Sausage Recipes

[Guest guest]

Here's the promised Part II of my sausage tales, the recipes. I have

several sausage books and there are plenty of recipes on the net, but so

far I've mainly used the recipes from a stupendously good cookbook called

_Better Than Store-Bought_ by Helen Witty and Schneider

Colchie. Unfortunately it's been out of print for a long time, and it's

only sometimes available used, and only occasionally at a reasonable price

then. I lucked out and got my copy for $9, I think from 's, but I've

seen it for upwards of $60 far more often and sometimes even for more than

$100.

Anyway, here are the recipes I've used so far, mostly as I made them rather

than exactly as they're found in the book, and with a little helpful (or

not, as the case may be) commentary.

LIVERWURST

3/4# pork liver cut to 1 " cubes

1/2# lean pork cut to 1 " cubes

1/4# fresh pork fat (not lard!) cut to 1/2 " cubes

1/2 cup coarsely diced onion

1/2 t ground white pepper

scant 1/2 t ground cardamom

scant 1/2 t ground ginger

1/8 t ground mace

1/2 t ground coriander

1 1/2 t salt

A couple crushed ice cubes

After you've cubed the meat and fat, make sure it's chilled to

near-freezing, because grinders work best and yield the best texture when

the meat and fat are practically frozen. If the mixture is too warm it

winds up being mashed into a paste rather than neatly ground, and believe

me, that's bad for a whole host of reasons, only the least of them being

that the grinder will bog way down when this happens. The easiest way to

avoid that problem is to cube the ingredients as they're defrosting and

then keep them ice-cold until grinding.

I've used pork shoulder for all my sausages, and it's worked extremely

well, but it does require recalculating the lean-to-fat ratio a little. I

figure that lean pork has about 10% fat whereas shoulder is supposed to be

30% fat, so I just tallied up the shoulder as contributing 80% of its

weight to the lean pork and 20% to the fat. I also like a fatty sausage,

so I used more fat overall, but in deference to varying tastes I left that

part of the recipe as is; you can make your own adjustments.

Anyway, toss the pork, liver, fat and diced onion together, then sprinkle

the spices and the crushed ice over them and mix well. Then run the

mixture through the grinder and stuff into large casings. Liverwurst is

practically an emulsified sausage (a hot dog being the most popular

emulsified sausage) so it needs to be ground with a very fine plate, on the

order of 1/8 " , but even with my powerful grinder I had an awful time

forcing the mixture through the grinder with the smallest plate, so I think

the trick is to grind it with a very course plate -- 5/16 " at least -- and

then run it through again using the fine plate the second time. I haven't

tried this yet (I'm out of pork liver, worse luck) but I expect it to work

just fine.

Somewhere during the stuffing phase, have your sous chef put a large pot of

lightly-salted water on the stove and start bringing it to a boil. (Better

yet, sit back and watch football or a good movie while your sous chef does

all the work and then don't let him eat any of the finished sausage -- just

sit back and gloat and keep watching football while you eat it all.) When

the sausages are all stuffed, ease them into the water and cover them with

a small heavy plate or a jar or something like that to keep them completely

under water and then adjust and monitor the stove to keep the water between

170 and 175 degrees. Poach them at that temperature for 2 hours, and then

they're done. Put them in the fridge and then when they're nice and cold,

enjoy!

If I haven't said it often enough already, this is an INCREDIBLY delicious

liverwurst. It's better than anything you'll find in the States, and as a

liverwurst lover I've tried them all (and been disappointed by almost all

of them). It may even be better than anything you'll find in Germany, at

least nowadays.

Unfortunately, liverwurst seems to be the one sausage (or one of the only

sausages) that just doesn't take well to freezing. The texture suffers and

the flavor is at least half destroyed. In a colossal miscarriage of

justice I found that out the hard way, freezing most of the liverwurst

right after I made it. I fully expect whatever bozo made that idiotic

decision to get his karmic comeuppance any day now, and I expect the

punishment will be most spectacular and entertaining. Anyway, I do intend

to try freezing a small uncooked link and cooking it after defrosting once

I get some more pork liver, but I'm not really optimistic. However, if you

make a large batch and vacuum-seal most of them they should keep a good

deal longer than the one week the cookbook suggests without vacuum-sealing

-- and trust me, if liverwurst is your kind of thing, spoilage won't be the

problem. There was absolutely no need to freeze the 9# I made; in fact,

twice that much would've disappeared in plenty of time, maybe even three

times as much.

I do have one more suggestion: grind your own spices whenever humanly

possible. It makes a huge difference in the flavor, and if you get an

electric spice mill, it's actually quite easy. I bought a Cuisinart

Mini-Mate Plus, which is sort of a miniaturized food processor. You can

get it at Amazon for $15, and it's surprisingly versatile. The blade is

reversible; the sharp side is good for dicing and mincing small quantities

of garlic and shallots and onion and the like, but the dull side is the

secret weapon for sausage-making -- it's perfect for grinding spices to any

consistency you desire. It doesn't handle enormous quantities at once, but

it's been more than adequate for my uses so far. I've cracked and ground

black pepper, coriander, cardamom, white pepper, allspice, and probably a

dozen other spices in it, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's not

a perfect gadget -- I suppose a perfect mill would've cost several times as

much -- but it's much more than good enough.

OK, I have another suggestion: use Celtic sea salt (or some other natural

salt, I guess). Celtic is as course as the coarse Kosher salt most sausage

recipes call for and it's much tastier and healthier.

KIELBASA

10oz. beef shin or other cheap cut cut to 1/2 " cubes

1# fresh pork fat cut to 1/2 " cubes

1 1/4# lean pork cut to a 1 " cubes

1/3 cup ice water

4 t salt

1 3/4 t ground black pepper

3 T sweet Hungarian paprika

1 t dried marjoram

1/2 t dried savory

2 t finely minced garlic

Toss the meats and fat together, mix the seasonings and sprinkle over the

mixed meat and fat, then run the mixture through the grinder using a 3/16 "

plate. Then mix the ice water evenly into the ground mixture and stuff

into casings.

Another note about spices: use fresh instead of dried wherever

possible. The difference in flavor is tremendous. After much searching I

found conversion ratios in _The Joy Of Cooking_; I don't have them at hand,

but I can post them if it would help.

I will say that this recipe, while very tasty, didn't much resemble any

kielbasa I've had here in the States. I've never been to Poland (and

kielbasa is just the Polish word for sausage, like " wurst " in Germany, so

maybe there are a million different kinds of kielbasa, not just the

particular variety we Americans are used to) and I didn't try any kielbasa

in Germany, so I don't really have any useful basis for comparison, but I

sure didn't get what I was expecting. Maybe it's just that I'm used to

smoked and cured kielbasa rather than fresh, but I'm not sure. I do plan

to at least try to hot-smoke some of my kielbasa before I run out, but that

experiment is still off in the future somewhere. At any rate, whether you

call it kielbasa or marshmallow lemonade, it's delicious.

CHORIZO

1 1/4# lean pork cut to 1 " cubes

3/4# pork fat cut to 1/2 " cubes

1/3 cup robust red wine

3/4 t cumin seeds

5 to 8 small dried hot peppers, seeded OR 1 1/2 t dried hot pepper flakes

1 1/2 t coriander seeds

3 to 4 whole cloves

2 1/2 t salt

4 t hot paprika

1/4 t whole black peppercorns

1/2 t finely minced garlic

Combine the cumin seeds, hot peppers or flakes, coriander, and cloves in a

small pan and shake over moderate heat until the peppers are slightly

toasted and the seeds start to crackle -- about 1 minute.

Combine the toasted seasonings with the rest of the dry seasonings and mill

to a coarse texture. Mix with the minced garlic.

Toss the meat and fat together, sprinkle the seasonings over them, then mix

well. Grind with a 3/16 " plate, mix the wine evenly into the ground

mixture and stuff.

This tasted somewhat more like the chorizos I'm used to, but I went light

on the hot peppers because the book didn't say how hot the hot peppers were

supposed to be, and all I had on hand were dried piquins (140,000 heat

units). Well, that was a mistake. The chorizos didn't come out hot at

all. Next time I'll use more peppers, and I might use more paprika, a few

more cloves, and maybe just a little more of everything else too. Still, I

don't want to suggest that this wasn't tasty, because it was excellent.

I hope this helps you sausage-lovers get started making your own! You

won't regret it.

-