18 July 2009: Stuffer

We got a sausage stuffer and made these sausages.

Following our earlier successfulle experimente with sausage recipes, it was now time to get hold of some sausage skins and see if we could make the real thing.

For those who missed the earlier excitement (or saw it get lost in the Saints melee that was this blog for three months), the story is that you can't get British-style sausages in the USA, except for some reasonably-close imitations from a pub in Indianapolis. However, a very nice man (and award-winning sausage guru) named Simon at Uptons of Bassett butcher shop in Southampton was kind enough to suggest a couple of recipes while we were there in April. Following his advice we put together a basic Lincolnshire recipe and tried them out, and deemed the recipe as successful and genuine.

So now it was time to get some skins and stuff our mixture into them. To do this, we needed an additional attachment for the mixer (acquired in Texas last week) and, of course, some sausage skins.

Phoned up the local butcher shop (well, phoned all three of them but only one would help) and he said we should use natural casings rather than artificial, as artificial tends to be a little chewy. Fair enough, until you realise that 'natural casings' means pig intestine, doesn't it? Yum.

So, assuming you have pork shoulder ground up and mixed with bread, salt, pepper and sage in the previously-stated quantities, along with a stuffing attachment and some intestine, here's what you do to make sausages.

First, run water through the intestine about three or four times:

Next, put the stuffer onto the grinding attachment, grease the stuffer and feed about four feet of intestine (sorry, casing) on there:

Then it's time to tie the end - either using string or just a careful, tight knot in the end of the casing - and begin putting the sausage mix into the top of the grinder/stuffer attachment:

Now the fun begins. Push the mix down into the grinder (using a tool, not your fingers) and it'll start coming out into the sausages:

Make sure that you don't over-stuff the casing, since it'll need a little expansion room when you twist them into links:

Once you're done, you'll have four feet of glorious-looking sausages:

If you're doing Cumberland Ring, just curl it up. We're doing individual Lincolnshire sausages, so it's time to twist:

We weren't hugely successful first time round with making them the same length, but they look pretty authentic:

Then we cut them up to put in the fridge, which is the photo at the top of this blog. Final stage of the process (aside from washing up and decontaminating the entire kitchen - and the camera - after getting raw pork everywhere) was phoning up some other British people in town and inviting them over for a barbecue this evening.

However, it might be wise just to cook one up now and check it's ok... just to avoid disappointing our guests, you know...?

Thanks again to Simon from Uptons for supplying both the basic recipe and the encouragement to make sausages in this far distant land.