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Hi,
I am new to the forum, but have had a few attempts at sausage making over the last couple of months.
First attempt at beef sausages used the following recipe:
4kg beef chuck
4TBS salt
1TBS thyme
2tsp garlic powder
2tsp onion powder
2 cups bread crumbs
2 tsp black pepper
I ground twice using 8mm plate.

It was nice and lean, but tasted bit too "meaty" for the family. They have asked me to make some good Aussie BBQ sausages!
Does anyone have any suggestions for recipes or improvements to above? upon reflection, the seasoning is a bit light for 4kg (except salt maybe)

thanks, John

Hi John,
You might try to make them with some fatty pork. If sausages are too lean they finish up tasting like BBQ'd saw dust. Most BBQ sausage for sale here are a mixture of meats, no horse though. Phosphate is used all the time in factory made sausages to retain moisture, it's not my favourite ingredient
I prefer now to measure everything in grams, so I can re-create it again exactly the same as I have found several sizes in spoons.
Just experiment and surf the forum for whatever you like. A true Aussie BBQ sausage varies wherever you are. I always add some genuine Hungarian Sweet Paprika powder.
Good Luck,
Jan.

I sometimes use phosphate in my sausages, particularly the ones that are a little more finicky such as emulsified sausages and those with a lot of added liquid. That said, I'm trying to reduce my use a bit. If you want to use phosphate it will work without added liquid but one of it's benefits in moisture retention is the ability to add additional liquid to a recipe and not have it weep out. Often I got about 1 cup ice cold liquid (beer, wine, stock, etc) to every 10 lbs of meat. If using phosphates I weigh based on the weight of the meat and go with about 0.2%. In the US the legal limit is 0.5% but more than 0.3 and the meat is so bouncy you could play basketball with it (and it's a bitch to cut, don't ask me how I know).

If they were too meaty you could do two things, I might try substituting a percentage of fatty pork (shoulder) for the chuck, maybe 25-50%. I made some Russian Imperial Stout and Onion sausage and did a blend of 2:1 chuck to pork shoulder and it was plenty "beefy" tasting.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!