Homemade Sausage Making

Hi everyone,

In Stanley's book "Home Production of Quality Meats & Sausages" he includes lots of great recipes in Chapter 13 for fresh sausage. However I'm a little confused about how to achieve the ideal fat ratio in some of the recipes (the consensus from experienced sausage makers is around 25-30%)

So take for example recipe for Merguez (p.247). It calls for 1000g lamb meat. That's it. What's the assumption here about the fat content? I can think of 3 cases:

1) use lean lamb meat only (result: 0% fat, really?!)
2) use lean lamb meat & add about 430g pork back fat (result: 30% fat)
3) use lamb meat that is 30% fat / 70% lean (result: 30% fat, but with lamb fat)

The reason I'm asking is that in other recipes, such as Bockwurst on p. 232, the back fat is listed explicitly along with the other ingredients (pork 500g, veal 300g, back fat 200g). Since Stanley sometimes does include back fat in some recipes, I wonder what to do when it's not listed?

Here are other recipes from the book that call for plain meats without any comment about the expected fat content of the meat, and no back-fat listed:
Bratwurst p. 235: pork 700g, veal 300g
Longanisa p. 245: pork 1000g
Loukanika p. 246: pork 700g, lamb 300g
etc.

The way I have been approaching them is to always use lean cuts of meat (pork, veal, lamb) as per the quantities listed in the recipe, then add extra pure back-fat to get the final product to around 25-30%. Not sure if this is what's intended by the recipe.

If Stanley or any other members could weigh in on how these recipes should be interpreted it would really help clear this up for me.

Cheers,
Nico

One way to learn about this is to "take apart" a cut of meat and weigh the "lean" portion and the "fat" portion. In this way, I satisfied myself that a pork boston butt was 20% to 30% fat. Do the same with lamb, beef, et cetera, or look up the fat percentages in Marianskis' books or others.

Some sausages traditionally have more than the 20% - 30% fat that we usually try for. I think the 25% mark is a good minimum, but I go higher on some sausages. Too low means too dry. Too high means "juicy," I suppose.

Back fat, like fat from other parts of the pig, has special qualities such as melting point, texture, flavor... What a fascinating hobby!

Experiment, and please post your results. Enjoy!
Duk

Hey Duk,

Thanks for that great tip, and you know, I've actually done exactly what you suggested to figure out exactly the fat content of the various meats I can get at the markets here in Tokyo.

The question is, I wonder what those percentages are in Stanley's mind, as they pertain to the recipes he shared in his book!

You are right - it's a great hobby!

Nico

I agree with Ducko about the minimum amounts used in sausages and I think you have to think about what happens when you break down a pig carcass and think of the waste cuts being used for sausages and what the fat content would be from these trimmings. I think it is also important to remember that today's pigs are bred and raised to be leaner than the traditional field raised pigs were at the time. Here, sausage making was usually an effort making use of the "scraps" and off cuts and what wasn't used was rendered for lard.