sausage too soft, help

[Lance Yeoh]

I made a batch of chicken sausages yesterday, I minced the chicken really fine and used about 10% breadcrumbs. After stuffing and linking, I cooked them in hot but not boiling water for about 10 minutes. I grilled some and pan fried some. Results are the same, it was a bit too soft and the texture was not firm.
Any comments on how to make then firm and juicy?
Did I understuff the casing? I was using sheep casing. Thanks in advance for the advise.

[Paul Kribs]

Lance Yeoh

Your recipe definition is a bit vague, but 10% crumb or rusk is OK. Did you add any water/liquid? There is the possibility that you understuffed the casing but I think the problem could be with the very fine minced chicken. Chicken is a very soft flesh to start with and You might find it better to mince it a bit coarser.
Alternately, if using chicken, you could maybe mince 50% with your fine mincer and 50% a bit coarser. If you do not have a coarser mincer you could chop it with a knife/cleaver to the desired texture.
Remember that it is all trial and error towards your desired preference. I would advise making notes until the desired recipe is reached.

Paul Kribs

[Lance Yeoh]

The recipe that I used was:
4 whole legs deboned and 1 large keel totalling 1.2 kg.
1 tsp ground sage
2 tsp marjarom
120g bread crumb
1 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
100ml water

[Paul Kribs]

Lance Yeoh

Your recipe seems OK. I don't know what a keel is but if it is chicken and equates towards the total of 1.2 kg then fine. If it were me then I would cut the moisture down to 50 ml as I find chicken to be quite moist to start with, and as it is a soft meat also try the coarser mince.. Good luck.
As I said, it is a case of getting of trying to get it right and then sticking to the recipe.

Regards, Paul Kribs

[Lance Yeoh]

Thanks Paul, I'll try to add less water and maybe just chop them next time. Will be using pork today.
Keel is what they call chicken breast here.

[sausagemaker]

Hi Lance

You stated that you minced the chicken fine but you have not said if you mixed all the ingredients by hand or mixer.
I think you may need to mix the meat mass longer or by a mixer if you have one.
When making chicken sausage or any other that you are going to cook in water you need to extract the protein that is available in the meats & it sound to me this is where the problem lies & not in the water / crumb ratio as this is close to 1 to 1
A trick to ensure you do not have too much water is to soak the breadcrumb in the water & then squeeze out the excess before use.

Hope this helps

Sausagemaker

[Lance Yeoh]

Hi Sausagemaker,
I mixed the ingredients by hand, I only mixed the ingredients for about 3-4 minutes as I saw that the mix was kind of even. You mean to say I need to mix it much longer? I don't understand what you mean by extract the protein, please advise more on how I can do this. Thank you.

Regards
Lance Yeoh

[Lance Yeoh]

This is the pic of the pork breakfast sausages I made on boxing day. Still a tad soft and I can't seem to make them juicy enough.

[welsh wizard]

Hi Lance

They look spot on to me!

Re chicken - the only advice I can offer is that when i mince out pheasant (and I do that a lot) the water content in the breast seems to be much higher than say pork. Therefore although I do not choke down on the rusk I tend to not add as much water, say the same amount of water weight wise as rusk. Anyway keep on keepng on

Regards WW

[Lance Yeoh]

Hi Welsh Wizard,
Thanks for the advise. Will reduce water next time.

[Oddley]

Lance as I have read on another thread you would like your sausages to be springy and juicy, in that case have you thought of emulsifying the chicken. It would come out like a frankfurter but without the nitrite would taste like a chicken sausage.

Look through the forum for emulsification it has been discussed. All you need is a good kitchen processor.

[Lance Yeoh]

Thanks Oddley, will look for the topic. I just made another batch last night and have yet to try them, I added a small amount of phosphate into it. About 0.1% only of the total weight.

By the way, love your avatar, looks really funny. Is that the effect of eating too many sausages?

[sausagemaker]

Hi Lance

Hi Sausagemaker,
I mixed the ingredients by hand, I only mixed the ingredients for about 3-4 minutes as I saw that the mix was kind of even. You mean to say I need to mix it much longer? I don't understand what you mean by extract the protein, please advise more on how I can do this. Thank you.

Regards
Lance Yeoh

You need to mix until it becomes sticky, this is the protein in the meat & will make it tighter in texture.

Regards
Sausagemaker

[Lance Yeoh]

Thanks suasagemaker, I'll keep that in mind for my next batch. I think one of my mistake is I've added too much water sometimes. The meat is quite moist sometimes and when I added another 10% water it may end up too wet.

Had to dump one batch of sausage I made last Wednesday. I was using my usual recipe but on top of it, I added about 0.1% of phosphate and 2 tablespoons of modified starch. It looked good when I made it, really sticky and stuffed without any problems. But when I cooked them, they had a strong 'chemical' like taste to them. It leaves a strong unpleasent taste in the mouth so I threw them out with the trash. Any advice as to what went wrong? I mixed the 2 extra ingredients in to the mix in their powder form.

[sausagemaker]

Hi Lance

Re the metalic taste this will be coming from the phosphate & at 0.1% this is double what you would expect from a commercial seasoning.
You really only need these chemicals if you are bowl cutting or emuslifing your meats & from the pictures you are clearly not.
I would suggest that you just mix the meat a little longer to make it sticky & miss out the phosphate, if you do want to use it reduce it by half.

Hope this helps

Regards
Sausagemaker