Homemade Sausage Making

I never know where to file these posts so this seems like a decent place.

I visited Salumi, in Seattle this summer. For me it is the Mecca of American fermented sausage. I have been haunted by something the Armondo Battali said to me during my visit there. He told me that he felt Salumi makers had lost their creativity. He pointed that everyone was sticking to the same flavor profiles. After some consideration I feel like he is correct. There are a few exceptions like his mole salami which is amazing.

We often talk about using technology to make our products safer. I just wonder if using that technology could allow us to create new sausage flavored with a world view?

I have been kicking around ideas of using tea like earl grey, a floral oolong or even vegetable ash. I was wondering if anyone else is using non traditional flavors in their sausage?

I think that it is pretty safe to say that almost every permutation of sausage available to the mind of man has been tried during the last 5,000 to 10,000 years. The ones that we have now are the ones that have withstood the test of time. Everything is fair game but some things are known to work. This is not to encourage you to play safe but to suggest that you must anticipate many failures before you will develop a "new' sausage.

It is an interesting question and one that has got me pondering. Why not more experimentation than we see? I am not motivated to experiment with it myself - my goal is to get good at achieving traditional flavors. Maybe that's just because I'm a beginner. With other foods I would be more interested in innovating. Some traditional foods lend themselves to experimentation more than others, it seems. Take beer and wine. Wine tastes are more traditional. The great majority of the wine we drink is either red or white, sweet or dry, and putting quality aside, from there variations are many but minor in the grand scheme. Most beer is light or dark, though the variations on those themes are broader. I don't know why this is - most people would rather try chocolate stout than chocolate cabernet. Sausage seems to be somewhere beetween wine and beer. Maybe, like beer and wine, it is so good as itself - meat, salt, pepper, and maybe cure and time, and maybe smoke - that you don't need to innovate to get the result you want most. After all, it is meat! You can put anything in rice - it's bland on its own, and needs the help. Meat doesn't need a lot of help, and for me at least, it's hard to get bored with it.

Another thing. Sausage is a soul food of many cultures - what your people eat. It is also a comfort food - what you grew up eating. The point of soul and comfort food is great execution, not great innovation. Because if you innovate too far, it may be good, but it's not what you grew up with.

Well, I'm just babbling!

I thought it to be a interesting post Cab, not blabbing at all. It kind of hits the nail on the head, the thought of making and eating what you grew up with. When I stop to think about I guess I could pretty much be happy making nothing but Italian sausage, it's what I grew up with and what I love to make and eat. I'll par-boil it in beer and onions before going onto the weber, just like a bratwurst. Good smoked just like a Polish too. I try making other stuff to not seem too one dimensional I guess, but I could live on what I love. RAY