From the original at The Big Green Idea.
Sausage making is remarkably easy, and can be great fun, particularly as a family activity – kids just love the oozy squeeziness of it and there are few things as satisfying as sitting down to a plate of your own home-made bangers and mash. From a health perspective, the shop bought sausage can (and usually does) contain any kind of rubbish left over in industrial pig processing – making your own means you control exactly what goes into your sausage, and thus exactly what goes into your family. Likewise you can select meat from good butchers, from free range pigs that have been reared properly, something it can be safely said your supermarket sausage porker is almost certainly not. From a Green point of view it forms part of a holistic ‘nose-to-tail’ meat eating: if you are going to kill an animal, make sure you use every part of it you can.
First principles
Whether you are making salami, chipolata, veggie sausage or Beano-style bangers the basic technique is much the same and devastatingly simple: mince up the meat (or beans), mix with the other ingredients and squeeze it all into the casing. Tie off to your preferred length and Bob’s yer uncle.
Equipment
Unless you are using bought mince (yuck!), you will need a mincer or a mincing attachment for a food mixer (although you could buy good meat from the butcher and ask him to mince it for you).
If you are planning on making a lot of sausage, a proper sausage stuffer is a worthwhile investment, but these usually start around the £100 mark. Certain food mixers (eg Kitchenaid) have attachments which will do this job, or if you just want to dip your toes in the water, a plastic funnel and a wooden spoon will work just as well, if a little slowly.
Casings
They are usually made from the intestines of the pig (or ox in the case of salami), although non-animal-based alternatives are available for veggie sausages.
These can usually be bought from any butchers who make their own sausages or ordered over the net (see links section). They are packed in salt to preserve them, so, before use, rinse the casings in a bowl of cold water then put one end under the tap and flush through. This looks quite funny and quite rude depending on your level of immaturity.
Basic banger recipe and method
- 1 kilo minced pork – ideally a mixture of belly and shoulder
- 50g rusk – fine oatmeal or fine breadcrumbs or similar
- 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper & good pinch salt
Having mixed the ingredients together, the basic principle is to stuff the meat inside a long length of casing, then divide this up to sausages of your preferred length. If using a sausage stuffer, the barrel of the machine is loaded up with meat, then a casing is slipped on to the (greased) nozzle. This stage also has a certain rude humour value. Tie a knot in the end and start to crank the handle, slowly filling the casing with meat mix. It is useful to have two people for this – one to crank and one to coil up the filled casing as it emerges.
The funnel method is exactly the same: slip the casing over the thin end of the funnel, put the meat mix in the wide end and push it through using a rolling pin or wooden spoon. Once the casing is full, tie another knot in the open end, then work your way along, gently pinching off at the length of sausage you prefer and twisting the sausage clockwise until you have a string of sausages.
It is not obligatory, but nonetheless quite a good idea if this is a first attempt, to tie off each section with a piece of butcher’s string. Find the middle of the string of sausages and twist ‘opposite’ sausages into pairs. This is a bit of an acquired technique so don’t worry if it doesn’t work first time.
The sausages should then be hung up somewhere where they can air overnight – ideally where they will get a flowthrough of air but away from flies. Don’t forget to put a bowl underneath to catch any drips. Hurray, you now have sausages!
Variations on a theme
There is no limit beyond your imagination and personal taste as to the combinations of herbs, seasonings and additional ingredients you can add to your basic sausage mix.
Finely chopped sage, thyme and marjoram is a good all-purpose herb sausage mix. Finely chopped apple, a good slosh of cider and some mixed spice is also very nice. How about Christmas sausages with sultanas, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice? Or cumin, turmeric, coriander and chillies for a spicier sausage? Large quantities of paprika and a twist of marjoram are a favourite in our household. You can fry up a little patty of meat as a taste test ayou experiment and have a lot of fun coming up with ever more outrageous recipes.
Salami and dried sausage
- 800g lean pork
- 200g back fat, diced
- 20g fine salt
- 200ml red wine
- 1 clove garlic, mashed to a paste
Salamis are the same but different… Use only the leanest parts of the meat and trim off any excess fat. Then add form in the form of finely chopped back fat in nice pea-sized chunks – this will stay firm and not melt in, giving that speckled salami appearance.
You also need to add exactly 2% salt – this sounds an awful lot, but it is the salt that will preserve the meat while drying – any less and you risk it going off. Mix all together to ensure the fat is well distributed through the mixture. Traditionally salami is made in larger casings, usually ‘ox-runners’, which come from a cow’s intestine. This gives a thicker salami like one might buy in a deli.
Personally I just use the same runners as for sausage and have thinner salamis. Technique-wise it is exactly the same as for sausage, except you should tie off each salami as it extrudes from your funnel rather than making a long coil and separating afterwards.
Tie the end of the salami off with a loop of string and hang it to mature in a cool, airy place (a porch is ideal). Some people add acidophilous (available in chemists) to the mix to promote the growth of the right kind of mould on the skin.
Personally I prefer to hang an already matured salami (bought one will be fine) alongside, and the mould spores transfer quite happily. All manner of technicolour mould patterns will grow on the outside of the salami as it hangs, white, green, red – this is quite normal and not a problem (black mould is not a good sign though) – simply rub it off with a brush when you are ready to eat.
Six weeks is a good time for a salami to hang, but you can experiment anywhere from four weeks to four months depending on how hard or soft you like your salami.
To this basic salami mix can be added more garlic, or smoked paprika and crushed fennel seeds for a Spanish-style Chorizo.
Again, the world’s your sausage - have fun experimenting!
Useful links (no pun intended) & further advice
The River Cottage ‘Pig in a day with Hugh and Ray’ DVD has a good video tutorial, and the River Cottage Forum is a useful resource for all things porcine.
Pictures courtesy of Rhomboid Foundation.
