My sausages are very dry after cooking

[GarryM]

I made my first batch of sausages on the weekend. I fried some up the day after making and found them to be too dry. How can i fix this next time?

[NCPaul]

Welcome to the forum.
We will need some details about the sausage you made and how you made them since there are several ways to get a dry sausage.

[Wunderdave]

Generally, either add more fat, cook over lower heat, or both.

Another possible issue would be fat smearing during the grinding/mixing/stuffing process.

If you want to make lower fat sausages you can but you will need to add things to the mix such as milk powder for example to make up for the lack of fat in the mix.

[vagreys]

We need to know your recipe and what you did to be able to tell you why.

[GarryM]

This is the recipe that I used I started with a pork shoulder and leg which gave me about 32 pounds of ground pork. Amounts are in grams

White Wine 500
Salt 120
Fennel Seeds 30
Black Pepper (ground) 30
Paprika (mild) 150
Parlsey Flakes 30

I let the sausages dry over night in my mud room (5-10 deg C) and then fried them in some oil. I froze the rest. I'll try some of the frozen sausages on the weekend.

Thanks

[NCPaul]

These are my guesses -

The recipe is on the low end for salt content. Salt not only flavors the meat, it also helps to extract the proteins that bind the sausage and help it hold water.

How did you manage to mix 32 pounds of ground meat? Did the meat come together and look and feel like sausage? Did you add the cold wine slowly after achieving a good bind?

[GarryM]

We cut the salt in half due to health reasons for one of the family members. We managed to mix the 32 pounds of meat by dividing it into 3 sections. It looked and felt like sausage meat. The wine was added all at once with the spices.

[BriCan]

This is the recipe that I used I started with a pork shoulder and leg which gave me about 32 pounds of ground pork. Amounts are in grams

Have you got the weigh amount of the meat you was using, it looks like there is/was not enough fat in the meat content

White Wine 500
Salt 120
Fennel Seeds 30
Black Pepper (ground) 30
Paprika (mild) 150
Parlsey Flakes 30

Salt is fine, I have used a little less (commercial operation) Wine might be a tad on the high side -- just my thoughts

I let the sausages dry over night in my mud room (5-10 deg C) and then fried them in some oil. I froze the rest. I'll try some of the frozen sausages on the weekend.

Sausage will be dry in two to three hours at the most at that temperature.

Don't over mix as this will also cause problems

[This Little Piggy]

All the comments here seem to me to be on the right track.

SALT. While we are still regularly told to reduce salt in our diet as a way to treat hypertension, medical studies show little to no benefit. For a very small portion of the population, a very low sodium diet may reduce their blood pressure a few points. That's it. And, as mentioned above, salt in the mix is essential to extract myosin from the meat and get a good bind. If you really want or need low sodium levels, try substituting some sodium phosphates. Just 2g per pound of meat will give you a good bind. Also be sure to mix the salts with the ground meat for a day or two before final mixing and stuffing, to give them plenty of time to work.

FAT. As mentioned above, if you're just using whole shoulder, there may not be enough fat in the mix. Typically, you want a ratio of 4:1 or 3:1 meat to fat. If you're cutting back on the fat for health reasons, please reconsider. I know that for as long as I've been alive, we've been told that eating saturated animal fats causes heart disease, but the latest meta-analysis (2010) of scientific studies found no significant link between saturated fat consumption and cardiovascular disease. And animal fats have almost as high a proportion of oleic acid (the "heart health" good stuff) as olive oil

COOKING. Finally, don't overcook the poor sausage! We're told that ground meat has to be cooked to 160ºF in order to be safe to eat, but at temperatures that high, the proteins in meat constrict tightly, squeezing out the moisture and leaving the sausage dry. The truth is that pathogen reduction is a function of BOTH time and temperature and that you can pasteurize a sausage just as effectively by heating it to 130ºF and holding it there for just over an hour. That's what I do, in a temperature-controlled water bath, and the finished, fully cooked sausage is so deliciously moist you'll never go back to cooking them any other way!

Hope all this helps!

[larry]

I agree that the likely culprit is too little fat, and I also vote for making sure you mix long enough to develop that sticky, tacky feel which indicates that the myosin has started to release. My early attempts were crumbly and dry, and tasted more like ground pork than sausage. The cures for me were more fat, more mixing and more salt. I also try to do very small batches when I am experimenting with ingredients. Sometimes I just chop the meat in my food processor instead of the grinder so I can try out different flavors and proportions with a couple of extra pork chops. I'd rather have an 11 oz. mistake than a 32 lb. one. There's also a procedure called the quenelle test, which you may have heard of. Before you put the meat into casings, wrap a little in a piece of plastic wrap and boil it until cooked, then try it. Quenelle refers to the shape, which is like an american football. If it tastes dry, at least you have time to try and fix it. I've added extra liquid, or even some oil, or I've put it back in the mixer.