Making Fresh Sausages

If you are looking to start producing some home foods an ideal place to start is with fresh, homemade sausages, they are relatively easy to make, the ingredients are cheap and the results are instant and very rewarding.

Sausages or snags come in many different shapes and sizes and can be easily defined between the two main categories, fresh and cured. 

Fresh sausages alone have an enormous variety from the German bratwurst to the Finnish makkara but perhaps the most loved in the UK is the breakfast sausage; made from a mixture of pork meat, fat, rusk and seasonings it has been a staple of the full English breakfast for many a year.

Fresh sausages or snags are made up of a simple mixture of meat which has been minced or as we say in the trade ground; this ground meat is available from any butcher but anyone who is serious about making sausages will grind the meat themselves using a grinder (mincer.)

There are a whole myriad of grinders available from professional motorised ones to hand powered machines, there are also handy attachments available to use with your kitchen food processor.

The mincer or grinder forces the meat via an auger through a stationary plate which depending on the  size of the holes will determine the coarseness of the meat.

This mince in then combined with a mixture of rusk, herbs and spices to give substance and flavour.

Rusk is a dry mix which can be brought from butchers and other kitchen supply stores.

Rusk resembles a dry stuffing mix and like stuffing it needs to be rehydrated before the maker’s choice of flavoursome herbs and spices are added to give the fresh sausages their individual taste and style.

Every fresh sausage needs a casing to hold it together. Sausage casings can be divided into two categories, man made and natural.

Man made casings are easy to use and require no real preparation. Natural casings on the other hand are a completely different beast. Your natural casings will come either in brine or sometimes in a salt cake so the first thing you will need to do is treat them to reduce the salt content and to soften the casing itself.

The best way to treat the sausage casings is to separate out what you think you will need and soak in a bowl of cold water in the fridge overnight.

When soaking the sausage casings make sure you hang the ends over the edge of the bowl or they will be very hard to find when you go to use them. Give them another rinse before you go to stuff them.

If the casings came in a salt cake I would advise passing water through the inside of the sausage casings as well or you may end up with an overly salt sausage.

Deciding whether to use natural or man made casings is an individual choice but most serious sausage makers will go with natural every time. My personal favourite for fresh sausages are sheep casings.

Once the casings have been treated you are ready to begin stuffing. If you have elected to go with the man made casings then you can simply follow the stuffing instructions on the packet.

If you have gone for a natural sausage casing then thread previously soaked skin onto nozzle, the best way to do this is to open the end of the skin and dunk in water to allow some water into the skin, this will make the skin easier to load onto the nozzle and fill more smoothly with the sausage mixture.

Load the skin onto the nozzle until full and allow part of the sausage skin to overhang nozzle by two centimetres. As you feed the mince into the grinder a flow of meat will start to fill the casing.

How much you restrict the flow will determine how tightly packed the sausage; too tight and the sausage will burst!

To regulate the flow simply hold the sausage skin on the nozzle with thumb and forefinger and adjust the pressure, the more pressure you apply the tighter the sausage will be packed.

Once you have filled your casing tie a knot in the end and then tie the fresh sausages into bunches. You will need to hang the sausages in a dry cool place for several hours to allow them to dry.

Once the casings are dry you can divide into pack and store. Remember that you have no preservatives in your fresh homemade sausages to they will need to be eaten within three days if you are freezing them make sure you use a sealable bag and never re freeze.

The perfect fresh sausages

Everyone has their own idea of what makes the perfect fresh sausage just look at all the varieties we have in the supermarket - Lincolnshire, Cumberland, pork and apple, sweet chilli the list goes on and on.

Making your own fresh sausages or snags allows you to impart your own flavours and style in the sausages, every aspect of it is totally in the makers control - the size, shape seasoning can all be changed to suit taste as can the meat which is used.

The best way to get started is to follow a sausage making recipe to the letter and see how you feel about the results, pretty much everyone will have an opinion on how the finished article could be improved so from then on try changing one thing at a time.

Maybe you would like a stronger taste so up the seasoning; maybe a slightly softer consistency would ideal so you could increase the fat content – you can literally tailor make your ideal homemade fresh sausage.

Once you have perfected one sausage recipe you can start on the next, pretty soon you will have an impressive fresh sausage making repertoire with a sausage or snag for all occasions.