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.

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