Sausage Tasting

Browned sausages in a cast iron skillet

After the sausage-making marathon I think we can be excused for deferring the formal tasting of the fruits of our labours for a full seven days.  We convened the 1st Annual Celebrity Sausage Tasting Panel (i.e. family members) and cooked up all five varieties of homemade sausage for sampling and (gentle) critiquing.

A platter of cooked sausage pieces and healthy pile of sauerkraut

First, let’s spend a moment discussing how to get the sausages from raw (or frozen) to perfectly-cooked.  In my opinion grilling sausages is largely about ambiance–it’s pleasant to be outside to cook a meal in August, not so in January.  From a culinary perspective the challenge is that sausages are best cooked over very gentle heat and that can be a hard thing to get with gas and especially charcoal.  They don’t spend enough time on a charcoal grill to pick up enough smoke flavour to balance the difficultly involved in controlling the temperature.

Directions for sausage cooking often combine a gentle simmer with a hotter sear by starting the sausages in a flavourful liquid (like beer) over medium-low heat and then by removing the lid and increasing the heat until the liquid evaporates and the sausages have browned. Without the perfect pan and a burner with a very wide range I find that this method is too hot and makes a mess of the pan.  I would rather simmer the sausages, remove them from the pan, pour out then water and then brown them in the reheated pan.

Hank Shaw has what I think is an even better method on his site.  He directs that the sausages be browned, on medium-low heat in an oven-safe pan (five minutes in a preheated cast iron pan seems to work) and then flipped before the whole pan goes into a 300°F oven.  Hank calls for twenty to thirty minutes in the oven but I have found that after eighteen minutes the sausages had reached the perfect temperature.

To defrost sausages I find it’s best to simmer them gently in water for about ten minutes or until they’re no longer rigid.  Because the starting temperature is less precise this way an instant read thermometer should be used to check the sausages’ temperature in the oven.

Here’s our thoughts on the five varieties of sausages we made:

Bratwurst with its amazingly smooth texture

Bratwurst: We noticed the impressive nutmeg flavour right away.  Between the veal, eggs, and heavy cream this sausage had the most uniform texture of the lot.  The only change I might make next time to this recipe would be to add some orange zest to subtly connect the fatty meat flavours to the spicy nutmeg.

Hot Italian with its coarser texture and winning flavour

Hot Italian: My favourite for taste, I think. This hot Italian (Michael Ruhlman’s recipe) starts with a subtle sweet note that lures the taste buds into their grasp only to make the heat at the end more shocking.  In opposition to the bratwurst the texture of this sausage was the crumbliest.  Italian-Canadian friends tell us that our grind should have been much coarser–even as far as half-inch chunks of meat.  This seems excessive to me but we do plan to aim coarser next time.

Easily identifiable by the black bits of mushroom this is the pizza sausage

Pizza: Alex’s creation really was very tasty.  Both the oregano and tomato paste flavours come through excellently and while pizza is very much about the texture and taste of the crust this sausage does a superb job of replicating the rest of the flavour.  The bits of salami brought that remarkable tangy, fermented flavour that dry-cured sausage has–especially after being heated.  A bit more cheese and a tweaking of the mushrooms (perhaps dried wild mushrooms) would be the only minor changes I’d make to this one.  I joked that putting this sausage on a pizza would be like standing in one of those mirrored hallways where you can see your image infinitely reflected.

Bacon Cheeseburger: My innovation needs some work.  To start, the beef is an important aspect and I will have to use that instead of pork shoulder next time.  Like the pizza it needs more cheese, as well as more bacon.  The dill pickles are a good addition but more of them in bigger chunks would have been welcome.  Also, I think I would increase the meat flavour with worchestershire or even something more intense like marmite.

The flavours of three powdered peppers (paprika, ancho, and chipotle) make for a smoky, spicy symphony

Mexican Chorizo: The third Ruhlman recipe that we used was also quite good.  The smoked paprika, Ancho powder, and Chipotle powder create a balanced triad of authentic flavours.

As we went along and improvised our own sausage recipes we had to decide how to integrate various ingredients.  Should they be ground with the meat or diced and mixed in during the stage between the grinding and stuffing?  Here’s a breakdown of what we did:

• Cheddar cheese: cubed, well-chilled, and ground with meat
• Salami: cubed, chilled, and ground
• Dill pickles: finely diced and mixed after meat was ground
• Mozzarella cheese: grated and mixed after meat grinding
• Bacon: cut into small lardons, fried, chilled (too much and they should be separated or will easily freeze as one big hunk of bacon), and then mixed post-grind
• Mushrooms: finely diced and mixed between grinding and stuffing

It’s really too bad that we didn’t have enough cheese in either the pizza or cheeseburger sausages so were unable to judge which works better for this ingredient grinding or shredding.  Maybe it just depends on what cheese you’re using and what effect you want to create: I bet shredded mozzarella is more likely to form the stringiness that we associate with pizza.

French Potato Salad

With such a wide range of sausages we also chose a diverse group of sides for our tasting.  For the German sausages we served sauerkraut, barely warmed with a couple glugs of chicken stock.  To go with the Italian sausages Alex made some of his excellent polenta–a heavy hand with the parmesan is, not surprisingly, his most important trick.  I put together a French potato salad using Cook’s Illustrated’s recipe.  I really like the French version–whose strongest secondary flavours are vinegar, mustard, and tarragon–better than a bacon-heavy German potato salad, or a mayo-based American style one with rich protein like sausages.

Making sausages at home is a lot of work that does require some special equipment but I really think it is worth it.  The big problem with store-bought sausages is that they’re either prohibitively expensive (for instance the amazing Meat Hook Butcher Shop in Brooklyn, NY charges $10.99/lb for their bacon cheeseburger sausage) or crap.  Although they’re often considered an ingredient they really are more like a prepared dish because it is very difficult to adjust seasoning, and fat content after the meat is in the casing–with homemade a bit can be fried up and seasoning adjusted to taste.  Homemade sausages freeze really well so long as you take the time to make sure the twisted casing where the links join is tightly-rolled and freeze them flat on a lightly-greased sheet pan.