Holy Meatwad, Batman OR Very Busy Weekends

Disclaimer:
If you are vegetarian, you may want to wait until my next post to read my blog.

If you aren't vegetarian, I will share with you a few facts, and a conclusion.

1. It would be an gross understatement to say that I like sausage. I adore it, really. That also sounds a little gross to me, but so be it. It is out in the open now: I LOVE (definitely in caps) sausage.

However, there is a bit of a rub. I don't like to buy it in the store, because I have no clue what the $*@% is in the stuff you buy there. Use your imaginations, folks. Whatever gross thing you are picturing in your head is probably in most of the sausage at the store. Sorry - it is true. I would be a total liar if I said I don't eat the stuff though every once in a while. I do. (In fact, one of my favorite food venders here in Vancouver is called Japadog, and though I don't go there often, I do go there.)

2. Sebastien and I love to travel, and we love to cook, and we love trying new recipes. When we were in South Africa, we got really excited about boerwors, literally "farmer's sausage," that was served at every braii (barbeque) we attended. We had a really hard time locating some when we arrived in Vancouver from Cape Town, so we thought, "Hmmmn.... Maybe we could get our butcher to make this for us! We'll just give him the recipe." Then our thoughts changed to, "Why don't we just do it ourselves?"

3. For Christmas, Sebastien's sister gave him a sausage attachment to use on our Kitchen Aide (thanks, V!), so now there were no excuses.

In CONCLUSION, we are now sausage-makers. (The strange part about all this is that I don't think we cook meat more than once every two weeks, if that.)

We've done about 4 batches so far, and each one has been totally different from the rest.

We made a classic Italian sausage first (because it was pretty basic), and then moved on to boerwors (free range organic pork & beef, a little bacon, coriander, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, garlic, and some chilis), then did a merguez, and the most recent one we made was pork with apples and leeks. All have been delicious, and all of them I can stand behind.

What has caught me by surprise is how excited people got when I told them what we were doing! So many co-workers were interested in getting some, and so now we are having a hard time keeping up with the demand! That isn't a bad thing at all. It seems like other people were also looking for quality sausages!

Because we've been making so much, this is an (almost) all-day process. We purchase the meat and other ingredients from the best suppliers we can think of (without a car, which makes bringing home 12-15lbs of meat home more interesting), and then prep the ingredients, chopping and grating (in the case of the boerwors, we had to grate a few tablespoons of nutmeg - you could totally taste the difference).

First we partially freeze the meat, to make it easier to cut into cubes and then grind. Then we season it all (which uses every large bowl we have, to make sure the seasoning is dispersed evenly). We put the ground, seasoned meat back through the stuffer, and load the casings onto the "nose," being careful not to tear it. After the casings have been filled, we make links and then dry them, in the refrigerator. The following morning is when we are able to cut them apart and bag them for our friends!

Here are some photos of the process (these are from the italian sausages):

Some ingredients - garlic, fennel, parsley, chili flakes, and casings.


Sebastien looking very intent on grinding the meat - this takes a couple of hours usually


Cutting apart the links - after putting the seasoned meat into the casings


The finished products

We've been making one batch per month so far, giving most of it away (well, not giving it away, but...). I am sure we will keep it up, experimenting with different recipes and ingredients. If you have any recipes you've tried, let me know!