The ZumBurgess Sausage

In anticipation of moving to a country where it is normal to butcher your own pig and, among other things, make your own sausage out of it, we decided it might be time to learn how to do it ourselves in London, after Jo retired.

We learned from our friend Jackie that a butcher from her home town in Dorset would visit us with half a pig and show us how to cut it up and how to make sausages, pancettas, hams and other yummy stuff from that pig (trotters included, head not).

Ray Smith is a very engaging meat meister and features often on “River Cottage,” a popular television series in Britain starring the chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Hugh’s kind of a jerk but Ray is a great guy. He brings his wife Mary to help and all the things one needs to cut a pig up.

He loves what he does and that translates into a great teacher.  We were introduced to the ‘sausage stuffer’ machine and how to put the casings on the stuffer.  Of course Jo knows her way around a meat grinder from the days when she helped her dad make gritswurst (another story for another day).

That Pig Day in London was a great success. The only problem was that our freezer was woefully undersized for the 50 pounds of pork and dozens of sausages we needed to freeze.

Well, one of the first things we did when we got to Svätý Anton was to buy a deep freeze. Jo wanted one as big as Aunt Bea’s on the Andy Griffith Show but we got one instead that would actually fit through the door of our chata (just).

If you want to read about Slovak Pig Day, you can, but that’s still just a set up for today.

Along with Scott’s fantastic Christmas present to Jo, her very own sausage stuffer, she of course has one of her dad’s many meat grinders. Both are necessary for the job at hand.

 

This weekend of Saints celebration has been set aside with no obligations or errands outside of Chata Diviak.  We have stocked up for the next three days (including Monday to recover) so that we can really make a celebration of the New Orleans Saints going to the Super Bowl for the first time in their history. 

And stocking up included pork out of which we wanted to make sausages all by ourselves.

Okay so we’ve actively participated with Ray the Meat Guru in making good English sausages and we’ve watched at close hand the “Brav Majster” (pork master) making good Slovak sausage.

Here's the difference between the two sausages:

· English sausage uses something called rusk, a cereal used as bulk.  The spices the English use are also mild.

· Slovak sausage has no ceral added at all – it is pure pork meat and fat. The spices are LOTS of fresh ground garlic, lots of caraway seeds, paprika, salt and pepper.

Both meat masters believe in mixing the sausage-to-be with your hands; messy but effective. (The Slovak method includes tasting the raw mixture for correct seasoning.)

Both of those sausage recipes have things we don’t like: cereal in sausage sucks. Caraway seed in anything sucks.

So today we tried our hand at making bespoke ZumBurgess Sausages: the perfect sausage for us.

We actually got kind of close.

Here’s what we learned for next time:

Never use anything but the best cuts of pork; if you get stew meat or bulk stuff there is too much gunk like gristle and that membrane that doesn’t want to go through the grinder. At all. And it prevents other good bits from going through too. We had to dismantle the meat grinder several times to get the caca out of the grinder.

Make sure you put the meat grinder parts together in the right way; This was another cause of our having to dismantle and reassemble the meat grinder.

Keep the casings good and wet when you’re shoving them onto the sausage stuffer. This will help prevent them from tearing and your having to start over again.

It’s easy to under-season but you must get the seasoning right: too much can’t be fixed. We recommend frying up a little to taste before stuffing the casings.

Ray taught us how to twist the sausages.  We have six in the fridge for dinner tonight. There are only six because we bought the wrong kind of meat and had to toss most of it (!).

And they’re a little bland because we didn’t fry up the uncased mixture;  but we’re proud of our imperfect efforts. We’re eating them tonight.

Comments

[JAN POULSEN]

Hi Joellen and Scott

Fantastic to see you working as butchers! Looks like you really enjoy it. Thank you for a very nice Christmas letter. I have tried to mail you, but with out any luck. I also send you a letter, but I don't know if you have recieved it.

That's why I try to get in contact with you this way.Please send me your new mail adress. My mail is: janbpoulsen

All the best

Jan

[felicia]

where can I buy the sausage stuffer in london
felicia

[En Fuego Inc]

You should enjoy eating the saysage.
I enjoy reading about healthy ways to prepare food.