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Hogs Pudding

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2018 4:18 pm
by This Little Piggy
Seems like it's been almost 10 years since this particular sausage last came up, and it's well worth resurrecting. I'd never heard of this West Country specialty until I tasted one at this year's British Charcuterie Awards that went on to win a gold medal, so I'm trying my hand at recreating it.

Most recipes I see make it with rusk – some almost as much rusk as meat – but the version I had tasted was made with barley, which I particularly liked. So for the meat mix, I went with a formula that I found in this ITV video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywin4HUiSiM, calling for 85g ea of pearl barley (soaked overnight) and pin oatmeal per kilo of minced pork shoulder. I cubed the meat, added the full amount of salt, and vacuum-sealed it overnight before chopping it and mixing in the other ingredients. I poached the sausages with chicken broth in a bain marie at 80C until they reached an internal temp of 75C to cook the barley.

The resulting texture is quite firm, so they fried up nicely, without falling apart, but I remember the gold-medal winner having a little more richness and tenderness to it, so next time I think I'll try soaking the barley in milk with some added cream as well as adding some extra back fat to the mix. As for the seasoning, I followed the recipe in the video for half the mix, which is pretty much the same as that in the recipe attributed to Marge Parrill posted previously in the forum and quite mild. For other half the mix, I used the seasonings in a recipe from Phil, which, in addition to the white pepper, calls for mace, nutmeg, thyme, and cayenne.

I could happily eat this for breakfast every day!

Re: Hogs Pudding

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 1:00 pm
by wheels
Thanks for posting this TLP.

It should be noted that my spice mix was actually devised by Johnfb and is for Irish white sausage. I'd hate us to upset anyone from Devon!

IIRC, the barley in Johnfb's was precooked, as I think it is in many products.

Phil