www.sausagemaking.org

This recipe is from Paul Bertolli's book Cooking By Hand (ISBN: 0-609-60893-2). This is a very thoughtful book from an excellent chef. His recipe for fresh sausage was interesting to me because it did not call for fennel (thought it does use anise seed) and because it calls for cooked pork skin. His recipe (scaled to five pounds) with my small changes noted.

3.5 pound lean pork (I used 1535 g)
1 pound fat back (I used 336 g)
0.5 pound pork skin (I used 140 g)
40 g salt (I used 30 g)
7 g ground black pepper
1.5 g dry sage
0.5 g cayanne
7 g fresh garlic smashed
4 g anise seeds
7 g dextrose
69 g ice cold water

The pork skin is cooked for 30 minutes in boiling water then frozen and ground through a medium plate twice. This is mixed with the meat and fat along with the spices and ground through a medium plate. The sauage meat is mixed with the water and then stuffed into hog casings.



I allowed the sausage to bloom overnight and poached them at 170 F for 30 minutes. After a quick frying, I had this



This sausage has a very "meaty" texture and is nicely flavored with the anise seed and pepper. The sage and garlic are present but more in the background. Very worth trying.

On my list to do...thanks for sharing it.

Very nice. Did you actually use anise seed or did you sub fennel?

...and if you used anise-seed, was the taste significantly different from fennel?

Phil

I did use anise seed. It's hard to decribe the taste differences but I would say the anise has a "brighter" taste, maybe even "sweeter". I would suggest trying a single seed of each. They come from related plants so it's not surprising that they have a similar taste. Fennel could be used instead but I think the sausage would be different (but still good ).

I have some anise-seed from another project. I'll give these a go, they look great.

Phil

Looks real good!
I'll give it a try sometime.

NCPaul wrote:I would say the anise has a "brighter" taste, maybe even "sweeter".

That describes it perfectly!!!!
I won't use fennel without adding at least a little anise.


~Martin