Ground Meat On Sale? Make Sausage!

Monday, 15 February 2010

Ground Meat On Sale? Make Sausage!

It's easy, it's cheap, it tastes amazing and you can make it lean as you like...that's right, homemade sausage...wait, keep reading! You don't need a meat grinder, casing etc.

Now, if you are a purest and only consider it real if it's like the store bought version, then this might not be for you, but if you are a person who likes to cook, likes to eat and looks aren't the most important thing when it comes to food, read on.

For some reason, ground meat of all varieties was on sale the other day, so I stocked up. Usually, I would just patty it up and put it in the freezer for later use but it was a rainy day, a good day for cooking, so I got creative.

I had tried my hand at homemade bratwurst about a month ago with tasty results! I mixed up ground pork and beef with spices, made sausage shapes (no casing) and baked them so they'd retain their shape till they firmed up. They browned nicely in the oven and tasted great...oh, did I mention they cost about 1/3 of what store bought prepared brats cost? Since I, like so many of us, am currently unemployed, this is a plus!

Encouraged by that experiment, I decided to try my hand at some other varieties - fresh kielbasa (I am 50% Polish), and chorizo...because I LOVE it spicy.

I searched the web for recipes and then, in true cook's spirit, used them as inspiration rather than formulas. I keep a well stocked herb/spice collection, so it was easy to improvise as I went along. The recipes for kielbasa varied wildly but the ones for chorizo, barring the proportions, were surprisingly similar.

What I did was check out a number of recipes and see what the basic, across the board, ingredients were. I used that as my starting point, then tweaked it with the inclusion and amounts of the other spices according to my own tastes and sensibilities. I mix the kielbasa and chorizo by hand but when I make brats, I prefer the smooth textured ones so I mix that in my stand up mixer for a longer time to pulverize the meat - works like a charm.

Several recipes suggest leaving the mixed sausage in the fridge overnight (or longer) kneading from time to time to let the seasonings meld. I thought that sounded like a good idea; I hadn't tried that last time.

The chorizo recipes suggested leaving it go for as long as three days to get the full flavor, which is probably OK since one of the ingredients is a surprising (to me at least) amount of wine, vinegar or combination of the two. The kielbasa and bratwurst recipes only suggest overnight.

Some recipes use egg as binder. In my brats (this time I used turkey because it was on sale), I added ground cooked barley to hold in extra moisture, since the meat was so lean. Many recipes include dry milk as well.

Sausage-making is not an exact art, though some rules of thumb are useful. Most recipes suggest using fatty meat and surely they will make for a tasty juicy sausage. Because of the diet I am on, I use leaner meat, either with or without fillers. Since I make the sausage for my own personal use and don't really miss the fat, this isn't an issue. The filler can hold moistness, though technically it is something that is left out of homemade sausage and, indeed, it is one of the reasons people make their own.

Fillers, like bread crumbs, oatmeal, other grains, or crumbs (think meatloaf) certainly change the texture but not necessarily in a negative way. Meatloaf is nothing else but a large quick sausage, yummy and moist in its best incarnations. To any homemade sausage recipe, add some filler, bake it in a loaf and you'll have an interesting ethnic meatloaf. It's all good!

Indeed, I've learned a lot about the "theme" spices of various cultures. It is not uncommon for the same or similar type of spices to show up in both savory and sweet dishes of a culture. In Mexico, chili, chocolate and cinnamon show up in both sweet and savory dishes. In German and Polish cooking, allspice, nutmeg, ginger and mace reappear over and over. In Italian, anise and fennel are standards in both main dishes and desserts. This is a good thing to remember when making sausage.

So, for each pound of ground meat you want about 1 tsp of salt, 2 Tb of seasoning, and 1/3-1/2 cup of water or other liquid. These are all negotiable but are good jumping off points. If you prefer a smoked sausage, add liquid smoke flavoring. Most sausage recipes also suggest about a 1/2 Tb of sugar or other sweetener per pound of meat but adjust according to taste.

Don't limit yourself to the seasonings of any particular culture. Be bold! Use your imagination! I plan to make Indian curry sausage and Thai inspired sausage very soon. Why not? I mean, Indian seasoned meatballs in a lovely curry sauce...I'm drooling here...are you?

Sometimes we let the details of a certain food preparation put us off. I didn't make sausage for years because I thought I had to have a grinder and casing. But cooks throughout time have improvised, that is where our recipes come from. We take what we have, put it together in new ways, sometimes out of desperation, necessity or inspiration and Viola, a new favorite is born!

Have you ever made sausage? Do you have any sausage recipes you'd like to share?

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