Toulouse Sausages

2kg pork belly
30g salt
5g black pepper
100ml red wine
20g garlic
20g parsley
4g sage
4g thyme
2g nutmeg
hog casings

I first tasted Toulouse sausage when a good friend brought some for me from his local market in Lyon. This was to make a Cassoulet while on our ski trip. They were amazing. So I was looking forward to having a go at my own version of this sausage.

Toulouse sausages are as easy to make as the Paysanne. The ingredients are roughly the same. The difference is that they have the addition of red wine and a minor adjustment of the fresh herbs and spice.

The finished sausage is very different from the Paysanne. The wine adds a deeper colour and the cooked sausage has a deeper, richer taste.

I have now started to compare recipes I find on the the net and in books and I see that there is no definitive recipe for Toulouse, or indeed any type of sausage. Every sausage recipe is a variation on a theme and after considering many for the Toulouse sausage recipes, I thought that the one in The Sausage Book is as good as any other. I notice that recipes are either simple or complex. The simple recipes, like this one, have few ingredients and provide a bold flavour. The complex versions are apparently fine-tuned versions. They are the type of recipe that calls for both black and white pepper, or three different types of paprika. I guess that I will stick with the simple recipes for now.