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After an initial stab at a pork & leek sausage, which received a lot of good feedback from my birthday bash last year, I decided to modify the recipe to increase the leek content as I felt it just needed more leek flavour. Anyway, I tweaked the recipe and made another batch last week and it is so good I'm unlikely to make any further changes! My daughter and her husband, who are fans of a P&L sausage, tried these last night and said they're the single best they have tasted. So, I thought I'd share the recipe here.

All ingredients are a % of the total meat weight.

Pork (20% fat)
Leek 20%
Rusk 12.5%
Water 12.5%
Salt 1.7% (gives 1.14% salt for the finished product)
Black pepper 0.16%
White pepper 0.23%
Mace 0.10%
Sage 0.10%
Ginger 0.07%

The leek weight is fresh uncooked. I cut the whole leek (green and white) into approx 8mm squares and lightly sweated this until just starts to soften in a little olive oil and a small quantity of water. My first recipe used nutmeg and mace but out of laziness I used the combined weight of mace only. I had powdered mace and didn't fancy grating nutmeg!

Sevorg

Looks like a very interesting recipe. I understand the 20% pork fat content but how much pork are you using in total. I’ve seen many recipes here asking for Rusk; what exactly is that? I love the concept with the leeks.

Thanks for sharing your recipe Sevorg, It sounds interesting.

The pork is 100 %. On my list to try!

Odin wrote:Sevorg

Looks like a very interesting recipe. I understand the 20% pork fat content but how much pork are you using in total. I’ve seen many recipes here asking for Rusk; what exactly is that? I love the concept with the leeks.

My batch was 1kg of pork, 800g lean meat (80%) and 200g fat (20%) all the other quantities were a percentage of the 1kg of meat.

The rusk i buy from the sponsor's website - search on "rusk"
From the website it states "Rusk is an essential ingredient in sausage making, used by all professional sausage makers and experienced home users alike. Use up to 10% rusk in your sausage to improve the texture and bite, it helps bind the fat within the sausage and helps retain moisture making a more succulent sausage." It is a wheat based biscuit in fine granular form. Dried and crumbled bread is ok too. I think the rusk may be yeast free from what I've read.

There's a recipe on here to make it if you can't get it where you are.

viewtopic.php?t=339

HTH

Phil

Thanks sevorg and wheels very interesting about rusk and how to make it. What I got from the reading though is that your just adding a form of bread to the sausage. Looks like more of a way to use less meat. I understand the other benefits but there must be a better way of doing this without adding bulk ie: rusk. Or is the use of rusk a U.K. tradition?

Rusk/breadcrumbs as a filler is often said to be because of war time shortages; however, use of fillers certainly predates WW2 and as far as I am aware scaled rice and breadcrumbs were in use pre WW1.

I'm sure that there is an element of bulking meat out when used commercially, but used in sensible amounts it's more a textural thing.

Phil

I think this recipe is fantastic - I made a big first batch a while ago, and this week will be making another...

Just wanted to add that as a Brit expat living in the US, rusk is not easy to find and making my own hasn't been worth it (tried the Scott Rea recipe). I have also tried my own breadcrumbs and ground oats. Not happy with these either...

I have since found that boxed Panko breadcrumbs in the same quantity are excellent. Perfect snap, seems to make the sausage super moist. Recommended!