The Year of the Sausage

The New Year has popped around, summer is here, good times.  Now is the time to make those New Years resolutions, which I don't.  But I am keen on doing one thing this year, and that is making this year "The Year of the Sausage".

Why? Cause home made sausage are better than sliced bread, better than organic sourdough made by an artisan baker using a wood fire oven, better even than your own home made bread.

When I first started out making sausages it seemed a very daunting and risky business.  But now that I have cranked out a few batches I think everyone should be doing it.  Yes you.

I will take you through a stock standard recipe, the first one I tried, and one that I keep coming back to.  Toulouse Sausage.  For those Tour de France fans, Toulouse should be familiar as the town in South West France that the tour passes through either before or after the Pyrenees.  It has finished there about 20 times. Mark Cavendish was the last winner in 2008.

Back to Toulouse Sausage, or Saucisses de Toulouse, it is about as basic a sausage comes but has an awesome flavour.  In fact, I make the sausages smaller so the servings are smaller, such is the huge flavour.  The recipe I use comes from The Sausage Book by Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton.

2 kg of rough minced pork belly
30g good salt
2g fresh grated nutmeg
5g fresh ground black pepper
100ml red wine (I always omit it)
20g chopped garlic
20g chopped flat leaf parsley
4g chopped fresh sage leaves
4g chopped fresh thyme leaves
2.5m of hog casings

The hardest part of sausage making is finding the casings.  Asking at your local butcher usually gets a shrug of the shoulders but I have hunted down my preferred suppliers in Hobart, Meat and More on Elizabeth St and Ziggy's out at Moonah.

Pork Belly

Sometime the pork belly will come with the skin on and or with ribs.  We don't want either in our snags.  Get the butcher to cut them off beforehand so you don't have to pay for them ;)  But the ribs can be used for something else, stay tuned.

Chop the pork belly up into strips.  This will make it easier to insert into the grinder.  Now freeze them for an hour or 2.  This will firm them up and ease the grinding.

While the meat is chilling, prepare the rest of the ingredients and place them into a large bowl

Once the meat is firm, not frozen, grind away.  I like to use the coarsest setting.

Get messy.  Mix all the ingredients together by hand.  It must be very well distributed.

Remember "personal development" at high school?  Place the skin over the largest sausage stuffer nozzle.

Stuff away.  Don't pull the skin off too quick or your sausages will be thin.  Careful to not get any air in the skins.

Seems easy? Yes?  But what if you don't have a groovy red Kitchen Aid?  I have the solution.

1. Ask the butcher to mince your pork belly (meat grinder solution)
2. Buy a calking gun, yes, the same used for liquid nails. (sausage stuffer solution)

It will do the stuffing job for you, and will only cost a few dollarydoos down at Bunnings.

So now there is no excuse, and I want to see pictures of your sausages during "The Year of the Sausage".  Tweet them to me @vineyardpaul, or put a link to them in the comments section.

Happy New Sausage Year