Hi Steve,
Finally, a subject on which I feel I can contribute something useful! I’m not a professional butcher, and the following is just my opinion, but it’s based on a fair amount of research and a decade or so of various culinary adventures (including buying and butchering a whole pig with a couple of my mates last summer).
Sausages are definitely worth a go! Here are some thoughts:
• A combination of fatty (eg belly) and lean (eg boned shoulder) meat is good, half and half ideally.
• I like it coarsely minced to give bangers with some proper texture.
• Might sound like cheating, but adding some rusk/breadcrumbs actually helps the sausages to retain fat when cooking and keeps them moist. About 5og per kilo of meat. Not absolutely essential though. If using, mix the rusk in well (use your hands!), then add 100ml water per kilo meat.
• Salt is a crucial ingredient- about 5-10g per kilo of meat.
• Ingredients- anything you like! Some of my favourites are: White pepper 30g/kilo meat. Sage, apple and cider: a good handful of sage, 120g finely chopped apple/kilo meat, and use cider instead of water. Toulouse: smoked garlic, sage, rosemary, lovage, thyme and basil (1.5 handfuls of herbs/kilo of meat). It’s great fun to make little test-patties, choose your favourites and then multiply up.
• Don’t overfill your casings. You need to leave enough room so they don’t burst when you twist them. Leave them a bit flaccid (sorry, but it’s the most appropriate word!).
• A sheet of polythene, vinyl tablecloth or similar on the table, and a gentle mist of water from a spray bottle makes doing the twist thing a doddle. If the casings get dry, they stick to each other and are a right pain.
• My mates and I struggled for ages with making links (those professional looking bunches of bangers that butchers do), watching videos, and tying ourselves and the sausages into all sorts of crazy knots. Then one day I had a eureka moment. Links are just a “chain sinnet” knot like this one (with a wee variation):
http://www.animatedknots.com/chainsinnet/index.php?Categ=decorative
Look at each element of the knot, and imagine making them a bit longer so the 3 “strands” are parallel. Then imagine the rope is your casing of sausagemeat! So you start with a loop, and pull another loop through it. Pinch the casing at the crossing points. The variation is that when you pull the loop through, just take it round the back, and then flip it through the same loop again. This stops it coming undone. I hope that makes sense, and would be really interested to know if it does! This is where keeping everything moist and slippery with a spray bottle really helps.
• Once you’re done, hang the sausages up somewhere cool (and animal-proof!!) for a few hours/overnight. A fair amount of liquid will drip out, and you can then cook or freeze them.
Hope that's useful.
Enjoy!
Best,
Sven
