Here in South Africa the most popular sausage is called Boerewors, and one can find it everywhere in many varieties. Boerewors is nice, but after a few years of it something different was needed. One can also find an abundance of German style and English bangers, but those don’t interest me too much. Harder to find is good quality Italian style sausages. In fact I have never encountered a really good Italian style sausage in Africa!
My friend Johan suggested we endeavour to make sausages from scratch. He recently had his high end kitchen equipment shipped in from Sweden, so he was eager to make use of it. We decided to make sausages from ground pork in two styles; a spicy Italian and an Italian herb.
We purchased 4kg of ground pork and casings from the local butcher. The casings are actually made from the intestine of the pork – different!! The casings are washed and scrubbed to get rid of any residue. We mixed the pork mince with vinegar, garlic, and spices – only quality ingredients were used and no filler was added.
Spicy Italian Sausage mix
2 kg ground pork
1/2 cup vinegar
6 cloves shredded garlic
4 tsp crushed and ground chillis
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp black pepper
3 tsp paprika
4 tsp salt
Italian Herb Sausage mix
2 kg ground pork
1/2 cup vinegar
6 cloves shredded garlic
2 tsp fennel
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp rosemary
2 tsp sage
1 tsp black pepper
4 tsp salt
After mixing the ingredients together thoroughly we prepared the sausage making machine to be loaded. The casings are threaded into the nozzle, ours were on average 1 metre long. The idea being that you pull the casings away form the machine as the meat is pressed out. The sausage comes out and fills the casing for the entire length and the sausages are rolled to create individual links at the end.
In the end we created about 40 sausages! At a bri in the evening we cooked up a couple to share with friends. They were most certainly delicious! I particularly enjoyed the spicy version which had a good fiery kick.
-
- 4 Kilograms of ground pork
-
- Pork intestines provide the casing for sausages
-
- Spicy Italian meat and spice mix
-
- Spicy Italian mix ready to case
-
- Testing a sample of the mix
-
- The casing are incredibly tough
-
- Fitting the casings onto the machine
-
- Sausage stuffing machine
-
- Making sausages!
-
- Loading the machine
-
- Spicy Italian sausages
-
- Italian herb meat and spice mix
-
- The finished product!
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
