Pork Sausages One

This last weekend was time to make some more sausages. I followed two recipes this round and then cold smoked half of the second recipe. This is an experiment to see how much smoke flavour I can get into a pork sausage.

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE WITH FRESH GINGER AND SAGE

The first recipe was "BREAKFAST SAUSAGE WITH FRESH GINGER AND SAGE" from the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. see books tab.

Unfortunately I could not find fresh sage and mine has not survived the winter or the puppies so I had to substitute with dried sage. For the rest I followed the recipe closely and must say this is a delicious sausage. I do believe the fresh herb would add another dimension to the flavour - next time.

THYME FLAVOURED SAUSAGE - Half smoked

The second recipe was a simple sausage focusing on a strong thyme flavour. I also cold smoked half this batch.

Ingredients:
3kg 80:20 pork shoulder
1tsp garlic powder
8g white pepper
53g salt (I used fine ground Himalayan rock salt)
3Tbsp Dried Sage
2tsp onion powder
3g dried thyme
300ml iced water

After blending the dry spices with the chopped meat I ground this through the mincer small plate then mixed for about 2 minutes in the electric mixer (Kenwood) adding the water until this was all looking nice and sticky. This was then stuffed into hog casings and linked.

Half this batch was then put into the cold smoker for 2 hours of cold smoke contact. After this the sausages are bagged, tagged and left in the fridge for a day for the smoke and flavours to blend.

The thyme flavour is well pronounced in this sausage. The cold smoke also penetrated well giving this an interesting additional flavour for a fresh sausage. Adding smoke like this to a bacon and cheese sausage would work very well.

The smoke was not a dominant or overpowering flavour but also tamed the thyme somewhat. The cold smoke also didn't make the sausages very rich like I find hot smoking them does.

The texture and flavour here was wonderful and I will definitely add a splash of cold smoke to sausages on occasion going forward.