Cured Lincolnshire Sausage Again

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Meat and Fat	gm
Cure #2	gm
Salt	gm
Sugar	gm
Sage (dried)	gm
Black Pepper	gm

This was a re-run of the Cured Lincolnshire Sausage that I made in March. I was dissatisfied with the strength of the sage in that batch so this time I both upped the proportion of sage and switched to dried sage over the fresh for a stronger taste. It was a good move because I am delighted with the results of this saucisson. It is the first recipe that I have used that I think needs no alteration.

The Linconshires Secs are shown in the foreground of the curing cabinet. I only got three and a bit saucisson from my 1Kg of pork. I will be sure to make these again and to make a good sized batch next time.

Caraway Sauscisson

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Meat and Fat	gm
Cure #2	gm
Salt	gm
Sugar	gm
Caraway Seed	gm
Garlic	gm
Black Pepper	gm

I have been fermenting lots of vegetables recently. In all of these mixed vegetable dishes there is cabbage and when I started it was by making Sauerkraut. The traditional spice for Sauerkraut is caraway and recently I have been getting quite a taste for it. It seems natural that the next thing to do is make a cured sausage with caraway seed. I used as my basis the Cured Fennel Sausage that I made in April and substituted the fennel for caraway.

I accidentally put in a greater proportion of spice than I intended. The reason for this is that I made these sausages as a combined batch with the Lincolnshire sausages and forgot that I had taken 1Kg of meat out when working out the spices. Luckily the basic mix had been made correctly. If I had got the quantity of cure wrong in the mix I would have had to ditch the lot.

As it turned out, even with what I thought was twice the amount of caraway that I was aiming for the spice was still too low. The caraway flavour is good, but it is too much in the background.

Spices and Herbs

It seems that this spice and herbs reference will be pretty useful, at least to myself! Although I can't capture the interaction between spices mixtures, it will serve as a good starting point for creating new combinations.

This is a spice and herbs reference for cured sausage. This reference is of no use if you are making fresh sausages. The curing process greatly reduces the strength of the flavourings. If you were to use this reference to make fresh sausages then the end result would pack a much bigger punch than intended.

I shall updating and extending this table as I continue to experiment.

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	Meat and Fat	gm
Fresh Garlic, minced	Mild	gm
Fresh Garlic, minced	Medium	gm
Fresh Garlic, minced	Strong	gm
Paprika	Mild	gm
Paprika	Medium	gm
Paprika	Strong	gm
Sage, Fresh	Mild	gm

Marmite Cured Sausage

Ingredient	Grams
Meat/fat	2450
Salt	35
Cure #2	6.125
Sugar	16
Marmite	95
Black pepper	20
Casing	Beef runners

The salt in the base mix was reduced to account for the high salt content in the Marmite.

Considering the large amount of Marmite that I used in this recipe I'm amazed at how little of the Marmite taste comes through in the finished sausage. I will try this again some time and I will increase the Marmite by 50%. It's still a great tasting sausage and the Marmite has given it a lovely dark exterior.

The curing cabinet photo shows the curved Marmite sausages on the right. To the left are the still-curing fennel salami which are straight as they use larger beef middles as a casing.

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Meat and Fat	gm
Cure #2	gm
Salt	gm
Sugar	gm
Marmite	gm
Black Pepper	gm
Casing Sheep Hog Beef Runners Beef Middles	m

Fennel Salami

Ingredient	Grams
Base Mix	2600
Black Pepper	10
Fennel	4
Corriander	2
Garlic	22
Casing	Beef middles

This a cured version of the fresh Italian sausage I made a few years ago. From my experience, I associate fennel in cured sausages with Kabonos, which are smoked, unlike those I have produced here.

The spices are a good blend here, but the fennel is just too subtle. It is another case where the amount of spice used in a fresh sausage needs to be increased for a cured sausage. I wonder if this is due to the fermenting bacteria reducing the impact of the spice.

The black pepper is just right and the half-crushed texture works well giving small pockets of strong pepper to crunch on.

This is the first time that I have used beef middles to get a good salami-sized width. Previously I had only used hog casings and beef runners.

Curing Cabinet Update: A New Type Of Fan

I've made a modification to my curing cabinet to keep the air moving in a more sustainable and reliable way. The fan that I was using previously was a cheap USB fan, shown orange in the picture. These fans are designed for occasional use and the motors burn out very quickly. I got through three of them in a couple of weeks even though I was only using them in 30 minute bursts.

Now I have switched to using PC cooling fans, shown black in the picture. They are also very cheap and come with USB connectors. I have bought two sizes at 40mm and 60mm. These fans are designed for continuous use so I am hoping to get longer than a few days use out of them. I've started with using the 40mm fan. I notice that it is quieter and that it makes a much smaller air movement than the previous fan. I think will be a good thing as I want a gentle circulation around my curing sausages rather than keeping them in a wind tunnel.

Cured Lincolnshire Sausage

Ingredient	Grams
Basic Mix	2000
Sage (fresh)	20
Black Pepper	8

This was my first experiment taking a traditional English fresh sausage recipe and turning it in to a cured sausage. The key ingredient is sage and I used the same amount that I would use for making fresh sausages.

While the finished item is good to eat, the flavour of the sage does not come through strongly enough. I wonder if I should use a higher proportion of fresh sage or switch to using dried sage which has a stronger flavour? I guess I will have to make more to see which will produce the best results. My hunch is that the dried sage will work better.

I also notice that the fresh sage turns form green to black after the sausage has fermented. It's a shame because the bright green sage seen through the translucent skin of a fresh Lincolnshire sausage is much more appealing.

Cured Curry Sausage

Ingredient	Grams
Basic cured sausage mix	1800
Garlic	28
Sainsbury's Hot curry powder	18
Turmeric	10

I tried making a fresh curried sausage previously but the spices were quite stark as they do not get the required amount of time to cook as the sausage cooks. I figured that the fermentation of the spices in a cured version would work better and I was right. It's delicious. The spices are rounded and compliment the tang of the cured meat.

Although I wanted to use Sharwood's curry mix as it is a classic English curry flavour, when I got to the supermarket all they had were their own brand version. I took the easy option and bought what was available at the time. It worked well but as I am sure that this is one to make again I will use Sharwood's next time. Although the curry powder was advertised as Hot this did not really come through in the finished item. And although I enjoy a hot curry, I think that this is fine as it is, without the heat.

I added extra turmeric to the recipe as I wanted to get a distinguished yellow colour to the finished sausage that was similar to the red of a Chorizo.

Curing Cabinet

After three years of research and failed attempts, I have at last built myself a working curing cabinet. I didn't really build it so much as put a few things together to get the controllable environment required. I had previously been put off building a cabinet by the complicated designs that I had found on the internet. I do not want to drill holes into fridges and wire-up temperature and humidity controls to mains electricity.

This is a much simpler design. I bought a second-hand wine-chiller to use as the cabinet rather than a fridge. The beauty of this is that it has a working temperature range of 4 to 18 degrees C. Inside I put a battery-operated digital thermometer/hygrometer so I can monitor the environment. I removed all the wire racking shelves except for the top one onto which I hang the meat. A nice thing about this wine chiller is that it has a glass door and an interior light. It looks great! I keep it out of sunlight with the light off, except for show.

Air circulation is handled by a small USB fan designed for plugging into a PC. I have also ordered some USB processor fans which I will experiment with. The fan is on a plug-socket timer so it does not run constantly and burn out. The USB power cable is flat so that it can fit nicely in the wine-chiller door seal.

Humidity is controlled by a bowl of water near the fan. There are many ways to get a stable desired humidity. I can adjust the size of the water bowl, the closeness and/or orientation of the bowl to the fan, the time operations of the fan. Because the wine chiller is a relatively small space it is incredibly easy to get a high humidity.

The two saucisson hanging in there at the moment are curry and Lincolnshire (sage) experiments. These are nearly ready and I'll blogging about them soon.

Alsace Saucisson Sec

I was thinking back to the delicious, light and fun fresh Alsace sausages that I made in 2012 and I wondered what a cured version would be like. A quick search around the Web and I realised that this was already standard fare in the Alsace. I made my own version and shared them with friends to get their reactions. It took a while to get used to the taste, kind of a mix between saucisson and vin chaud. I'm not sure that the light Alsace spices go with the deeper flavours that curing brings, but it was an interesting experiment.

I'm drawn to the idea of taking standard fresh sausage recipes and seeing how they work after a cure. As far as I am aware there are no traditional cured English sausage so I will have a play with some of these first.

Sadly I have no photos of these cured Alsace sausages. All were eaten before I thought to take a picture.

Ingredient	Grams
Pork shoulder	2170
Back fat	230
Salt	40
Cure #2	6
Sugar	15
Cloves	1.0
Cinnamon	2.0
Ginger	2.0
Nutmeg	0.9

Base Mix For Cured Sausage

Now that I have made cured sausages a number of times I notice that there is a basic meat/salt/cure base on to which I add the herbs and spices that give the sausage it's character. The recipe here makes 3 Kg of base mix which is a good quantity to make for the effort involved. It makes enough sausages to enjoy myself and to give to friends.

Essentially the lean meat/fat proportions are 90/10. Or use pork belly for 'ready mix'.
The Cure is 2.5 g per kilo meat mix.
The Salt is 18 g per kilo meat mix.
The Sugar is 7.5 g per kilo meat mix.

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Meat and Fat	gm
Cure #2	gm
Salt	gm
Sugar	gm