Basically a sausage recipe is meat, salt and pepper












 








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Sausage Recipe Secrets


 

Basically a sausage recipe is meat, salt and pepper. I will never
forget when I made my first Polish smoked sausage that turned out very well and
I proudly gave it to my friend - professional sausage maker Waldemar to try. I
have included salt, pepper, garlic, and added optional marjoram. I also added
nutmeg and other spices that I liked. Well my friendłs judgement was as follows:

"Great sausage but why all those perfumes?"
For him it was supposed to be the classical Polish Smoked
Sausage and all it needed was salt, pepper and garlic.
Combining meat with salt and pepper already makes a great
product providing that you will follow the basic rules of sausage making.
Itłs that simple. If you donłt cure your
meats properly or screw up your smoking and cooking temperatures,
all the spices in the world (saffron included) will not save your sausage.
If you follow safety rules and the proper manufacturing
methods it does not really matter how close to the original your recipe is and
the final product will taste great. It is like roasting chicken in a rotisserie,
as long as you add salt and pepper to it, the chicken will come out beautifully.
You may add paprika to it, lemon juice, garlic or any other spices you like but
it will still remain a fine meal. But if you roast it too long, now it is a
different story. The same applies to a sausage, as long as you stay within
certain temperatures and times, the sausage will turn out great. Let us quote
Madame Benoit, the famous Canadian cookery expert and author who once said:




"I feel a recipe is only a
theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a
variation."



Most likely you will be making sausages for yourself so use
spices that you and your kids like, after all you will end up eating it. We have
seen recipe books with names like these: Sausage #1, Sausage #2, Sausage #3. You
can do the same but be original and name it after your kids, friends or even
your dog or a cat. Just put more oregano to one recipe because John likes more
oregano on his pizza and put caraway into the second recipe because Elizabeth
likes bread with caraway seeds. Now you have John and
Elizabeth Sausages with family history.

Keep in mind that most of those wonderful recipe sites on the
Internet are run by college educated kids who are good at writing. This is what
they do for a living - they nicely compile information that they think is
relevant and present it for you to read. How many do you think have made
their own head cheese, blood sausage or cold smoked salmon or pork loin?
Most sausage books on
the market are written by restaurant chefs who want to be creative and let go of
their imagination and for them it is like cooking a meal. They can be easily
spotted as they often donłt mention curing meat or using nitrites when smoking.
The smoking and cooking temperatures they recommend are also much too high as
they are mainly familiar with barbecuing or grilling. In some European countries
for example in Poland there is a profession one elects when studying Meat
Science in College and it is called the butcher
sausagemaker and it is a quite
demanding program. Everything they do has been tailored for producing top
quality meat products.

 

 
The rules (the secrets):


1. Fat. The meat needs about 25 - 30% fat in it. This will
make the sausage tender and juicy, without fat it will feel dry.


2. Salt. You need salt. The proper amount of salt in meat
(tastes pleasant) is 2
3 %, though 1.5
2% is usually an average. About 3.5-5%
will be the upper limit of acceptability, anything more and the product will be
too salty. Almost all original sausage recipes contain 2 % of salt and if you
use that figure your sausages will be great. If you want a consistent product
weigh out your salt. Estimating salt per cups or spoons can be deceiving as not
all salts weigh the same per unit volume. more about Salt


Salt perception can be an acquired taste. If you decide
to go on a low sodium diet and start decreasing the amount of salt you consume,
in about three weeks time you may reach a point when your food tastes enjoyable,
though you use less salt than before. This is fine as long as you prepare those
meals for yourself. When smoking meats, sausage or fish for your friends try to
adhere to the amount of salt the original recipe calls for as other people will
probably like more salt than you.

When smoking large amounts of meat that will be kept for a
week or longer in the kitchen or refrigerator, remember that it will keep on
drying out (losing moisture). Salt will, however, remain inside and your
sausage will now taste saltier and will be of a smaller diameter. The meat
flavor will also be stronger now. In such a case you may use less salt than
originally planned for, letłs say 1.5 mg/kg (1.5%). That will not apply when making a
fresh sausage which will be consumed in a matter of days and 1.8 - 2.0 mg salt
per one kilogram of meat will be fine.


3. Pepper. The most popular spice "pepper" comes
in two forms:



black pepper - unripe
seeds of the plant with the skin left on
white pepper - ripe
seeds with the skin removed


It is available as the whole seeds but you have to grind it.
Like in a case of coffee beans, the advantage is that you get a fresher aroma
when grinding seeds just before use. It is available as coarse grind, sometimes
called butcherłs grind or fine grind. A recipe will call for a particular grind
but the final choice will be up to you. Black pepper is normally used in fresh
sausages and blood sausages, and white pepper is used in others. Polish sausage
might need black pepper of a coarse grind but a hot dog, Bologna or Krakowska
sausage will call for white pepper. The dividing line is whether you want to
see the pepper in your product or not. Otherwise it makes no difference and
you can replace black pepper with the same amount of white pepper, although the
black pepper is a bit hotter.


4. Sugar. Less crucial, normally used to offset the
harshness of salt. Amount used is about 10 % of the salt used in the recipe.
Sugar is normally used with salt when curing meat. As a flavoring ingredient,
sugar plays a little role in making sausages. No more than 3g of sugar is added
to 1kg of meat otherwise it can be noticeable. Chinese are very fond of sweet
sausages so they might be an exception to the rule. If after mixing meat with
ingredients we find that the mixture tastes too salty, we can try to save the
product by adding a little sugar. Not too much though as it should not be felt
in a ready to eat sausage.
5. Taste your sausage before you stuff it. There is not much we can do to alter the taste of the
sausage after it is stuffed into the casing and we strongly recommend to taste
the meat when mixing it with spices. People make mistakes when reading recipes,
they get confused with ounces and grams, they use different size spoons to
measure ingredients, etc. We donÅ‚t expect you to eat raw  meat, though some
people have been
doing it all their lifes. Ever heard of a steak Tartar? Well, you can order it in a
good restaurant or make it at home. A
steak tartar is a raw ground beef, mixed with salt, pepper, some mustard, put
some finely chopped onions on top, throw a raw egg, little pickle and all you
need is a bottle of cold beer. That was the food the greatest warrior that ever lived,
Genghis Khan, and his troops ate every day, though they used the horse meat.
Well, smile we donÅ‚t expect you to do the same as  there
is a much easier way to taste your meat. Just make a very tiny hamburger, like a
quarter, throw it on a frying pan and in two minutes you can taste your sausage.
In case itłs too salty and there is no more meat at home, all you can do is to
run to the nearest market and buy some ground pork and add it to your creation.
In case the supermarket has only ground beef, buy it all the same. You will
slightly change the recipe and you might even like it more. You are the
artist, do what pleases you
 


 

 Most sausages will include a dominant spice
plus other spices and ingredients. There are some Polish blood
sausages (kaszanka) that add buckwheat grouts or rice, there are English blood
sausages (black pudding) that include barley, flour or oatmeal. Some great Cajun
sausages like Boudain also include rice, pork, liver and a lot of onion. Most
sausages are made of solid meat which is easier and faster to process, but a lot
of sausages like headcheese contain different organs like tongue, heads with
brains, liver, skins, and hearts. Liver of course always goes into liver
sausages. There are some delicious hams where the only ingredient is salt and
people say that even adding pepper distorts the natural flavor.
 Let's see what goes besides salt and pepper into some well
known sausages that have a recognized flavor.
 




Name


Type of meat


Dominant spice


Sugar



Italian Sweet Sausage

Pork

Fennel

Yes



Italian Medium Hot Sausage

Pork

Fennel plus cayenne

Yes



Italian Hot Sausage

Pork

Fennel plus more cayenne

Yes



Polish Smoked Sausage

Pork

Garlic

Yes



Kabanosy

Pork

Nutmeg, Caraway

Yes



Hunter's Sausage

Pork, beef

Juniper

Yes



American Breakfast Sausage

Pork

Sage

No



Hungarian Smoked Sausage

Beef

Hungarian Paprika (Sweet)

No



Andouille

Pork

Garlic, thyme, cayenne

No


 
All those sausages contain salt (about 2%),
pepper and sodium nitrite (except Italian Sausages, American Breakfast Sausage
as those are fresh type sausages that will not be smoked). They also include
more spices in smaller doses, but the dominant spice is what gives them
their characteristic flavor. Take for example two great Polish classics: Polish
Smoked Sausage and Mysliwska Sausage (Hunterłs Sausage). The amount of salt and
pepper is exactly the same and they both contain garlic and sugar. The
difference is that Mysliwska has 10 % of beef in it and juniper.
And that gives it different taste and flavor. Thatłs the secret.
 
Spices
 


Mace and Nutmeg can leave a bitter taste when used more
than 1.0 gram per 1 kg of meat. As a rule they are not used in fresh sausages as
their aroma is easily noticeable.

Onion if not cooked will leave a bitter taste and should
never be used in sausages that are going to be cold smoked or air dried for a
long time. Up to 50 g/kg can be used in blood sausages, liver sausages, and
headcheeses. Fresh or dehydrated onions may be used. Dehydrated onions are more
practical as they are always in uniform size, clean and ready to use.

Garlic can be used fresh or granulated. The advantage of
granulated garlic is that it does not have to be peeled off which may be a time
consuming task when making large amounts of sausage. Although the flavor of
fresh or granulated garlic is basically the same, fresh garlic has a much
stronger aroma.
Dark spices like nutmeg, caraway, cloves, and allspice can
darken the color of the sausage.

Paprika is another well known colorant and will give the
sausage an orange tint (dosage:1 Tbs/1 kg)

Thyme is similar to Marjoram but stronger

Ginger is used in poached sausages (white headchees,
liver sausages)

Vinegar though not a spice is used in some sausages like
white headcheese or Mexican Chorizo.
Meat plants use commercially prepared extracts that have a
much stronger flavor.
Basic guidelines for spice usage (grams for 1 kg of meat) as
practiced by commercial sausage manufacturers are listed in the left table
below. Measuring such small amounts of spices requires a very accurate scale and
in the right table below there is a column that lists spices used in recipes and
how many grams of a particular spice contains one flat teaspoon. The numbers are
based on spice data published by the American Spice Trade Association.






Spice

A typical dosage in g/kg


Allspice
0.3-0.5


Cardamon
0.25-0.4


Cinnamon
0.5


Coriander
0.5-1.0


Garlic
1.0 - 2.0


Ginger
0.3 - 0.5


Juniper
1.0-2.0


Marjoram
1.0 - 3.0


Mace
0.5


Nutmeg
0.2


Onion
10.0


Paprika
0.5 - 2.0


Black Pepper
1-2.0


White Pepper
1-2.0


Thyme
1.0


Sugar
2.0






Spice

Grams in one flat
teaspoon


Allspice, ground
1.90


Bay leaf, crushed
0.60


Basil, ground
1.40


Caraway
2.10


Cardamon, ground
1.99


Cloves, ground
2.10


Coriander seed
1.80


Ginger. ground
1.80


Mace, ground
1.69


Marjoram, dried
0.60


Mustard seed, yellow
3.20


Nutmeg, ground
2.03


Oregano, ground
1.50


Paprika, ground
2.10


Pepper-black, ground
2.10


Pepper-white, ground
2.40






Our note: 1 tsp of sugar = 5 g, 1 tsp of table salt = 6 g, 1 tsp
of cure #1 = 6 g, 1 tsp of juniper berries = 1.53 g,
1 Tablespoon = 3 teaspoons

If a recipe involves 10 kg meat just multiply the above
numbers by a factor of 10. Remember those data are a point of reference for your
calculations and you can adjust the amount of spices the way you like. If
you make a product for yourself your palate should be the final judge.

There are no secret
recipes, that is all boloney. All well known sausages are well documented and we
know what goes inside. Sausages are meat, salt, pepper and spices and correct
rules that govern their manufacture. You know that for instance a smoked
turkey breast from one manufacturer taste better than from the other. And
probably costs more, too. Why? The turkeys did not go to different schools, did
they? The answer lies in different manufacturing practices or may be the turkeys
were fed with a different feed which affected meat quality. Good meats make
good products.
Of course they are fresh
sausages and dry sausages and some of the sausage making steps will be omitted.
Some of the steps like grinding, mixing, drying or stuffing will influence
texture and the looks of the sausage more than itłs taste.
Others like smoking and cooking are very crucial as this is where the most
damage is done by using too high temperatures.
There are some family
operated sausage manufacturers (notably in Italy) that have been producing
consistent high quality product for generations and they do keep their formulas
secret. But this is an exception to the rule. They manufacture dry sausages and
it is more difficult to produce dry fermented sausages. Here the ingredients
like starter cultures, humidity control and other factors will play a major
role.

Extra ingredients and chemicals. You can change the look and even
texture of the sausage by adding soy protein concentrate but you have to stay
below 3 % otherwise you may change the taste. Your sausage will even look
prettier. You can put some liquid smoke into it, use colorants or pre
colored
casings or chemicals that will speed curing or retain more water. The whole meat
industry in the USA and recently also in Europe is based on one principle:
to add into meat as much water as possible.
Half of the machines in a meat processing plant are designed for that purpose:
pumps, computerized neddle injectors, meat tumblers, liquid smoke atomizers
(those supply smoke flavor) etc. We feel that those chemicals and methods should
be reserved for commercial manufacturers who without them will go out of
business. And we understand that but our site is dedicated to making top
quality products and unfortunatelly they don't do that. You know the saying:
"if you want something to be done right, you've got to
do it yourself". Anything that you put into the meat will change its
flavor even if we carefully measure the dosage that may be undetectable  by our
senses. If I tell you that if you put little mustard into your ice cream you
wonłt be able to taste it, you are not going to do that and you will think I am
crazy. So why  put all those unnecessary things into the sausage even if they
can not be detected. In the end they will have some accumulative strength and
will affect the final flavor of the product. It is surprising how little of the
spices were needed in the old original recipes to achieve the desired flavor.
Once you start adding binders, fillers and chemicals you have
to double up your spices to cover up your tracks.
That simple.
To sum it up:

"There are no secrets for most fresh and smoked sausages, just
the proper ways of making them".
 
 


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