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Hi,
am new to this board. I'm a chef and also make a lot of sausages for my customers. I need to make chicken sausages (halal) for a new customer but find the problem with chicken without pork fat that they generally tend to be very dry. Has anyone experimented with crisco or some other plant based fat?
I would normaly use lamb fat or beef fat, but they want the chicken flavor to be dominant.
Any suggestions would be highly apprechiated

John

JohnBKK wrote:Hi,
am new to this board. I'm a chef and also make a lot of sausages for my customers. I need to make chicken sausages (halal) for a new customer but find the problem with chicken without pork fat that they generally tend to be very dry. Has anyone experimented with crisco or some other plant based fat?
I would normaly use lamb fat or beef fat, but they want the chicken flavor to be dominant.
Any suggestions would be highly apprechiated

John

Hi John,
I make lots of chicken sausages about 90% of sausages I make are chicken.
What cuts of meats do you use in yours? I've experimented with chicken quite a lot and I've found that the best cut is the whole leg of the chicken and that should give you enough fat. Avoid adding those layers of yellow chicken fat found on other parts of the chicken as it's really unhealthy and in my opinion defeats the purpose of home sausage making.
I'm in KL Malaysia btw.
Welcome to the forum btw.

Hi John,

I also make a lot of chicken sausage, I agree with Lance with regard to the leg as being the better meat, but I also include the skin and fat! In some chicken sausages I actually purchase chicken skin seperately to add to forcemeat, I am not really so worried about the health aspects, every thing in moderation so my old grandmother used to tell me. You are actually better off I find to purchase meat from Broiler Fowl, the flavour is much more developed and in my experience they seem to bind better. If you are having problems with dryness you could also try a mouselline sausage such as this http://nungkysman.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A05A417D22C49E2D!209.entry or add apples like this http://nungkysman.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A05A417D22C49E2D!204.entry All my listed recipes are Halal.

You could try vegetable based oils but would need a binder to absorb the oil, otherwise it would just leak out, instant breakfast oats work well for this, don't bother with all the fancy commercial products!

Can anybody tell me why my links don't work?

Richard,
I use the skin from the leg only but I don't add additional skins to the sausages.

Hi, the chicken skin idea came to me too, problem in Thailand is though, that Thais find a use for every part of the chicken (including the feet) and it is virtually impossible to buy chicken skin separate.
I figure that, since the skin coming wit the birds will not provide enough fat, I will try crisco, (supposedly totally tasteless) use soy protein as a binder combined with a slightly higher amount of phosphate - hope that will work - bumber is, I would normally add some white wine for flavour, but I guess that's out of the question too.
As to the parts of the chicken, I use breast since we don't have to de-bone this and when you have to make 120KG a time, this saves a lot of work

By the way, when I make chicken sausages for non muslims, I add pork fat, white wine reduced to a near sirupy consistance, parsley, fresh basil. capers and some parmesan cheese cut into little cubes - makes a great up-market buffet sausage

Hi JohnBKK

If you can get a hold of some tapioca starch this will give a similar mouthfeel to fat, I think about 3 - 4%

Hope this helps

Regards
Sausagemaker

I tried the tapioca starch suggestion with a small experimental quantity of 1lb pre ground chicken thighs and it worked perfectly

1lb ground chicken thighs (est 90%lean)
1.6 oz water (10%)
0.8 oz crackermeal (5%)
0.5 oz tapioca starch (3%)
1/2 tbs salt
1/4 tbs butcher grind black pepper
1/8 tsp sausage base

The mix was a bit sticky, I could probably have added less or no water, but didnt want to risk it being too dry. As it wasnt worth stuffing that small amount, I made it in to 4 patties

I'm not sure that would work so well with breast meat though, I for one would not want to add Crisco, it is full of unhealthy trans-fat. I think there is some alternative made from palm oil which might work though.

Hi,
thanks for the suggestions. Didn't have time to source Tapioka starch and did 2 lots of 20kg for a test using finely ground roasted cashew nuts, tahini which I had made and left over from a batch of Hommus I made for a customer and added only about 400G for the whole lot of crisco with a slightly increased phosphate level and the result came out fine.
They are juicy, have a good bite and the nuts give fat as well as some extra flavour/body - you will need a powerful cutter for the nuts since otherwise the sausages could be gritty. I processed the nuts into a paste.
I'm not sure what price cashew nuts have in Europe or the US, but here they are produced and are reasonably cheap.

John,
I believe tapoica starch should be easily available at any sundry shops where you are. They're widely available here in Malaysia.

The tahini/nuts idea sounds good, what proportions did you use johnBKK?

Hi,
PER 10kg total weight - 500g roasted nuts ground to a very fine paste and 500g of Tahini (sightly roasted sesami seeds & olive oil ground to a paste) + 500g of soy protein and 8.0kg of chicken breast with skin and 0.5kg water in form of ice in the cutter

I'm sure you can use other fatty nuts such as Brasil nuts as well - I'm going to experiment (when I have the time) on a nut based sausage for veggies - not for myself but for a rather large market out here of veggie customers

I figure nuts, soy beans chillies mushrooms pepper mace salt and an olive oil based rue - something along that line

I love experimenting - makes life in a 60C kitchen during the hot season and with all burners and ovens going more bearable

My last experiment was a roasted garlic & olive sausage (cold cut) which is now part of a number of 5 star hotels menue

JohnBKK wrote:Hi,
PER 10kg total weight - 500g roasted nuts ground to a very fine paste and 500g of Tahini (sightly roasted sesami seeds & olive oil ground to a paste) + 500g of soy protein and 8.0kg of chicken breast with skin and 0.5kg water in form of ice in the cutter

I'm sure you can use other fatty nuts such as Brasil nuts as well - I'm going to experiment (when I have the time) on a nut based sausage for veggies - not for myself but for a rather large market out here of veggie customers

I figure nuts, soy beans chillies mushrooms pepper mace salt and an olive oil based rue - something along that line

I love experimenting - makes life in a 60C kitchen during the hot season and with all burners and ovens going more bearable

My last experiment was a roasted garlic & olive sausage (cold cut) which is now part of a number of 5 star hotels menue

JohnBKK,
Do you use a mincer besides a chopper? A chopper is more for making emulsified sausages like hot dogs right?
Most if not all of the members here use a mincer instead of a chopper I think.
What kind of casings do you use for your sausage making?

Hi Lance,
it depends what kind of sausage I'm making. For fine Bratwurst. Franks etc.. we mince the meat and fat (separately) first with a fine disk, than use a 10KG Fritter (a kitchen machine on steroids) to emulsify cld water and the fat - when all is done, we mix the fat and water emulsification into the minced meat together with all spices and filler - that the whole lot goes into the cutter until the right consistancy is achieved -

course sausage -we mince the meat and fat seperately through a course disk - again emulsify fat and water add spices and filler und the whole lot goes into a paddle mixer until its well mixed and emulsified

we use either lamb/sheep intestines or bore - unfortunately, since we do a lot of breakfast saussages for Hotels and they like their sausages only 1.5 inches long in sheep casings, which are more sensitive to bursting, this is quite an exercise when making 100KG per batch and takes 2 of my girls a whole day, even with the clipper machine

By the way, did a final test run with the chicke sausages this morning (8 tasters of different origines and ages) and the results were so positive that they are now vacuum packed and on sale in a local Supermarket chain - nice when things work out well
Tomorrow its Liversausage - Leberwurst and Snake & Pygmy Pie day

Hi John,

Glad it all worked out so well for you. I just wanted to say that the reason I use chicken thighs is because of the slightly higher collagen content compared to breasts, although if you are using an alternative binder such as tapioca starch or meal, this is not really a problem.

Well done any way, when I am next in Bankok I will be calling round for some samples.