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