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Has anyone tried to make a Teriyaki sausage? I am currently trying to make on but it comes out with a strange texture and very poor binding. You know that weird texture if you over-marinate chicken in soy sauce? I am getting that in my sausage! the ground chicken pieces are separating from each other and have such a weird feel in your mouth.

I have tried an "all natural" phosphate, as well as carrageenan, both of which have helped the texture and binding on high acidity sausages. Neither of these seem to help with the break down of the soy sauce.

I am using 180g of soy sauce per 2 Lbs (about .9 Kg). The flavor is amazing but it is hard to get past the weirdness of the texture to enjoy the sausage.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Hi, welcome to the forum.

The full recipe and method you used will help members to advise you.

I'm wondering if soy sauce is acidic? I can't find my litmus paper to be able to find out. If it is, using a buffer of bicarbonate of soda may help. See:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5318

HTH

Phil

It will depend on the specific teriyaki sauce recipe.

Some have rice wine and vinegar, which will both interfere with binding in high enough quantities.

Thanks, it's a possibility then.

Phil

My recipe is soy sauce, brown sugar, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, and some all natural rice seasoning (with sugar and other spices, no acids). Soy sauce does have some acidity to it though, so I am adding . Hmm, well, Today I am trying to enhance the bind with these ideas I found online:

1) Food Starch
2) Non Fat Dry Milk
3) Bread Crumb
4) Bicarbonate of Soda

I will be stuffing them and putting them through the smokehouse, so hopefully we can see the differences each of these ingredients has on the texture.

I appreciate all of the help and am so happy to have found a sausage making forum that people keep up on!! Thanks for the kind welcoming and I look forward to sharing my knowledge with you all as much as you are sharing yours!

If I were you, I'd only change one thing at a time - and keep records, you'll think you'll remember everything you did, but...

You sound as if you are an experienced sausage-maker? Can I take it that you know about things like mixing to develop the myosin in the meat to turn the minced meat into sausagemeat? Or, do we need to cover the basics?

My own thoughts are that the addition of Food Starch, Non Fat Dry Milk or Bread Crumb will ,at best, hide/mask the real problem; what that is, is what we need to find out.

Is there any salt, or are you relying on the salt in the soy? How long are you mixing the sausagemeat for before stuffing, and are you keeping the meat near freezing throughout? Are you adding any fat/oil? Is the meat breast, or thigh? Including skin? I'm in the UK so don't know what 'all natural rice seasoning' is?

And the method, how many times ground? What plate? etc...

The more detail you can give, the more likely it will be that something will 'click' with members reading it.

A couple of the guys who are around at present have more experience of chicken sausage than I do. Hopefully, they'll join in to help out.

Phil

Hi Goskate_girl,

As Phil and Thewitt have said it may possibly be the vinegar, I recently made some paprika flavoured chicken sausages, which had only a splash of vinegar, about 1 tablespoon, and the texture of these was different from other recent chicken sausages. You can see the difference in my recent posts in the sausage recipes section. It would help if you could detail exactly your process and post some pictures, we may collectively be able to come up with a solution. For sure don't give up on this interesting flavour combination yet!

Regards,
Richard

Hi Phil,

I am somewhat experienced in sausage making, as it is what I do for a living, though I have only been in this job for three quarters of a year! I do have a degree in Culinary Arts and have done some Garde Mange (Cold Kitchen) classes that we primarily focus on sausage making.

Since I work in a sausage factory, all of the meat is pre ground to 3/8 inch (I'm not sure the measurement you take in UK?). I believe we use all chicken thighs with the skin and fat, without adding additional fat to the mixture. I am not 100% sure about that though.

So all of the meat I get is pre ground, then I mix in water, salt (If using), and and binding agents. I mix until the bind built up enough to make the meat "stick," usually about 5 to 10 minutes. In some cases I have mixed for us to 30 minutes in the production size mixer, but I think that was because I added sugars and fiber to the mixture before building the bind. I then add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and the rice seasoning, which is essentially rice wine with salt.

I did look up the PH of soy sauce with is equal to that of acid rain! And the rice wine is adding to that as well, so I am sure the acidity is killing the sausage at this point. I do always keep accurate note on everything I do, and I am making all 4 of the above mentioned changes separately. I have 4 separate test batches going right now that we will be able to compare the results of and see which agent helped most.

I hope what I have written is clear, as I am better at cooking than explaining! Thank God I am a chef and not a teacher!

Sara

Oh, and there is no vinegar added, it is: soy sauce, brown sugar, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, and the rice wine vinegar. That is it! I am not adding any salt, as the soy sauce I have added has plenty! I will have pictures and updates at some point tomorrow with how all 4 variations came out!

True teriyaki has pineapple juice in it which has enzymes that breaks down proteins.
Could this be in the ingredients as just sugar ?

I just finished cooking up my 4 batches of Teriyaki sausage. I took pictures of the precooked sausages, but when I went ot take the pictures of the cooked cut sausage, my phone died, so no pictures available yet! Well, all of them are still quite a bit too soft. The NonFat Dry milk seems to have helped a little, as well as the breadcrumbs. The baking soda made the sausage look wrinkled and dehydrated, and the food starch didn't seem to do much at all. It is a start, but I will definitely have to try harder next week!

Um... I'm at a loss then. I'll have to get my 'thinking head' out!

Let's just get it clear: what you're trying to make is a chicken sausage with teriyaki flavours? So a sweet, soy sauce, mirin; and maybe sake, garlic and ginger; flavoured sausage? Is that about right?

Phil

Here are a couple thoughts that might be worth attempting on a smaller scale. I'm happy to hear you're working on a teriyaki sausage as I've been mulling over the same thing and you've already saved me from failure #1.

Thought #1 - maybe change your soy to a dark soy sauce or mushroom flavored soy sauce. You might be able to use less to get the same or similar effect.

Thought #2 - not sure how the baking soda was added but in case this wasn't your methodology make a spice slurry with the baking soda and other flavorings then add that mix to the meat. Perhaps if the soy sauce was added to the meat by itself too much acid could have affected the meat before the soda was able to neutralize the acid.

Teriyaki Chicken Sausage

Chicken thigh meat and fat 1000 g

Kikkoman soy sauce 90 g
Sherry 20 g
Baking soda 0.75 g
This will adjust the pH to 6. Carefully (foams a lot) reduce this to 80 g in a pan on the stove, then cool completely.
Fresh garlic minced fine 3.4 g (2 small)
Fresh ginger grated 2.5 g
Black pepper 2 g
Light brown sugar 6 g (1 t)
Orange zest 3.75 g (from half an orange)

Plain breadcrumbs 80 g
Grind the chicken meat and fat (nearly frozen) through a course plate. Add the seasonings and liquid and mix until the mixture forms a cohesive mass. Add breadcrumbs and mix until uniform. Stuff into sheep’s casing and rest overnight on a rack in the fridge.
An interesting article about the use of sherry in this recipe:
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_to ... ith-sherry

Is a pH of 6 what we should aim for in (say) a tomato sausage?

Phil