| Ingredient | Grams | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| pork belly | 2580 | 95.66 |
| salt | 41 | 1.52 |
| black pepper | 20 | 0.74 |
| Sage, rough cut | 56 | 2.08 |
Casing: beef runners, sheep casings
Sage goes fantastically well with pork as the good folks in Lincolnshire know and so I thought I would have a go at making my own Lincolnshire-style sausages using the purple sage that grows in my garden. I had no recipe to follow so I guessed at the quantities of sage and black pepper to use. The salt, as usual, I kept to 1.5%.
I diverged form a Lincolnshire sausage recipe in that I don't use binder (rusk) so the sausage doesn't have the 'traditional' British sausage texture. I think this is one of the occasions where some binder would work well as what I like about sage is how well it goes with stuffing/meat loaf and this is the direction given by adding rusk to sausages. Normally I prefer the meaty texture of a non-binded sausage over the rather spongy texture that (too much) rusk gives. But I wonder if this is an occasion where some rusk would go well.
I'm reasonably happy with the result, but I will be changing a few things the next time I make these. I will use more sage and less black pepper. I might even double the amount of sage. This could also change the texture of the sausage, for the better I hope. The sage shows up well through the casing and gives the sausage an interesting appearance. I would have liked to have used hog casings, but I am out of them at the moment and instead I am using up what I have to hand. I would like to try adding some rusk. It would be good to make some with and some without rusk to I can better judge the differences.
