Homemade Sausage Making

Last fall I tasted some pepperoni sticks with cranberries that a friend made. He did not offer the recipe so I came up with my own and it turned out quite good: medium spicy, sweet and with a bit of tang from the erythorbate and buttermilk. I made a total of 7kg using pork from picnic, shoulder and sirloin. Also threw in 1kg. of Canada Goose breasts.

Recipe for 1 kg.

Pork 70/30 (you can add up to 30% beef)
Salt - 15g
Cure #1 - 2.4g
White pepper - 2.5g
All spice - .5g
Paprika - sweet 4g
Paprika - hot 3g
Hot chili powder - 2.5g
Fresh garlic - 2g.
Dry cranberries - 100g (I used Craisins brand)
Buttermilk powder - 15g
Sodium erythorbate - 6g.
Red wine - 50 ml

Grind the more fatty pork with 4.5mm plate, then grind everything with a 6mm. Mix with the remaining ingredients and refrigerate for 24 hours. Like with kabanosy, take care not to overmix so that the sausage will have a crumbly appearance when snapped in half. Stuff into 22mm colagen.

Smoke for 3 hours at 55°C then at 86°C for 30 minutes. Do not shower or subject to cold water bath! (reference here to the product, not the sausage maker ) Hang at room temp for a couple of days to dry and get that wrinkled look.

Hey Red those look marvelous! I have had too busy a summer to make much of anything, but see a window of opportunity in August, and my family has put kabanosy at the top of my list. I want to try your pepperettes on them.

Question re hot paprika plus red pepper in your ingredients list. I read somewhere hot paprika is just sweet paprika with cayenne added. Is that so? I don't have any hot paprika but I do have some lovely Hungarian sweet. So I could just adjust some sweet with some cayenne and have hot. Or could I....?

Cheers,
Jeff

I'm sure that there are mixes that bring up the heat in ordinary paprika by spiking it with cayenne. I used Hungarian Pride of Szeged brand, so I hope that they used only the spicy Hungarian grown variety. But in the end, all ground capsicum is a "paprika" , so in Hungary they would call cayenne pepper also a "paprika". (Where is Gulyas when we need him?)

When you will be making the cranberry pepperettes, use what you like and adjust the heat accordingly.

Beautiful sausage Chris! The color is very attractive. How about a photo of a cross-section? Very interesting recipe. Grats for the Brats!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

A beautiful piece of work Chris, I really like the idea of cranberry flavor in sausage! RAY

Hey Chris, I've just got to know. Is that your backyard in the photo? I've been to Vancouver Island and I saw the gardens. Absolutely beautiful. And Ray will be up to check out those sawhorses holding your smokesticks. First class!

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Yes CW that is my backyard, and a hell of a lot work the way everything grows here. About 25 feet back of the sausage is a drop-off and the golf course. In the distance we see the Salish Sea (Known as the Strait of Georgia until a couple of years ago), then the snow covered mountains on the mainland.

I will take a pic tomorrow from my balcony. Nice place and we consider ourselves to be lucky living here.