Spicy fresh chorizo

Photographer: Adam

 

When floating round ideas for this month it was decided someone had to make sausage. It’s the ultimate Kiwi outdoor food and unfortunately not something us Kiwi’s do very well. Although lately there has been a vast improvement in our sausage dabblings we’re still not on par with the likes of Europe.

Kiwi sausage, as I recall from childhood, has mostly been the off cuts from the butchery floor smushed together to make something sausage shaped. It’s no wonder I was never very keen on sausages at the family barbie. Enter the present and now even the supermarket possesses gourmet quality sausage. I’m always keen for the spicy variety and often end up purchasing a merguez or something similar.

I tried out this recipe from a sausage bible but quickly found it needed far more garlic and chilli to bring it up to flavours my taste buds desired. I highly recommend having a play – not only is it a fun process (often riddled with innuendo) but it makes far more tasty sausages than ever expected.

INGREDIENTS

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2.5 kg lean pork diced
500g pork fat diced
2 Tbsp pork shoulder (ground)
1 Tbsp Kosher salt
1 Tbsp ground black pepper
2 Tbsp roughly chopped parsley
2 tsp ground toasted fennel seed
1 tsp cayenne pepper
2 Tbsp minced chilli
2 Tbsp minced garlic
¼ cup red wine
2 Tbsp brandy
1 hog casing
1 Tbsp white vinegar

METHOD

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1. The night before freeze your mincing equipment and bowl. You can also completely freeze your diced pork fat.
2. The next day (sausage day) ensure all pork is diced and freeze for two-three hours.
3. Combine your diced meat and fat with the dry seasonings and proceed to mince. I preferred to use a coarser grind as I think it makes a better texture for your sausage.
4. Once ground mix in the wine, brandy, garlic and chilli – set aside covered in the fridge for an hour or two.
5. In the mean time rinse your hog casing and check for any leaks by running water through it, cut the entire casing into metre long segments to make extruding easier. Then soak in salted water for an hour followed by an hour in vinegar water.
6. Once nicely marinaded beat your sausage mix with a paddle attachment to ensure it is thoroughly mixed. At this stage you may want to fry a few small patties of the mix to check the seasoning and spices of your mix.
7. To extrude your sausage mix feed your pre-prepared casing onto the extruder nozzle, leave the end open and prime the nozzle and machine with the sausage mix to get rid of any air pockets. Then tie of the end of your casing (just like a balloon) and begin to feed the sausage through.
8. Feeding through the sausage is one of the more important stages. Do not overfill your casings! This will result in sausage explosions – never fun for anyone. Keep them lightly filled but still nice in shape and try to keep the air out as much as possible.
9. Extrude all of the mix then set about creating individual links. This is done by pinching along the sausage and then turning the end a few times to create the separation. Again be careful here not to overfill. I kept mine in a boerewurst shape and skewered it to cook on the BBQ.

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