Many of us still remember the taste of our grandmothers' products, prepared according to Old Polish, natural recipes, whose flavor is worlds apart from the products available in even the most sophisticated delis. Fortunately, nothing stands in the way of preparing dishes just like those from the past in your own kitchen.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Homemade products - why is it worth trying?
- Homemade products are healthier
- Homemade products are tastier
- Homemade products will enrich any kitchen
- Ingredients for homemade sausage
- What meat for homemade sausage
- How much seasoning for homemade sausage / what spices to add
- What casings for homemade sausage
- Accessories for making homemade sausage
- How to make Homemade Sausage - step by step
- How to cure meat for sausage?
- How to season homemade sausage?
- How to prepare casings for sausage?
- How to smoke sausage?
- Baking homemade sausage
- Scalding sausage after smoking
- Summary
HOMEMADE PRODUCTS - WHY IS IT WORTH TRYING?
In recent years, interest in healthy eating has been steadily growing among consumers. We are increasingly giving up ready-made solutions in favor of products prepared in the comfort of our own homes, which contain no preservatives or artificial colors.
HOMEMADE PRODUCTS ARE HEALTHIER
If we consider all home-cured meats, homemade sausage is perhaps the most famous among them. This is not surprising at all, considering that store-bought sausage contains a mass of chemical ingredients, including nitrites, which can increase the risk of certain types of cancer. Homemade sausage of your own making is simply much safer for your health.
HOMEMADE PRODUCTS ARE TASTIER
Among the many reasons why homemade sausage is tastier than mass-produced items, the most important is the quality of the meat. The flavor is also enhanced by spices, which we can not only adjust to our own taste and needs but also use in larger quantities, giving the dishes a delicious aroma.
HOMEMADE PRODUCTS WILL ENRICH ANY KITCHEN
Meats produced in a home smokehouse will work in any kitchen. They are excellent as a base for traditional Polish dishes and in regional cuisines. What might be surprising, however, is the fact that homemade cold cuts have also found a place in modern cuisine. They pair perfectly with sophisticated cheeses, vegetables, and even seafood.
INGREDIENTS FOR HOMEMADE SAUSAGE
Sausage is a product that has its permanent place in the fridge of every meat lover. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to purchase high-quality meat in a typical store. If such products are available in delis, we have to pay quite a lot for them. Even if you don't know a reliable homemade cold cut producer, you are not doomed to chemically modified store meat. Check how to prepare homemade sausage using commonly available kitchen accessories.
WHAT MEAT FOR HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
Sausage is such a universal product that it can be consumed for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, both cold and hot. Without additions or in a main course. Our great-grandmothers prepared homemade sausage mainly from pork for economic reasons. Pork was usually the most readily available meat. Sometimes venison or mutton was also added to sausages. To prepare a flavor-rich homemade sausage, it is best to use several types of meat: shoulder, ham, bacon, and pork jowl. You can decide the proportions yourself, guided by your own taste.
WHAT SPICES TO ADD TO HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
Don't know how to season homemade sausage? Nothing simpler. Most often, for 1 kg of meat, 15 g of salt, 10 g of granulated garlic, and 5 g of black pepper are used. Popular ingredients also include mustard seeds, white pepper, allspice, sweet and hot paprika, or sugar. As you gain experience, you can allow yourself various flavor modifications. The only thing that should be measured precisely is the salt. The rest depends on your taste.
Ready-made spice mixes are also available on the market; depending on what kind of sausage you want to make, you can use, for example, a sausage spice mix for Głogowska, Grill, Podwawelska, and many, many others. Be sure to check the available market offer.
WHAT CASINGS FOR HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
To prepare homemade sausage at home, we don't need a special or expensive stuffer. It is enough to get an attachment for a meat grinder called a funnel and attach the end of the casing to it. For every kilogram of meat, you should prepare 1 meter of casings. Pork casings are best suited for making sausages, allowing us to prepare white sausage, Silesian, country sausage, blood sausage, liver sausage, or potato sausage.
The excellent physical properties of pork casings allow them to be boiled, smoked, semi-dried, dried, scalded, and grilled. Properly prepared for stuffing, pork casings ensure an aesthetic appearance for the sausage and prevent it from falling apart during thermal processing. They make the meat firm and juicy. Casings protect against the loss of juices and the aromas characteristic of sausages.
ACCESSORIES FOR MAKING HOMEMADE SAUSAGE
We don't need specialized equipment to prepare sausage in our own home. It is necessary, however, to use equipment that allows for meat preparation and stuffing. Fortunately, these are devices that most of us already have at home, or if not, can be purchased without high costs.
To make homemade sausage at home, you need:
- a meat grinder and a funnel
- natural casings or artificial casings,
- meat,
- herbs and spices, including: curing salt, table salt, garlic, pepper, and others to taste.
The most important tool we cannot do without during homemade sausage production is a meat grinder. We could also buy ground meat, but we wouldn't be sure of its original state and appearance. Therefore, we recommend buying a manual and indestructible ALFA grinder, whose advantages over electronic equipment are worth considering. The grinder used for producing homemade sausage should be equipped with plates of various hole sizes and a funnel used for stuffing the casings with the meat mass.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE SAUSAGE? STEP BY STEP
Preparing homemade sausage is not at all complicated, despite appearances. To enjoy the unique taste, all you need is good quality meat, a handful of aromatic spices, and a little patience.
There are as many recipes for homemade sausage as there are palates. This type of cold cut can be prepared from various types of meat and any combination thereof. The only thing to remember is to include both lean and fatty meat in the recipe. Fat is the carrier of flavor and gives the sausage the right consistency.
If you intend to prepare sausage at home for the first time, it's good to start with a small portion and see if it's the taste you're looking for. With subsequent attempts, you can experiment, add other types of meat, and adjust the spices to your preferences.
HOW TO CURE MEAT FOR SAUSAGE?
Before we start the actual preparation, the meat should be cured beforehand to extend its shelf life. There are two methods of curing: wet and dry.
Curing is one of the oldest ways of preserving food. For this purpose, a special curing salt is used, which is dissolved in water. Additional benefits of curing include improved meat color and a characteristic aroma.
It is very important to maintain the correct proportions of the brine. To cure meat for sausage, we add 17-20 g of curing salt per 1 kg of sausage stuffing. Meat curing should take place at a temperature of 2-6 degrees and last about 24 hours for meat ground for sausage. If we cure whole pieces before grinding, e.g., a ham weighing 2.5 kg, we pour 50 g of salt into 0.5 liters of water.
The pieces of meat are covered with or injected with the prepared brine and turned every few hours so the flavor spreads evenly. Curing salt is not suitable for direct consumption, so it should not be used to season dishes.
HOW TO SEASON HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
Add spices and garlic to the ground, cured meat. Knead the whole thing, gradually adding water. First, mix the meat that was ground through the finest plate, adding some salt and water as well as part of the spices. Mix until you get a sticky mass that comes off the hand and is like modeling clay. Later, mix the meat that was ground through the 10mm plate and the 4mm plate, adding the rest of the spices and salt and a little water. Mix until the whole is uniform, and then add the meat mixed at the beginning. Knead everything until a uniform mass is obtained.
HOW TO PREPARE CASINGS FOR SAUSAGE?
Next, we prepare the casings. Casings should be filled tightly using a stuffer or a grinder. The ALFA grinder, for which you can choose funnels of various sizes, works perfectly for this.
- Thoroughly rinse the salt off the casings.
- Then soak the casings in warm (30-35 degrees) water for about 3 hours.
- Rinse the inside of the soaked casings with warm water by pouring water inside and pulling your hand along so the water flows out the other end. The water will make the walls slippery and make it easier to stuff the sausage.
Stuff the casings, twisting them every approx. 30 cm, thus creating links that should then be hung up. Next, we move on to smoking.
HOW TO SMOKE HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
Homemade sausage dries for about 30 minutes at a temperature of approx. 50 degrees. The chimney or hatch of the smokehouse should be kept slightly open then, so the sausage can evaporate and dry out. After drying the sausage, we move on to smoking with smoke. We recommend using cherry wood chips or beech-alder chips. Smoke with smoke at 55-60 degrees for about 1.5 hours. When the sausage takes on the appropriate color, it's time for baking or scalding.
HOW TO BAKE HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
Increase the temperature in the smokehouse to 80-90 degrees and bake until the internal temperature of the sausage reaches 72 degrees. A special probe thermometer can be purchased in specialized stores.
After smoking the sausage, we can choose scalding instead of baking. This is simply a thermal processing process, the same as boiling.
HOW TO SCALD HOMEMADE SAUSAGE?
To do this, heat water in a pot until it reaches 70 degrees, place the sausage inside so it is completely submerged. Cook for about 20 minutes, making sure the water temperature stays at a constant level.
There is also a second school that teaches scalding sausage for a maximum of 30 minutes in water seasoned with salt, bay leaf, allspice, and thyme at a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius.
Now all that remains is to enjoy the taste!
SUMMARY
Preparing your own cured meat products is a way to preserve tradition in modernity. Furthermore, it is the luxury of preparing meat exactly in the way that best suits your palate. Sausage produced in the comfort of your home can be different every time and perfect at the same time. Experiment and see in which version it tastes best to you.
