Our best sausages yet

We brought the pork from our latest batch of pigs back from the butcher yesterday, including a huge bag of minced pork (boned out shoulder and ham, boned out belly, and fat).

So, last night we set to work on our sausage making.

Now, we have made sausages before and been well pleased with the results, but last night we came up with a recipe that went beyond excellent to verging on the sublime.

Ingredients

• 5lb minced pork (make sure it has a good ratio of fat, but not too much)
• 3oz stale breadcrumbs (or rusk)
• 2 tbsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tbsp fresh sage, finely chopped
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• Good pinch of cayenne (not too much, we’re not making spicy sausages!)

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl, then force into casings and tie off into sausages.
2. Leave to hang for about an hour, then bag, leave in the refrigator overnight and then freeze. Hanging allows the casings to dry while refrigerating before freezing allows the flavours to develop.
3. You can also make the force meat into patties – the boys had one each for breakfast and they disappeared in no time.

You could cut the salt back to 1 1/2 tbsp but our first test cook with that much was a little insipid (althought still good). The extra salt and the large pinch of cayenne added for the second test cook made the difference between good and brilliant.

But, we must not forget the top-rank chefs we had working alongside us…

The sausage mixer

The sausage stuffer

Finished, now when can we eat?