This is our first sausage using the new electric meat grinder and sausage stuffer. The electric mincer is much easier to use than the hand grinder and produced a much better quality mince in less time.
1/2 a kilo of pork shoulder (pork butt), this is a good fatty cut so helps moisten the sausage.
Cut the meat into cubes about 2cm X 2 cm and cut the fat into smaller chunks about 1cm X 1cm as it is much tougher than the meat and is harder to grind. Once chopped mix the meat and the fat together in a bowl. Remove the connective tissue and sinew, this will not grind and will add nothing to your final sausage.
Mix dried chilli, salt, black pepper, fennel and chopped fresh garlic
Season the meat with the mixture and then freeze for 30 minutes - 1 hour. This solidifies the meat, stops the fat melting during grinding and results in a better mince consistency.
Grind the meat through the medium grinding plate. Chill the ground meat for 30 minutes and then grind again through the medium plate.
Fit the sausage stuffing attachment with the coarse plate and load on the sausage casing. Normally we use natural hog sausage casing but it was unavailable so we used synthetic sausage casing for the first time. Synthetic casing lasts forever in the fridge but is not as stretchy as natural casing so it is prone to ripping and takes a little getting used to working with. The final product though is pretty good and if you didn't know it was synthetic casing - you wouldn't be able to tell.
We made two large links, firm them up in the fridge overnight.
Italian sausage, fried polenta cakes, roasted pomodoro tomatoes and salad
The final sausage was pretty good, the fennel and chilli are a great combination but the sausage was a little dry. I need to look at ways to moisten the sausage without adding extra fat.
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