My First Batch of Saveloys

[Wal Footrot]

One of the reasons I took up sausage making in the first place was because of the generally poor quality of smallgoods here in Queensland. This particularly applies to Savs which no butcher seems to make and the commercial ones are just not worth eating. Now that I've had a bit of experience with sausage making I thought I'd finally give these a go. The results are quite pleasing though I can make improvements.

I started off with 2.5 Kg of pork meat at 20% fat concentration. In future I'll use a combination of pork, beef and lamb as I believe it'll improve the flavour and go down to 15%. To this I added the requisite amount of Lesnie's Formula 2 smallgoods mix and nothing else. I reminced it through a medium blade with the mix, stuffed and then linked the savs. After that I dropped them into water heated to 170F/77C and left them in there for 20 minutes with the heat on. I didn't add the red dye so they don't look like Saveloys but at the moment I don't care.

The proof of good savs is if can you eat them raw/cold and these ones you certainly can. My taste but buds tell me that these are fractionally salty and I have to fix this if I use the Lesnie's again. Would adding sugar help? I'd also be tempted to use some extra mace, nutmeg and maybe a bit of ginger. However, I can't complain as these are quite edible and will be much better when cooked.

I also have a very good recipe given to me by an award winning butcher which I might try next time.

[georgebaker]

Hi
please post the recipe 'cos I used to be very keen on savs when I was younger. I thought they were filled (in part) with poached pork skin and the messing has put me off making them

George

[Wal Footrot]

Today's the day when I try out the recipe I've been given. Actually I've got two and will try the first one.

Meat 75 % (I'm combining pork and beef)
Water 10% (adjustable)
Flour 10 % (adjustable)
Seasoning 5 %


Here are the seasoning percentages for both recipes

Recipe One

Salt 63.24%
Flour 15.41
Sugar 1.63
Grd Mace 2
Grd Nutmeg 1.5
Grd Coriander 1.5
White Pepper 1.6
Cinnamon 0.7
Nitrite salt 4.2

Recipe Two

Salt 59.44%
Flour 19.07
Sugar 7.41
Onion Powder 5.7
Beef stock*** 2.9
Grd Mace 0.31
White Pepper 1.04
Grd Nutmeg 0.31

I removed the sodium tripolyphosphate from the recipe as I couldn't get any will replace it with a bit more flour. this also means that the recipes above don't quite add up to 100% but it's close enough. I'm using rice flour for this as rusk is unavailable here in Australia. The big problem will be converting the percentages to actual weight I'm going to round off so beef stock will be 3%, onion powder will be 6% etc. I don't mind if the seasoning is a bit stronger. I'll also up the white pepper and nutmeg quantities as I think they really add to the taste.

I'll let you know tomorrow how they work out.

[Wal Footrot]

Well, the verdict's in and the result is very pleasing. I made a number of small adjustments to Recipe 2, including reducing the amount of salt by about a third. Eaten without cooking there was definitely a salty taste but when cooked this vanishes - I guess they still need more time to bloom. I doubled the amount of white pepper but to my taste I'd like them just a little bit stronger here - maybe a dash of cayenne would do the trick. I used liquid beef stock to replace some of the water and this has added a nice effect. Some smoke flavouring would round this recipe out quite nicely. These are far better than any savs I've tasted in mainland Australia but still do not equal the ones I got in Latrobe, Tasmania.

My next project will be to try and emulate those. My last batch were meant to do this but I used the wrong formula - Lesnie's Smallgoods #2 which is used for kabanas and other spicy continental sausage. They were really fiery but tasted quite good. When I went back to my notes I saw that Peter, the butcher who owns Morse Quality Butchers in Latrobe, actually used Lesnie's #1 smallgoods formula and has tweaked it to his own recipe. If I can come close to recreating those I'll be a very happy man!

[Vernon Smith]

Wal my ol' cobber,
I've been trying to contact you for ages without success. Thought you had dropped over the edge of the world. Where do you get your casings and seasonings is Aus? Here in the Sol. Is. I have to get everything posted from the UK. It costs an arm and a leg and airmail takes about 6 weeks. God knows how long surface mail would take... Anyway ordering from Aus would obviously be much cheaper and quicker. Please put me in touch with your source.

I have just posted the results of my first batch under "Saveloys". If you have a look at it you will see how poor the results were. I think I will try your formula next attempt in a few weeks time. I am up to my eyebrows with 20kg of ham that I put into cure yesterday so that must be completed before I start anything else. Meanwhile please help me with the following:

1...My savs were solely pork. Do you think that adding beef helps?

2...You use flour but I used rusk. Is flour a recognised ingredient or your own variation? Might be better than rusk as a binder.

3...Do you completely fill the casings or leave some slack for expansion? I left some slack but the filling didn't expand like a fried sausage would.

4...Would you fine tune your seasoning formula before making another batch? Please adsvise. I can't get onion powder here but I have everything else.

5...You add 5% seasoning and 63.24% of that is salt. My seasoning was ~66.6% but I only seasoned at 3%. Would you recommend reducing the salt? I found my savs much too salty.

6...Your formula uses nitrite salt. Do you mean Prague #1 powder? Please advise. I have both Nitrite and Nitrate available.


I am eagerly looking forward to your reply. BTW If you want any help with bacon and ham please let me know. I have some super techniques for both and the results are outstanding.

All the best

Vernon

[Wal Footrot]

Wal my ol' cobber,
I've been trying to contact you for ages without success. Thought you had dropped over the edge of the world. Where do you get your casings and seasonings is Aus? Here in the Sol. Is. I have to get everything posted from the UK. It costs an arm and a leg and airmail takes about 6 weeks. God knows how long surface mail would take... Anyway ordering from Aus would obviously be much cheaper and quicker. Please put me in touch with your source.

I have just posted the results of my first batch under "Saveloys". If you have a look at it you will see how poor the results were. I think I will try your formula next attempt in a few weeks time. I am up to my eyebrows with 20kg of ham that I put into cure yesterday so that must be completed before I start anything else. Meanwhile please help me with the following:

1...My savs were solely pork. Do you think that adding beef helps?

2...You use flour but I used rusk. Is flour a recognised ingredient or your own variation? Might be better than rusk as a binder.

3...Do you completely fill the casings or leave some slack for expansion? I left some slack but the filling didn't expand like a fried sausage would.

4...Would you fine tune your seasoning formula before making another batch? Please adsvise. I can't get onion powder here but I have everything else.

5...You add 5% seasoning and 63.24% of that is salt. My seasoning was ~66.6% but I only seasoned at 3%. Would you recommend reducing the salt? I found my savs much too salty.

6...Your formula uses nitrite salt. Do you mean Prague #1 powder? Please advise. I have both Nitrite and Nitrate available.


I am eagerly looking forward to your reply. BTW If you want any help with bacon and ham please let me know. I have some super techniques for both and the results are outstanding.

All the best

Vernon

G'day Vernon

To answer your questions:

Australia has to be both quicker and cheaper. Lesnie's vacuum pack their casings so they will last - I think I got about 90m of them for about $15. Our seasonings (I do this with a mate of mine) are from the packet and are ground up using a pestle and mortar though the ordinary pre-ground stuff would be fine. Lesnie's also make a great seasoning/meal mix called Smallgoods Formula #1. (check sites at the end of this post). I'm sure Lesnies will post out to you but there are a couple of other sites here in OZ that have the Lesnie's and other stuff like hog casings who I'm sure will post.

So, to the numbered questions

1 It's a matter of taste but the combination of pork and beef worked out very well

2 I used rice flour because I can't find rusk anywhere here in OZ. Rice flour adds no taste if you have to use a bit more - the guy who gave the recipe uses wholemeal flour and his sav's are very good.

3 The casings were quite full but I was also mindful of the fact that I had to steep them in hot water to cook them so I left a little bit of slack. Expansion was minimal.

4 I would definitely fine tune my seasonings. The sav's taste good but needed more bite. I'd increase the pepper even to the point of adding some cayenne. I also added more mace, nutmeg and cinnamon than the recipe allowed with no ill effects.

5 I halved the amount of salt and it worked out well. I also added extra sugar but don't know if it had any effect. For onion powder I used a part packet of French onion soup (no problems) and also added liquid beef stock as a partial substitute for water. This is one of the reasons I reduced the salt content.

6 I couldn't find any nitrite salt so the name Prague Powder comes as a bit of a surprise - maybe this is what I need to look for. I believe the nitrite salt is both a preservative and also induces a pink colour to the meat. There was also a recommendation that STPP (supertripolyphosphate, also known as globalean) be used but it's basically a binder for the fat. I couldn't find it so I didn't use it. It made no difference to the taste.

I hope this is helpful to you. Here are some sites that may add to what I've posted.

http://www.lesnies.com.au/# This has got to be one of the most poorly constructed sites I've ever visited but you will note that they say Pacific Islands and if you get hold of their Queensland office you might be OK

But this is much better...

http://www.bakeandbrew.com.au/category35_1.htm

and even better still...

http://www.orangefarmhardware.com.au/

Check out their catalogue and you've covered just about everything. A pity it's a PDF file but it still works.

My thanks to Ferret for these sites.

I hope this helps you make great sav's and snags

Feel free to PM me with any queries.

[Vernon Smith]

Thanks for your prompt response Wal,
I just checked the web sites you listed, Orange Farm Looks just the ticket.
I will make contact as soon as I need some stuff. Your replies are most helpful too. I suspected that youwouldn't have used 63.24% salt so I will halve it at my next attempt to around 33%. Thanks for the tip. I can get locally milled wholemeal flour so I will use that too. I guess 25% beef will be a good place to start and see what the result is like.

If you are at sixes and sevens re nitrite and nitrate my recent postings on "Cordon Bleu Ham" might help. I prefer KNO3 (Potassium Nitrate) at ~200ppm in all my sausages. Works well. I am sure you can get it in Aus even though I haven't noticed it on any of the Aus websites. A very small amount of KNO2 or KNO3 goes a very long way so it's worth the hassle of finding some. Don't bother with the Prague powders unless absolutely necessary they're 90+% salt so very expensive in the long run. "Sausagemaking" in the UK has both Prague #1 and #2 and KNO3 if you can't find them locally but as I said the post will double the price.

Thanks again for your help. I'll be in touch.

Vernon

[Wal Footrot]

OK, I'm now further down the track with my Saveloy making and thought that I'd share my experiences since I last posted.

In hindsight, recipe #2 (see post three) was a bit disappointing so I decided to go back to keeping it simple. I obtained some of Lesnie's Smallgoods Formula #1 and decided to to use that and only that. This pack has a side pack of nitrite salt. I made a batch last Saturday

I got 2 Kgs of mixed pork/beef mince with 15% fat content and added 300g of pork brawn. I made the Lesnie's into a slurry and added it to the mince/brawn and mixed for 5 minutes by hand. I reminced all this through a 6mm blade. Using my new 3kg Reber I stuffed the hog casings and linked the Savs. I then put them into a pot of water at 80C. I let these poach for 12 minutes (by which time the temperature had recovered to 80C) and removed them into a large container and sprinkled them with cold water. I then let these sit in my fridge for 24 hours.

Verdict: - well, they're all gone and most were eaten uncooked! They tasted very good but seemed just a little bit fatty. I think that I used too much brawn. I also like my savs to be quite spicy so I'm going to have to add to the basic Lesnies mix tomorrow and here is what I'm going to do.

5Kg pork/beef mince - 15% fat
Lesnies Formula #1 smallgoods mix including nitrite salt
500g of pork brawn (10% instead of the 20% I used last weekend)
Grd Mace 5g
Grd Nutmeg 4g
Grd Coriander 4g
White Pepper 5g
Cinnamon 2g

This makes up 5% of the original weight in seasoning (25g in total). I'll do a taste and if necessary I'll increase the white pepper

The beauty of the Lesnie's mix is that it gets the salt proportion right and already has a very subtle flavour.

My other alternative is

5Kg pork/beef mince - 15% fat
75% Lesnies Formula #1 smallgoods mix including nitrite salt
25% Lesnies Formula #2 smallgoods mix ( this was very spicy but a full mix was overkill)
500g of pork brawn.

I'll probably stick with the first option and report back to you sometime on Sunday.

[Vernon Smith]

Nice to hear from you Wal,
Please define "Pork Brawn" for me. I make brawn from brined pig head according to Paul Kribs recipe. What do you use?

I will be slaughtering another 150 kg pig sometime next week so now would be a good time to plan my savs. I will await the outcome of your next batch and get some Lesnies #1 mix through mailorder. If you fortify the mix with the additional spices I will go for that too. I also like spicy savs. Please post your results next week. I am sure there a lot of sav lovers out there like me who will be eternally grateful to learn a definitive formula.

[Wal Footrot]

Nice to hear from you Wal,
Please define "Pork Brawn" for me. I make brawn from brined pig head according to Paul Kribs recipe. What do you use?

I will be slaughtering another 150 kg pig sometime next week so now would be a good time to plan my savs. I will await the outcome of your next batch and get some Lesnies #1 mix through mailorder. If you fortify the mix with the additional spices I will go for that too. I also like spicy savs. Please post your results next week. I am sure there a lot of sav lovers out there like me who will be eternally grateful to learn a definitive formula.

I don't have the facility or the time to make my own brawn unfortunately so I have to buy mine from a delicatessen. I imagine it's the same as you're making, using the little left over bits from the face etc. What I found is that the brawn makes up for the very low fat content of the meat (15%) and gives a pleasantly smooth taste and effect. Now I don't know how much fat there is in brawn but I assume that the gelatinous part has some in it so I suppose that this raises the fat content a bit. You'll know all this so let me know too. Also, is there a simple way I can go about making my own brawn or would the cost of getting a whole head from the butcher be too prohibitive?

Looking at the seasoning proportions I posted last night, I'm no longer sure that they are correct (I'd had a few Friday Arvo beers at the time) so I'm going to recalculate before I start. My mate Trev, who shares in the whole sausage making process, (best way to get his wife out of the house he reckons) is quite good at working out this sort of thing so we'll consult this morning and look at some other recipes for sausages to get a gauge as to how much to put in. Some of these recipes are for 2.5 kilos of pork sausages and give the seasoning ratios in teaspoons or grams so we'll also use that as a guide. Seeing as how we're so close we're determined to finally lock away a recipe that we know we can reproduce with consistent results. As for a definitive formula, I can only go on what I like - others may have a different idea but at least there will be a base to work on.

I'll report back tomorrow.

[Wal Footrot]

OK, the verdicts in. These are as good though not significantly better than the last batch. That's not a bad thing as the last batch were good but the seasoning I used this didn't significantly lift the flavour - though it did change it. What I really wanted was a more spicy taste and while I used quite a bit of fresh ground white pepper I feel that I could have doubled the amount. The reduction in the brawn brought the meat to the inner limit of fat content but a very gentle boil made sure that the saveloy was still quite succulent.

Overall I'm happy with the result and all I can do is fine tune from here. I'm tempted to ring the guy in Tasmania to find out what seasoning he adds to his savs on top of the Lesnie's mix. It's a pity he hasn't got an e-mail address. Anyway, feel confident of using a smallgoods mix plus the addition of the seasoning in the recipe I've given. I'd probably leave out the cinnamon next time in favour of some extra mace and nutmeg. I wonder what the addition of a little ginger would do?

I might also look at some of the saveloy recipes that Parsons has contributed.

[Vernon Smith]

Thanks Wal. Seems all's well down at the Flats. I will have a go myself when I have offed my pig this w/e-ish and let you have the verdict thereafter. I think I will leave out the brawn altogether, shouldn't do any harm in view of your last results. Btw, I just can't get any sense out of Lesnies web site. How do you do it? I need to make contact and get some #1. Perhaps there is another source. Please advise.
Cheers for now, Vernon

[Wal Footrot]

Vernon - Try this phone/fax number and just order direct.

Tel: (07) 3899 2888
Fax: (07) 3899 2284

These are Queensland numbers

This way you could talk to someone who can tell you who the Solomon Is agent (if they have one) is. They may be prepared to post directly from Oz.

I agree, their website is crap but their products are good. Good luck and let me know how you get on.