Workout + Food

I learned a few things about making sausage today.

1. Sausage has sugar in it. Or at least it can.

2. If you use a hand grinder, you have to get the ring that holds the grinder together on as tightly as possible. Otherwise, the blade will fail to cut long fibers of meat as they pass through, and the grinder will clog.

3. Do not use a hand grinder unless you are a masochist or in need of bust development.

4. Picnic hams appear incredibly fatty when you grind them, but they’re actually too lean for sausage.

I took my brined hams and ground them up (nightmare), and then I used this recipe:

INGREDIENTS

10 lbs. pork
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. paprika
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp. sage
1/2 lb. El Cochinito brand lard

I added the lard because the test pieces I fried made almost no grease, and that’s unacceptable. I guess next time I’ll find a way to get more fat into the meat. Maybe I should buy pork loins at Costco and mix them with plain old fatback. Costco loins are cheap, and the quality is great. The picnic hams are okay, but they’re hard to cut up, and I suspect the meat is not as good for sausage as loins are. I’ve never had a gamy loin chop, but picnic hams are hit and miss.

The recipe I started with contained no paprika, and it only used two tbsp. of pepper. I thought the first test piece was a little bland, hence the pepper. I would cut the brown sugar to 3/8 cup next time. A little garlic wouldn’t hurt. I think powder would be better than fresh for this use.

I wonder if I could substitute frozen apple juice concentrate for the sugar. That would rock.

I ended up with 11 pounds of sausage. I intended to can it, but I couldn’t make myself make sausage without sage in it. It seemed immoral somehow. And you can’t can it if it contains sage. I shaped the sausage into 11 one-pound loaves and put them in the freezer to firm up. When they’re hard, I’ll seal ten of them in bags and freeze them. The other one is for immediate use.

This stuff will be much better than store sausage, mainly because of the paprika. When I made the first test piece, I thought it was a little sweet, and I thought it needed more pepper, and I knew there was something else missing. I concentrated hard, and then I knew the answer. I made two more test pieces, with paprika in one piece. It turned out to be exactly what was needed. This amount of sage is fairly light, but I didn’t mind that.

If I were going to can this stuff, I’d jack the cayenne and black pepper up by at least one teaspoon each, because I’d have to remove the sage, and that would make the sausage too mild.

It’s sad that the sausage is better than store sausage, because now I’m spoiled. Oh well.