Crumbly, but still fatty

[thepiggerpicture]

Hi all,

Have been making sausages for a long time now, always seem to be hit and miss whilst I mess around with recipes, and after a lot of research seemed to have finally honed a recipe I thought might work. I used:

2kg fatty pork shoulder
1.1 pork belly
170g rusk
340g iced water
70g seasoning

Grinded the meat under extremely cold conditions after the meat been chilled in the freezer for a couple of hours, added the water, rusk and mixed all together and left over night, then just stuffed and fried one up and and it was extremely fatty and juicy inside and crumbled and tore when tried to cut.

Getting so frustrated by this - what am I doing wrong?

[yotmon]

Hi 'thepiggerpicture'
how well did you mix the sausage meat, should be homogeneous by the time you have finished with it. Also, I would have filled the sausage first, left them refrigerated overnight and then sampled one rather than the other way round seeing as they will pick up more water from the filling process (wet casings) which won't have had time to leach out before you cooked it.
Another thing I do differently to some on here is to add iced water directly to the rusk first, as i read somewhere that there is a thermo-reaction wich causes the temp. to rise so then leave it in the fridge to swell and absorb the water, add seasoning and then the meat before going to town on mixing it all together.

That's my tuppence worth spent

[thepiggerpicture]

Hi Yotmon,

Thanks for the input. I mixed the meat for approx 6 minutes in a commercial looking meat mixer/dough kneader. Will have a fry of them tomorrow too and see what happens with them but can't see the meat changing its crumbly issue.

So you're adding the seasoning to the rusk/water mixture first then adding that mixture to the meat? Sounds a novel (also nice) way to do things, will give that a go.

Thanks again for your input.

[yotmon]

I prefer to mix it with my hands as you get a 'feel' for the mix and seem to know when its complete.
Just looking over you recipe - for the amount of meat you used you seem to be low on rusk and water. I use at least 10% weight of rusk to meat ratio (1 kg pork lean/fat = 100 g rusk). Iv'e just put your weight of meat (3.1 kg) into one of 'Wheels' calculators and it throws up the below measurements.

Rusk - 322.09g, water - 523.37g, seasoning - 80.51g - almost twice as much as you are using, maybe the answer lies within

[thepiggerpicture]

Hi Yotmon,

Thanks for the input. I mixed the meat for approx 6 minutes in a commercial looking meat mixer/dough kneader. Will have a fry of them tomorrow too and see what happens with them but can't see the meat changing its crumbly issue.

So you're adding the seasoning to the rusk/water mixture first then adding that mixture to the meat? Sounds a novel (also nice) way to do things, will give that a go.

Thanks again for your input.

[Wunderdave]

Crumbly texture is a sign of fat smearing. You may be mixing too long or not cold enough.

[Oddwookiee]

With that small of an amount of meat, you're much better off mixing it by hand. A large metal bowl set inside a larger bowl with a layer of crushed ice sandwiched between the two will offset any heat transfer from your hands. As said above, mix until homogenous, then keep going until it feels sticky or tacky. If you can shove your hand with fingers spread into the mix, pull it out and have a lot of sausage stuck to your hand, then it's ready to stuff. Stuffing before resting overnight is always a better idea as it will let the meat set into the desired casing shape and hold form better. Stuffing after the proteins have set will let the links fall apart much easier.

For what it's worth, water may be an issue too. In a fresh link sausage I'll use just a dribble of water to lubricate it and nothing more. However, I don't make my fresh sausages with rusk though, so that's the difference. I don't have much experience with it, so I can't comment on the water-rusk ratios.

[thepiggerpicture]

Thanks for all the info guys, an increase in rusk is definitely needed and will do the mix twice through the mixer next time and stuff immediately in cold conditions!