Proper sausages

 This afternoon I turned out 4kg of pork sausages  in Bout de Cote stylee...

That''s real pork 100% pork with a bit of seasoning. Tesco's had two for 6 quid deals on 800g packs of pork shoulder steaks. Four of those and the two packs of the fattiest belly strips brought the meat count up to around 4kg.

First job is to get the casings (skins to you and me) soaking in warm water. They come vacuum packed in salt and need to be cleaned and softened. I was using natural sheep casing today, perfect for chipolata sized sausages.

While they are in a bowl of warm water, mince all the meat with the coarsest ring on the mincer. I was struggling until I found I hadn't screwed the retaining ring on the mincer tight enough. The blades need to be tight on the ring to break up the connecting tissue. As it was any thing that didn't want to go through was wrapping it's self round the blade and the mincer just wasn't working. The skin has to be taken off the belly pork bun it's not wasted. Boiled, deep fried and then grilled has turned it into OK pork scratchings.

With the meat minced in went a bit of seasoning. 4 teaspoons of salt and 2 teaspoons of coarsely ground black pepper. And because I like the taste a good teaspoon of white pepper. 

The only way  to mix this is in a big bowl and get your hands in. I layered up the meat with the seasonings to cut down the amount of mixing that was needed.

My hand cranked sausage filler takes about 3kg of meat  at a time. The fiddliest job is getting the casing started on the nozzle. This gets easier when you have done it a few times. With that done and the end knotted it's time to push you sausage (ooer missus) and while this can be managed single handed it is much easier to have someone crank while someone else controls the feeding of the skin. The idea is to have a nice even fill. So the trick is a steady turn on the handle and an even feeding of the skin. Our artisan sausages are somewhat lumpy and rustic but at least you can see they are hand made.


I was running something like 3metres of casing at a time because it is easier to handle and I got through about 15metres. It's made about 74 sausages all together. Excluding the tester.


With both ends knotted the individual links can be twisted in. Nothing fancy for me just a pinch and a few twists to separate the sausages. At this stage you could decide to just coil up the sausage to make the a big cumberland style ring. Or get fiddly and do cocktail sausages.

I went for medium sized chipolatas. Resting them a little in the fridge for a while allows the skin to harden up and the twists to set in place. I'll get them bagged up and in the freezer later tonight.


Naturally they had to be tasted so I fried one up with the left-over sausage meat patties (there's always a bit that doesn't end up in the skin. Fried quite slowly, it stayed together ok with the juice nicely trapped in the skin ready to burst out when cut.

The verdict: I'd have had a bit more salt and pepper, particularly white pepper in them but they are more edible that your supermarket sausage for sure. Juicy and meaty. No added brine, no added rusk just pork.

All my sausage making kit came from http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/home it's by no means cheap but the sausage maker will outlast me. It's a lovely bit of engineering and built to last.

So now I have a month or so's worth of sausage and mash to satisfy my hankering for Richard's hand pushed sausages. All I need to do to make it better is to keep a few free range pigs...