Good looking sausages to sell

[Dej]

I live out in China and I've recently started making and selling fresh British style sausages which people seem to really love (thank you to all the wonderful insight from members of this site).
Although I initially used natural casing I now only use collagen. I just find it less of a pain to use and as I make chicken sausages as well it's just easier having the one casing for all.

I sell the sausages in links of six and of course the links don't hold so when customers cut them they have the ends a bit flappy which I guess people are not used to. The sausages expand (often too much) during cooking so by the time they are cooked it is normally fine but it still doesn't help with people getting over the home made (look) versus professional looking.
Anyone have a good suggestion for dealing with this?

Also on the subject of the expansion I do still have trouble with splitting. I've been educating people on cooking (slow and low heat) and tweaking recipe which has helped but I still don't have it fully stable. I have interest from a couple of small local restaurants but I will have to fix this issue.

At the moment in my pork sausages I use about 80% meat (50%/50% shoulder and belly) 10% oats and 10% water. I used to use breadcrumbs and the problem seems better with oats. Could it be the collagen casing? I'm looking to try a different supplier but wonder if there could be much of a difference.

[Dej]

haha, I don't know what I'd been drinking when I chose the title to the original post.
I've solved my issues.
I guess I was wrong to assume that all collagen skins would be pretty much the same. I've managed to get my hands on some Devro Tenderfry Bovine collagen skins They are fantastic. The stuff I was using before was from a Chinese factory.
The Devro ones are thinner and lighter. They feel much closer to natural skins when they have absorbed moisture.
I'm assumming that they are also more breathable than what I used to use as the sausages bloom much better now. When I cut each individual sausage the end don't unravel and open up so they adhere to the meat much better and hold shape. When cooked there is very little expansion of the sausage.
And the ultimate test was that I fried some of the sausages on the highest heat in the pan to the point where the outside was brown and inside was not cooked. One didn't burst at all and the other split very gracefully with the sausage still holding its shape rather than spilling out its insides. They also pass the oven test.

I have recently also started experimenting with sous vide (posh boil in the bag) and this is the one place the old collagen skins still win. The Devro skins just come of the sausages.

[wheels]

Hi Dej

Apologies, I missed your original post completely. Welcome to the forum. I'd love to hear more about your life making sausage in China.

Phil