Homemade Sausage Making

I am taking a sausage making/ meat smoking class at the local Tech College in Edmonton Alberta Canada...we call it NAIT. Tonight is our last night and we are allowed to make any kind of sausage we want. I would like to make Terriyaki Pineapple Chicken sausages but I cant seem to find a recipe.... I could wing it but I am SCARED. I get the jist of the process but I would rather have a tried and true recipe...I know also that I am grasping at straws being as its noon where I live and my course starts in a meer 5 hrs. but it is worth a try. Thanks for reading my words...Chachki

I dont know if your going to find something that will exactly tell you what you want. But sausage is not hard and you can "wing it" just like any other recipe as long as you pay attention to
1. Meat/H20 content
2. Salt content
3. Flavour

With chicken I would go 5-10% h2o by weight at the most otherwise the sausage may be really delicate and soft.
2% salt by weight is seems standard
and Terriyaki flavour by eye or weight. Oh and as much chopped pineapple as you want.

If I was winging this one I would use a Terriyaki tumble or seasoning blend for jerky. NAIT should have that on hand. It has the amount to use by weight right on it. Mix it with the water, salt is part of the blend so no worries there and add your pineapple. Easy. The only thing is there can be a cure in those blends so you might not want that if you just want a fresh salt only sausage.

If you want to be fancy you can get a Terriyaki recipe and make it fresh and then just add by eye. just stay aware of your salt.

To be fair I dont think most people would be able to tell between the blend and home made sauce.

Have a look at http://wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.ph ... =pineapple which discusses some of the problems with pineapple. Good luck. (With pineapple, it looks like you might need it!)

I read that pineapple turns to goo.... if I use the pineapple and omit the water would that work? I have my pineapple in the fridge and its cold. I will be using crushed pineapple.

if your using crushed and mixing it by hand then I would just use that, and adjust with more water if it seems too dry. A lot of your flavour will come from the fruit and the liquid with it. I would aim for a tacky texture where the meat still kinds of holds up on its own rather then a loose one. I would avoid mixing the spices and everything in with a mixer or through the grinder just because you will end up with a very emulsified/ soft sausage.

That being said if you like that texture then go for it. It works great for poaching them but I personally don't like fresh sausages that soft.

And the pineapple will probably go to goo or disintegrate, which may be a good thing. The flavour will distribute well then. You would need larger pieces if you wanted to have chunks of pineapple distributed throughout the sausage.

I've had a couple of sausage nightmares using pineapple, both times everything turned to snot and the casings dissolved, tho both my efforts involved trying to smoke the sausage. Pineapple and papaya are two fruits known to soften meat, breaking down the fiber. If they have the same effect on the casings things could get messy at grilling time. The pineapple-chicken-teriyaki combo sounds wonderful and might hold up as a fresh sausage. Good luck and please let us know how things come out. RAY

I found a old post about one of my miserable failures involving pineapple sausage, brings back some not-so-fond memories. RAY

http://wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.ph ... ple+dreams

Sawhorseray did you use natural or collagen caseings?

Natural hog casings, 32-35mm. RAY

Hey, hey, Sawhorse... would you believe there are two more? Yup, the kiwi fruit poduces actinidin and the fig produces ficin. The papaya you mentioned produces papain, and any singer knows that bromelain come from the pineapple plant. Bromelain digests (hydrolyzes) gelatin (a protein), into component amino acids. This enzyme adds water to split the peptide bond between amino acids. The protein strands that normally give gelatin its structure, are liquefied as the protein strands shorten. And yup, it is a mess! Just try adding pineapple to Jell-O. I remember your experiment.