This season I had an abundance of elephant garlic from my garden. Not a true garlic, elephant garlic is actually a type of a leek. But it looks like a garlic on steroids and has a milder, less astringent flavour than regular garlic. Once cooked, it has a sweet and mild garlicky flavour. It works well in soups, pasta and with fish. For quite some time it’s been on my mind to commingle it into a sausage, and finally I made a small amount to see what the result would be. I made an American style breakfast sausage and replaced the regular garlic in the recipe with elephant garlic. Because I wanted the elephant garlic to be at the forefront of the flavour panel, I added 25g/kg, about five or six times the amount of regular garlic that is most often added to sausage. That amount turned out to be just right, resulting in a flavourful, juicy and aromatic sausage. You can cook it any way you like, fry, grill, poach, or incorporate into a variety of dishes.
Elephant Garlic Sausage
Meats
Pork picnic, approx 20 – 25% fat, trimmed of connective tissue.
Ingredients for 1kg of meat block
Non iodized salt, 14g
White pepper, medium grind, 2g
Quatre épices, 2g
Red pepper flakes, 1g
Dried thyme, 0.5g
Fresh sage, chopped, 2tbs
Fresh elephant garlic, 25g
Soy concentrate, 2g
Iced water, 75ml
Instructions
1. Chill cubed meat to near freezing temp.
2. Grind with 7mm plate
3. Mix thoroughly, gradually adding the spices and water
4. Stuff into hog or sheep casings
5. Rest in the fridge over night or for several hours so that the flavours come into harmony.
6. Freeze sausage if not consuming within two days.
