gorgeous in the fridge right now.