My continual quest for a cured cooked merguez

[markjass]

Apart from duck and venison (treat meats) my favourite meat is lamb. Over the past few years it has been very expensive because its price is export driven. Over the last year its price has come down. There are two things that got me into sausage making, my quest for a decent merguez sausage and the Christchurch earthquake. After many years I found an Italian butcher who made amazing merguez. Unfortunately after the earthquake he left the city. What choice but to make my own. I pretty quickly got the fresh version how I liked it, but the cured, smoked and baked version did not work. Many of the subtle flavours were lost and the lamb flavour was lost. Spring lamb is lovely and sweet, but its taste can be hidden by strong spices. Sausages like lamb, rosemary and garlic work so well. I have tried Stan's et. al. recipies but they are not what I want.

I was chatting with my sister, she asked me how common are cured lamb products (I have made lamb pastrami, bacon etc with average results). I said that there are not many. She said does that not tell you something! Well I have taken that as a challenge (she knew I would). That is why every so often you will get a lamb idea from me.

As time has passed I have found that I prefer the flavour of hogget for many things. This is not so easy to find. However if you buy lamb from mid winter until late winter it has developed a better flavour. The older sheep get the more fatty they get and tougher they get. The factor that the fat seams to melt at a lower temperature than that of pork can make sheep sausages fatty to taste and texture. Recently I read that merguez were originally made from horse or goat. In my time I have eaten both. It is possible, but difficult to get hold of goat. As for horse forget it unless you buy mislabelled European beef.

I have just made some cured, smoked baked sausages and the taste and level of fat is where I want it. I slashed back on many of the ingredients (after re-reading the book) and after numerous recipe changes my hassa paste has worked out well. The secret is in using very good Hungarian paprika and dry roasting whole spices. I also kept the smoker temperature no greater than 80 degrees

Made the sausages the evening before and wrapped them in a tea towel and kept them in my fridge (were in the fridge for ???18 hours).
Dried them with a clean tea towel before
Hanging them in the kitchen at room temperature (about 18 degrees c) for half an hour
Placed the sausages in my smoker temperature (50 degrees) for half an hour
Applied light smoke for three hours.
After an hour and a half I increased the temperature to 60 degrees
Over the next hour I increased the temperature to 70 degrees.
By this time the sausages were 62 degrees
I then put the temperature up to 80 degrees.
Total time cooking was about 4 hours.

What I noticed is that there are no large pools of fat under the skin. This is the first time that this has not happened. The first taste is good, I find that the full taste takes a couple of days to develop. I have use hog skins, but that does not matter as those who consume them will know and are not fussed.

I control the heat of my smoker with vents, propping the lid open with a peg and using a gas burner. It has two rings that can be controlled independently. I have a cast iron frying pan sitting on top of the burner. This is filled with sand. I find that this helps moderate the temperature.

so far 6 0ut of 10 (best so far)



Here are the NZ definitions of sheep meat.
Lamb:
Definition: Young sheep under 12 months of age or which
do not have any permanent incisor teeth in wear.

Hogget:
Definition: A young male sheep or maiden ewe having
no more than two permanent incisors in wear.

Mutton:
Definition: Female (ewe) and castrated male (wether)
sheep having more that two permanent incisors in wear.
A wether must not show any ram characteristics.

Mark

[redzed]

Nice job on the sausage Mark. And I appreciate the fact that you thoughtfully analyze the process and try understand what happens at each step and why, rather than following a recipe, mixing the ingredients and then hoping for the best.

Meat from a hoggett or mutton would probably be better in dry cured products, because in older animals, like pork and beef, the flavour is more pronounced and the water content is lower.

I have never made any sausage from sheep products as the meat here is prohibitively expensive. I like to barbecue a butterflied and marinated leg of lamb, but have not even done that for a while. One of these days I will make a Polish Podhalanska sausage.

[sawhorseray]

Your sausage looks terrific Mark, bet it tastes great too. I'd love to attempt a lamb sausage but just as with Red the price here makes it out of the question. Most of the lamb I see at the local grocery stores is imported here from New Zealand and Australia, with racks going for $14lb, chops for $11lb, boneless legs for $6lb. My butcher pal told me the American lamb is even more expensive and they stopped carrying it because it just sits on the shelf. I love a couple of times a year to treat myself to a rack or some center-cut loin chops, thick cut, or a leg stuffed with garlic and covered with rosemary then cooked on the weber. A half hour from my house someone raises thousands of goats. I've never tasted goat but always thought it would pretty much taste just like lamb, they make the same noise and look alike apart from the horns. Probably too expensive to even inquire about, and most likely WAY too expensive to be turned into sausage. RAY

[Chuckwagon]

Mark, that's a beautiful sausage! Well done pal. I'll bet it has a flavor of all it's own eh? How is the moisture content? How do you serve it?

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon