Sausages!

I don't think I've mentioned Radishes before--a couple of years ago, some of my foodie friends decided to create a group dedicated to the learning, the cooking and, of course, the eating of different foods.  We meet every other month and there are two basic rules:  there is always a theme which the food or beverage must fit and the dish(es) must be homemade.  Most of our themes have centered around regional cuisines; Russian, Scottish, North African, and so forth.  A couple of times we went with a general topic; comfort food, picnic, you get the idea.  The results have been extraordinary--not only is the food enjoyable, but I find it fun to discover a little about the chosen region and its traditional ingredients.  This month we are meeting at a beach park and the theme is "Sausages 'n Stuff". 

I am ridiculously proud of myself.  I made sausages today; as in, ground, spiced meat, stuffed into pig intestines.  I have no idea how they taste but they look pretty nifty and the sausage stuffer I bought worked like a charm.  I love when things work the way they are supposed to! I started with two basic sausage recipes--one is pork with fresh parsley, sage and maple syrup and the other is pork with brown sugar and a bit of cayenne pepper.

Fresh parsley and sage, maple syrup

 I refrigerated the sausage mixtures for a while and then put the hog casings in warm water to soak--I didn't know how many of the casings I would need and I didn't realize how many were in the package.  Unfortunately, I had to toss the ones I didn't use.

They kind of look like kanpyo...

The casings were very thin and fragile looking but they were surprisingly easy to work with and none of our sausages burst.  C, who acted as my sous chef, said he, for one, was glad to know that intestines don't burst as easily as I had anticipated.  I see his point.  

The stuffer is pretty much like a caulking gun

I loaded the first batch of sausage mixture into the tube and snapped the stuffing nozzle onto the front of the gun.  C screwed the tube onto the handle and we were ready for the casing.

Yes, we both chuckled over the fact that it looked a lot like putting on a condom...

Once the casing was threaded onto the nozzle, C started pumping the trigger and despite the simple mechanism, the meat flowed out in a fairly steady stream.

It took a little practice to get the sausage nice and even.

We had 4 pounds of pork mixture and used 6 casings.  It was a fairly easy process but we definitely had our system down pat by the last sausage.

Definitely need two pairs of hands.

When each sausage was completed, I squeezed out as much air as possible and even used a pin here and there so there wouldn't be any bubbles.  Then I twisted the long piece into links.

Sometimes I forgot which way to turn the next one--they need to alternate.

The final product looked much more professional than I had hoped for.  The sausage stuffer wasn't too complicated to clean but I will definitely buy a bottle brush for the tube.  

Sure hope they taste good!

The real test comes tomorrow when we grill these babies and serve them up to our friends.  Hope it's a happy Sausage Saturday!