Minced sausage pork shoulder — 2,500 kg Nitrite salt — 49 gr Pork fat — 350 gr Sugar — 5 gr Black pepper — 4 gr Jamaica pepper — 3 gr Nutmeg — 4 gr Fresh garlic — 20 gr Water — 300 ml Collagen casing — 100 mm, pork intestine — 28−32 mm The pork shoulder was grinded in mincing machine with a minimum disc (4 mm). Then it was beaten thoroughly with cold water, salt and later put into the fridge for 12 hours so that it could «mature».
Next day I grinded the paste again (none of the devices could cope with this task), added some spices and garlic. The pork fat was chopped in cubes and later also added to the minced meat. Note that the meat temperature should not rise above 14C. On top of this I’m obliged to perform all the actions fast. So, the resulting paste was tamped into the collagen casing and sent again to the fridge for the whole night.
Early in the morning I took out the sausage from the fridge to warm it and in three hours I put it into the oven for «convection» mode under 55C so that it could dry and pass through a process of «nitrite maturation». In an hour I changed the temperature to 80C and was constantly adding water to the baking-pan to create the effect of water cooking. When the inside meat temperature is 71C the sausage is considered to be ready and goes back to the fridge till morning.
Ham
I decided to cook another sausage but this time using beef meat. The technology followed was nearly the same, the only difference was that I grinded the paste only once, utilizing big mincing discs (10 mm) to get a ham structure of the meat. I also excluded garlic from the recipe.
Conclusions:
The pork sausage turned to be good enough though a bit dense, most probably because the meat was not finely grinded enough. However, it did not spoil the brilliant taste of the product.
The beef sausage (ham) was juicy, with the right structure but characterized by a little dull taste. I guess, I should have added 20% of pork meat and «colored» it with spices.
