Well the votes have been cast and we have a winner
We had Pork medallions at 2.2% fat, turkey breast at 0.8% fat and Pork Shoulder Fat at 100% fat. The pork and turkey were minced once semi frozen on a small plate, the fat was minced frozen on the same plate. All got the same dose of professional pork sausage seasoning with rusk and were individually frozen hand mixed to a sticky consistency ready for combining. Freshly Rehydrated Soya mince (0.4% fat) was mixed with the same seasoning/rusk mix as a meat substitute in some mixes. Agar (a seaweed derived vegetable equivelant of gelatine) was used in the low fat mixes)
1) 80% Pork and 20% pork shoulder fat, 10% water added ~18% fat
My Normal British Banger positive control
2) 100% Pork, 10% agar mix added (6% agar so 0.6% in sausage) ~ 2% fat
3) 100% Turkey, 10% agar mix added ~0.8% fat
4) equal mix of Pork and Turkey, 10% agar mix added ~1.5% fat
5) equal mix of Pork and Soya, 10% agar mix added ~1.2% fat
6) equal mix of Turkey and Soya, 10% agar mix added ~0.5%fat
and oven cooked on a rack to avoid cross contamination.
None of the subjects knew exactly what was going on other than I was mixing all sorts of ingredients together. All sausages were stuffed into collagen casings and with the Girls help (4 and 6) all was ready about 2 hours later than if I had done it on my own
Despite the differences in mixes all sausages bound together very well and cut cleanly after cooking with no crumbliness apparent. The girls , I suspected, would make poor experimental subjects but were included in the initial rounds. My wife and son (13) were the main experiment.
No clues were given as to what was in what sausage. An initial taste test was of the Pork and Turkey, "please base your scores out of 10 on whether you like subsequent sausages more or less, assuming this sausage is 5" .
Both girls announced it was the best sausage they had ever tasted and it was also well taken by the grown ups . The girls then didn't like the next few saying they wanted more of the first, so although a trend was noted they took no further part in testing.
Marks were awarded out of 10, the initial taste test also being tested as a contender later on. Some were tasted more than once. They weren't tested in any particular order, but the positive control, the British Banger, was deliberately placed in the middle of the tests.
The Winner: 6 points No. 4
2nd 5 points No. 5
3rd 4 points No. 2
4th 3 points No. 3
5th 2 points No. 6
6th 1 points No. 1
The British Banger came last
I was expecting it to get 10
Clearly I expected it to trounce the lot and then I would move on to stage two, the best of the rest, but the winner was consistently picked out three times as being the nicest, and scored close to its baseline setting of 5.
The rest of the tests:
1a) What is the smallest amount of sausage mix you can put in a hobby stuffer and have nothing come out of the stuffing tube?
1b) Does it only appear to take longer to wind the plunger back out the more times you have to do it, or is this a quantifiable phenomenon?
2) Do you prefer your sausage casserole fresh, reheated one, two or three times (at 24hr intervals)?
3) What happens if I mix the left over pork fat and left over Soya at 100:0%, 50:50% and 0:100%
?
are probably of less interest to the forum as a whole
.
Dave