How to Make Your Own Pork Sausages.

Learning How to Make Your Own Pork Sausages at Home is great fun. Sausages are one of the most flexible foods we have available to us. Whether it’s a comforting plate of bangers and mash, fending off the cold weather. A quick buttered sausage roll as a snack, or the compulsory BBQ sausage, it’s a year – round, go to treat.

Most people will have a favourite sausage, British or continental. I’ve lost track on how many different types and flavours are available to us today. However, variety is one thing, quality is another, so read on!

So, What’s in a Sausage?

Well apart from any flavourings you want to add, Meat! The problem can be deciding on what is meat. Meat in its natural form has fat, and fat is important to the eating quality of our sausage. Just enough will provide flavour and moisture. Too much and a greasy feel will be left in the mouth. Too little and the sausage will be dry and tough.

Fat also adds flavour. In fact, it adds flavour to most things. As the fat dissolves on your tongue, it transmits the flavour of your food to the tastebuds. This enhances the experience of eating the food and something we are hard-wired into enjoying.

Whatever meat you are using Beef, Pork, lamb, Venison etc the fat is important. For beef sausages suet fat is ideal. For all the others I would stick to pork fat.

Don’t be afraid of fat but do control it.  Perhaps one rainy afternoon ill draft out a Food Files page on fats to help everybody understand how they work.

What are Sausage Casings?

There is one rule I like to apply here. Never Trust a Straight Sausage!

There are basically two main types of casing, natural and synthetic.
Natural casings are from the intestines of animals. They will be irregular in diameter according to how far down the gut then are obtained from. This provides sized from a chipolata right up to a salami size. The animal they are taken from will dictate the thickness and strength of the casing. Pork casings are relatively strong and a good size for most uses. lamb casing are more fragile and are smaller in diameter.

Preservation.

Commonly the casings are preserved in salt and need to be soaked and washed before filling.  If your local butcher makes their own sausages, they can help you or have a look online. As you will know the intestines are coiled around inside the carcase. This gives the sausage its curved appearance. A sure sign it’s a natural sausage.

Alternative casings.

Synthetic casings for edible sausages are manufactured from animal collagen. Personally, I don’t like the feel of them in the mouth. Some smoked and cured sausages intended as charcutier have plastic cases which are not edible.

If all else fails, you can from the meat into patties coat them in four and fry. To go one stage further egg and breadcrumb the patties. Cook slowly in butter so the meat cooks though without the coating burning.

Mincing the meat.

You don’t need fancy, expensive equipment to make your own sausages. A tabletop hand mincer is fine (although hard work) and I filled my first sausages using a cut off plastic funnel and piping bag.

A mincer attachment for your food mixer is a good choice. If you really get into it a small electric mincer can be bought for not too much money.

The key thing is to ensure the blade is sharp and you have the right size of mincer plate fitted.

It’s best not to use frozen meat if you can as it doesn’t bind together as well as fresh, Cut the meat and fat into cubes no larger than 2cm and keep the meat in the fridge before mincing.

Chefs will often put the mincer in the fridge or freezer before use to stop the meat from heating up due to friction in the mincer. This also helps with the shelf life of the sausages’.

Its not a bad idea to fry a small patty of the filling before filling the casings. This allows you to check the seasoning before committing to moving on to the filling stage.

Make Your Own Pork Sausages.

You Will Need: –

Pork Sausages.

Makes 7 good sized Pork Sausages.

• 400g               trimmed pork shoulder
• 150g               rindless green gammon
• 70g                 pork loin fat
• 5g                   mustard seeds
• 2tbsp              dry white wine
• 1 slice             crustless white bread
• 100ml             milk
• ½ tsp              mace
• 6g                  curing or table salt
• 1/8 tsp            cayenne pepper
• ¼ tsp              black pepper
• 1tsp               chopped fresh sage leaves
• 1 slice of bread to clean out mincer

The Night before.

Put the mustard seeds in a small dish and pour over the white wine. Cover and leave overnight for the seeds to soften.

Making the filling.

Pour the milk onto a small bowl and add the bread. Leave to soak for five minutes.

Take the meats and remove any sinew. Cut the meats and fat into roughly 2cm cubes and mix together in a bowl.

Lift the bread from the milk and squeeze out the excess liquid to form a wet ball. Add the bread to the meat and discard the milk.

Add the mustard seeds and wine together with the rest of the seasonings and mix well.

Fit a 6mm sized plate to the mincer then pass all the mixture through the mincer back into the bowl.

Return half of the mix to the mincer and re-mince once more back into the bowl.

Take a sturdy spoon and begin the mix the coarse and fine mixtures together. Don’t be afraid to give the mixture a good basing about as this helps the meats bind together.

Butchers commonly add water into the filling while mixing. This arguably adds moisture to the filling making the sausage juicer. Ever noticed all that gunk coming out of shop-bought sausages as you cook them? And I’m sure all that free weight helps with the profits. If you do want to try for a moister filling just add two or three tablespoons of water in as you beat the mix.

That it! You’re all ready to go to the filling stage.

How to fill the Casings.

Take some of the casings out of the container and shake off any excess salt. Wash the casings under running water for a moment then place in a bowl of cold water to soak for twenty minutes.

Piping bag method.

To fill the sausage casings with a piping bag, spoon the sausage meat into a large piping bag fitted with the widest plain plastic nozzle. I have used the cut off tube of a plastic funnel in the past, with some success.

Rinse the casings in cold water and roll the open end over the nozzle, like putting on a stocking! Hold the first 2 inches of the casing closed and squeeze the filling into the casing to form the first sausage, easing the casing from the nozzle as it fills. Stop when the sausage is big enough and twist gently before filling the next one. Tie the loose end of the casing on the first sausage. Continue until all the filling is used up. If you like, tie the sausages at intervals between the links with fine string then cut into individual sausages.

Using a sausage filling attachment.

If you are lucky enough to have a sausage filling attachment for your mincer it’s the same idea. Roll the washed casing onto the filling tube Then load the hopper with the sausage meat. Pull about 8cm of casing down the tube so it’s hanging off the end then slowly start the mincer until the filling appears at the end of the tube.

Stop the mincer then tie off the loose casing tight to the filling. This method will stop air been forced into the casing as the filling begins. Restart the mincer slowly keeping a steady flow of filling coming down the tube been careful not to over fill the casing.  A little slack on the skins if fine. Stop filling well before the casing runs out as you will need spare casing available to form the sausages.

Decide how long you want your sausages to be, then starting at the knotted end pinch the casing at the desired length to force the meat back down the casing then twist the casing together to form a seal. Again, just as when we filed the sausages make sure the casing is not too stretched or it may break when cooked. Keep going until you have formed all the sausages and repeat the process until all the filling is used.

Avoiding waste.

There will still be an amount of good meat trapped in the body of the mincer. To avoid wasting this put a slice of bread through the mincer at the end and the meat will be pushed through. Any bread can be pushed back out of the casing before the sausages are formed.

Using a sausage press.

You can also obtain a sausage press which resembles a big syringe clamped to the table. You simply fill the body of the press with the sausage meat. Clamp on the front and proceed as described above.

If you are using a hand powered mincer or a press a second pair of hands is great help. Otherwise, it’s difficult to control the sausage casing and work the press/mincer at the same time.

Cooking Sausages.

One golden rule – Don’t prick them!!!!!.

The purpose of the sausage casings is not just to make a pleasing shape but also to holds in moisture. If you prick your sausages the moisture will escape leaving you with a dry shrivelled up result.

If you’re having problems with the sausages bursting. It’s possible you have over filled the casings putting too much stress on the skin. The most common cause of bursting is simply cooking too quickly.

Take it slowly.

Whether you’re grilling, frying, or barbequing your sausages the process is the same.

Take the sausages out of the fridge before cooking to let them warm a little. Start the cooking briefly over a highish heat to set the skins then reduce the heat until cooked through. If you’re not happy with the colour a quick blast over a higher heat will do the trick.

It takes time for the heat to penetrate through the meat. Unlike a steak the surface won’t caramelise and gain flavour. It just burns, think of the classic BBQ burnt sausages and you will know what I mean.

If you’re grilling or barbequing rub the skins with a little oil before cooking.

Some varieties of sausage are gently poached, then stored prior to grilling. But for our home-made sausage grill or fry directly from raw.

Make sure they are cooked.

As sausages are a processed meat, they must be cooked all the way though before eating. I always recommend a probe thermometer when cooking. Ensure the centre of the sausage has reached 73ºc to be certain they are cooked.

F.A.Qs.

Enjoy Life!

John.

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©John Webber. 2023