Sausage Making
The mouthwatering sausages, can be purchased from the market; still preparing them all by yourself is something which cannot be compared to anything. The art of sausage making requires some duration to accomplish, but if you achieve it, you and your buddies will not wish to eat the purchased ones. Albeit preparing sausages is not quite complex, it asks for some extent of frequent practice, some particular judgments, as well as some patience, and obviously the correct appliances.
Sausages can be roughly divided into fresh and cured. Fresh ones are cooked just prior to serving. Breakfast, bratwurst, Italian and Polish sausages fall in this sort. They can either be stuffed into casings or can be given the form of patties or they can be fried like hamburgers. Cured sausages are prepared in a way so that they can be preserved for many years. For this purpose, methods such as fermentation, salting and dying are used. According to the most recent health concepts, it is suggested to use nitrates and/or nitrites so as to cease micro-organism development.
Cured sausages too are of two kinds, namely semi-dry and dry. Hot dogs and summer sausages come under semi-dry ones, which are cooked and further can be stored in whereas dry cured sausages are not cooked, but are dehydrated and afterwards can be preserved at room temperatures for many years. Both of these are many times fermented to provide them a unique tang and also ability to stay good for longer time.
For creating sausages, crushed meat is necessary, which you can either pick from the butcher or you can mince it all by yourself. And if you are going to crush it by yourself, the prior appliance, you will require is a meat grinder. Depending on your requirement of fineness of the meat, you can pound it a number of times. True sausage making contains stuffing them into casings, and this can be done also with the meat grinders, by including a stuffing tube. Casings can be of lots of classes, for instance beef middles, fibrous casings, hog casing and sheep casing.
For the purpose of curing, 2 categories of chemicals are brought into use; one comprises of sodium nitrite and is called Prague Powder 1 and the other has sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite and is called Prague Powder 2. The first one is brought into use for making semi-dry sausages, whereas the other is used for preparing dry sausages. These powders are blended with enough salt to make it convenient to measure their quantity in teaspoon, while making the recipes. They not only offer pathogen-killing effect, but also render an enticing pink hue to the dish.
For the purpose of fermenting, you can purchase the culture in the market and can produce a 5 pound bunch from 1/8 tsp. It has to be combined with the meat along with some water, just as remaining substances like spices. After stuffing, you need to preserve the sausages overnight, either at about 90° Fahrenheit in a smoker or for a little longer time at room temperature. Following that you can dry, smoke or cook the sausage, depending on the need.
Smoking is not wanted for preparing all the dishes of sausages, although it is a must for some dishes, for instance, Braunschweiger. It is done based on individual taste in dishes, like Polish sausages, beef sticks, salami and summer sausages.
Hence, although there are various processes and skills essential for ideal sausage making, the task is not undoable and you can achieve the talent to make them on your own to get the admiration of buddies.