1st wanted to say thanks to all the knowledgeable people who participate in this site,I have been reading and learning lots over the past few weeks.
As an Englishman, it goes without saying that I love sausages, and having lived in Namibia for many years I got a good liking for Boerewors.
So I set about making some English bangers and some Boerewors, using recipes and directions from from this site, including making my own rusk.
I have a #8 electric grinder with an 8mm plate, a 4.8mm plate and a stuffing plate with 7 holes in it. My stuffing tube is plastic, 7/8" and tapered. The grinding mechanism comes from the freezer, and the meat mix from the fridge.
My bangers turned out OK, the flavour was good, but the texture I need to work on. I ground the meat coarse, then seasoned/watered and then added the rusk mixed and cooled. Next it was ground through the finer blade, cooled and finally stuffed into 32mm hog casings, and left in the fridge overnight to 'bloom'.
My Boerewors was a different story, flavour was good as well and my issues cannot be blamed on the recipe, but maybe more a grinder/stuffer issue. The beef/pork was cut into cubes, and I added belly fat (shredded and frozen)added the vinegar spice mix and mix up a little. the meat mix was ground on the coarse blade(8mm). (For those who don't know, Boerewors is a coarse ground loosely packed sausage cooked over coals in a coil.) My next step was to stuff, and this is where I need help.
1) for both sausages I used the same hog casings, but had the hardest time 1stly get the casing on my stuffing tube, and 2ndly getting the casing to flow off the stuffing tube in a smooth and easy fashion. Th casings were soaked in warm water and then cold water, the were soaked for a couple of hours and then overnight, I tried them on the tube as is, blowing them up(inflating them), passing water through them, sitting in cold water, sitting in warm water, the result was the same every time, it feels like the casing has stuck to the tube, or it has shrunk a bit. Trying to get the casing to flow has been extremely frustrating, and rather than holding between thumb and forefinger to stop it sliding off too fast, I actually have to help the casing off tube and even this cannot be achieved fast enough to keep up with stuffing.
2) When it come to stuffing the boerewors, I do not want to grind the meat any more, so I started with just the stuffing plate, the 1st 6 inches of 'Boerie' looked good, after that the stuffed sausage looked like English sausages (fine mince), upon opening the auger, the stuffing plate was completely blocked. Next I tried with just the auger, result was the same, except this time the stuffing tube was the culprit and blocked up. I purchased a three(kidney) hole stuffing plate, and again the stuffing plate(despite having much larger holes) blocked up, next I had to modify the stuffing tube to allow the mincing blade to be fitted with the stuffing plate and stuffing tube(I could not get the grinding unit to close with all 3 out of the box), and once again I got what resembled English sausage and the stuffing tube blocking.
So I guess my 2 questions are - what am I doing wrong with the casings, and how do you stuff a coarse ground loosely packed sausage.