Paysanne Sausages

2kg pork belly
30g salt
10g black pepper
20g garlic
15g thyme
30g parsley
hog casings

This is a French farmers sausage recipe. It is used to illustrate all the fresh sausage recipes in The Sausage Book, the instruction manual for my sausage experiments.

It turns out that all fresh sausages are very easy to make - mince the meat, mix in the flavouring, stuff into casings.

It took me a while to mince the pork bellies as I started off forcing the meat into the mincer and it jammed. Once I realised that it needs to be done in small pieces without force, it flowed quite smoothly. Filling the casings went well with only one small split.

These were delicious sausages. The garlic packs a savoury punch and the fresh thyme is gorgeous. At some point I would like to compare using fresh or dried herbs to see the differences.

One of the best things about the recipes in The Sausage Book is that there is no mention of rusk (breadcrumb). Apparently, rusk is a 'stabiliser' that no British banger can do without. I am happy making these foreign nonsense sausages made out of meat.