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For a recent party I was asked to cater, I was asked to provide a caseless, mammal-free, low-fat, poultry sausage. The reasoning was that one of the guests has the tick-borne allergy to alpha-galactose found in almost all mammal meat, and there were other guests attending who were on special diets for heart health or to address hyper-lipidemia.

OK. This party was scheduled for the end of October. For the autumn season, I chose turkey, and figured skin-on turkey thighs would provide a reasonable, but still lean and flavorful base. Unfortunately, there was almost no fat on the skin of any of the turkey thighs I could locate, except possibly on whole birds. It was horrible. The sausage had good flavor, but it came out drier than I would have hoped.

So my question to you fellow sausage makers - how would you supplement the fat in the sausage to bring it up to a viable level. What do you do if your poultry sausage is too lean to have good taste and texture?

Duck skin is a good source, use it with a fat binder.

Could this be adapted or would cheese be a problem?

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There's an oil mix on the Marianski's site that you could use Tom:

http://www.meatsandsausages.com/sausage ... l-emulsion

HTH

NCPaul wrote:Could this be adapted or would cheese be a problem?

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12612

It sounds intriguing, Paul. It might be adapted. The eggplant and mushrooms are clever. Unfortunately, I'm deathly allergic to eggplant and would be wary of preparing it for someone else on my own gear. And in the case of this particular party, one of the guests was allergic to mushrooms, but there are a lot of interesting jumping off points in that recipe where it could be adapted and I'll definitely keep it in mind. You'e not steered me wrong, yet!

wheels wrote:There's an oil mix on the Marianski's site that you could use Tom:

Phil, I thought about that afterwards. Got my copy of Healthy Sausages, but haven't needed to make up a batch, before. I'm definitely going to consider this fat replacer if even turkey thighs and skin are going fat-free! I'm used to turkey thigh giving me somewhere between 12-18% fat, but this couldn't have had more than 10%. What a disappointment. Thanks for the suggestion. I guess I'll need to really consider the chemistry set if I keep getting asked to do these special-diet sausages.

Cooked apple or pear could work instead to modify the texture as could squash.

...and don't forget that tapioca flour gives a 'mouth feel' like fat.

Phil