Ol' Porky II

Our second attempt at the basic pork and herb sausage was much more successful than the first.

Recipe: 1 kilo pork loin

60g breadcrumbs

few tablespoons of water

1.5 tsps salt

1.5 tsps black pepper

2 tsps sage, 2 tsps thyme

1/2 tsp sugar

Hog intestine

1 Kilo of pork loin with enough fat for a good moist sausage.

Diced into smaller cubes than last time for easier mincing, about 2cm cubes.

Here's the coarse mince.

The last batch was very over seasoned and we didn't try it before filling the skins. A little of the sausage mixture is fried up for tasting so seasoning can be adjusted. We added more salt and sage after tasting the tester.

The adjusted mixture is passed through the second mincing plate for a fine mixture.

The sausage skin is coiled up on the sausage filling tube.

The final sausages! We decided to leave these as coils rather than link them.

After 36 hours of forming and resting in the fridge - here is the finished product

This is not a huge sausage! It's just a small plate.

The sausage was not as moist as the last batch which is most likely due to not enough fat in the mixture but the seasoning was considerably better than last time. The sausage skins also seem a little tougher this time, I'm not sure if this is due to natural variation or the breed of pig or some other reason. It's something I'll look into.

Tips, Sources and upcoming sausages.

Hello Mincing Fans,

I have read the first few chapters of the sausage making book i received as a secret Santa gift and have picked up a few tips like freezing the meat for 30 minutes before mincing and making the sausage in one big tube and linking at the end.

I have acquired some sausage casings to make a new batch tonight to try out on my colleagues, I found the Bath Sausage Shop also sell skins direct to the public as well as the Green St Butchers (Bath) and Source in St Nicholas' market (Bristol) so i have plenty of sources for future use, who would have thought they would be so widely available?

Tonight's sausage is likely to be another attempt at Ol' Porky - a plain pork and sage - as the last batch were far too over seasoned.

Update!

Good Morning Sausage Fans!

Today we held the office Secret Santa and I have a new shiny copy of 'Home Sausage Making'. Expect some special Christmas sausages and plenty more mincing goodness in the new year.

Moroccan Style Lamb Burgers

There's a small delay to our next batch of sausages so we've made some lamb burgers instead.

A mix of lamb leg steaks and lamb rump to give a variety of texture and some lean and fatty meats.

Passed through the coarse mincing disc.

Blended with Ras el Hanout, fresh coriander, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and a little water.

Moulded into patties and chilled for 30 minutes

the delicious cooked burger

open burger shot:

The burger was rich and meaty and tasted much more lamby than using regular purchased mince. The lamb leg steaks minced just fine but the tougher rump cut had a few problems going through the mincer, we removed all the fat but the mincer more crushed the meat than minced it. Chopping it into very small chunks helped it pass through, though excessive mincing started to melt down the fat which clogged the holes in the mincing plate.

We will remember for next time to chop the tougher meat cuts into smaller pieces and remove hard fats.

Overall - a success 7/10 for flavour, 8/10 for texture

No Sausages Today

Unfortunately, the sausage casing supplier has none in stock and an alternative supplier is closed. No sausages this weekend.

Monday will be sausage day!

Sausage Updates

The first batch of sausage casings are now past their best and I will be off to Source this weekend to get some more. We are going to make several batches and freeze them so we are able to use all of the casings up in one go.

We will remaking Ol' Porky this weekend to get the basic pork and sage recipe right, another pork sausage in some form and maybe some lamb sausages.

Sausage suggestions added to the list so far are venison with chocolate (The Steve) and pork, lime and coriander (The Jon). As promised these are named after the people who suggested them.

Ol' Porky - The Verdict

Our very first sausages have been eaten and a proud moment it was too. For our first attempt they were very good indeed!

The cooked sausages:

Sausage cross section

They firmed up and dried nicely overnight in the fridge, cooked as you would expect a sausage to cook and were nicely done after 25 minutes 180 degrees. We decided on oven cooking as it's healthier and our twists wouldn't be put under excess strain by being flipped every 5 minutes.

Texture - Perfect. I wouldn't expect any better from a professionally produced sausage. The balance of meat, water and breadcrumbs was spot on. It wasn't overly fatty and was nicely succulent.

Taste - Overseasoned. The guide we followed suggested 12 grams of seasoning for our amount of meat. The sausages were overly salty and the sage was a little overpowering. Next time for this amount of meat we would halve the over all amount of seasoning. It would be wise to season the mixture a little, fry up a small ball to taste and adjust the seasoning.

Looking forward to making another batch!

The First Batch - " Ol' Porky"

The first batch of sausages is complete - a simple pork & sage recipe (Ol' Porky) and it all went surprisingly well! Photos of our mini sausage factory can be seen below but of course the proof is in the tasting which will take place tomorrow. Pics of the cooked sausage and a review of it will be posted tomorrow. Only problem with the first batch is the odd range of size an shapes, hopefully we will perfect our sausage filling skills over the next few batches.

The Meat - a good mix of both fatty and lean pork

First Pass through the largest mincing plate

12 grams of seasoning, a mix of sea salt, celery salt, black pepper and sage

Final Sausage mixture with seasoning, breadcrumbs and water added

Second Pass through the finest mincing plate

Sausage stuffer tool fitted, casing end found and threaded on and the meat is starting to fill the casing.

Sausages taking shape

the final sausages! - Now sitting in the fridge overnight to dry out

Review of the finished sausage

The Mincer

This is the mincer / sausage stuffer - A Kitchen Craft '8' model with three various sized mincing plates and a sausage stuffing attachment

British Sausage Week

It is British Sausage Week November 1st - November 7th
http://tinyurl.com/2wavayg

Getting Ready

We have been reading up on the basics of sausage making so we are ready to go tomorrow when the kit arrives. Starting off simply with a good old pork and herb this is the recipe we intend to use:

80% Pork
2.5% Seasoning
6.5% Rusk/breadcrumbs
11% Water

We bought some quality local pork from a farm shop and it has a good amount of fat which should make a succulent sausage.

With the amount of pork we have the ingredients looks like this:

475g sausage

380g pork
12g seasoning
31g rusk
52.0g water

Sausage Casings

I have tracked down hog intestine sausage casings courtesy of Source Food in Bristol.We bought enough casings for 3kg of sausage for a bargain 18 pence and they are sitting in the fridge in brine awaiting delivery of the mincer.

The casings have a fairly short life of around 5 or 6 days to be used and then another week once made into sausages. Looks like we'll be freezing a lot of sausages!

Current photo is just an iphone snap - better photos will appear shortly

Welcome to Mincing Adventures

Welcome, welcome to the blog following our adventures with our latest kitchen toy - a meat mincer with sausage stuffing attachment. The mincer has been ordered today from Amazon after seeing one in a kitchen shop on a day trip.

This blog comes to you from the same foodies behind the cheese at home and ice cream adventure blogs.

Pictures, recipes and ideas to follow.