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Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2016 6:22 pm
by LittleGreyCat
Newbie at sausage making, and today we are trying our first batch.
The tale may become a little convoluted. :shock:

The Lidl mincer was an impulse buy - but not a complete impulse as we have been underwhelmed by commercial sausages for some time. Thinking about making your own sausages and seeing a mincer with a sausage attachment makes for a very strong impulse. 8)

So, first a word of praise for the mincer. It whaled through the meat very easily, and two passes (coarse and fine) produced a nice load of minced pork.

Secondly, a word of warning. There is only one sausage horn, and it is tapered. I measured it and thought 28 mm casings would fit. Turns out 32 mm casings just fit on the end. This is collagen casings. Being a German machine I get the impression they haven't really thought about any casings but stretchy animal intestines. I am looking at 34 mm collagen casings and thinking they might be a good idea unless I can go larger.

Anyway, it took a few attempts before we got the hang of feeding the sausage meat into the sausage casing; because you can't get all the casing onto the horn you have to work with short runs of casing with just the very end on the very tip of the horn. Takes two people and a lot of lubrication. However we managed in the end.

Digression; we won't be using animal casings because my partner worked in a butcher's shop as a Saturday job when young, and the smell of the casings still makes her want to heave. She spent quite a while vegetarian after that.

To go from mincing to sausage stuffing you basically set up as a mincer with a coarse {thing with holes in} and then fit the horn over the whole shooting match underneath the threaded locking ring. There are a couple of springs in the mix, and you can't see if things are properly located. As far as I can tell post sausage stuffing the metal hole thing probably wasn't seated correctly with the locking lugs in the notches in the body. The end result was that there was a leakage at the back of the mincer body and sausage mix forced down into the drive lugs. All cleaned out now but obviously not expected (from reading the cleaning instructions). This may explain why pushing the sausage mix through was much harder work than normal mincing. Had to remove a screw and take out a spring to be able to clean out the drive flange thing properly.

O.K. - recipe. We read quite a bit on line, and the mix seemed to be fat pork belly and pork shoulder. Into the supermarket(s) and pork belly was a ridiculous price. It also wasn't fat. Seems it has become a trendy "cheap cut of fatty meat" and has been re-imagined as an expensive cut of lean meat. Next time we will locate a decent butcher, but the budget option (had to be cheaper per Kg than store bought good quality sausages) was a shoulder of pork, and a smoked gammon joint. The most tedious part was getting the fat off the skin as we didn't want crackling in the sausage.

Quick test with a small patty of the mix (prior to seasoning) indicated that it was salty enough (gammon) and full of smoky flavour (gammon again). So we just used the minced meat and skipped the seasoning. Test Cumberland loop is cooking as I write, and smells pretty good. There seems to be adequate water in there, no doubt courtesy of the gammon again.

With the greatest respect to the recipes in the PDF, although a strong case was made for including rusk and water and other fillers into the sausage we usually buy sausages with nothing but pork in (up to 97% pork depending on supplier) and one thing that prompted us to think of making out own was visiting the USA a while back, and Australia and New Zealand more recently, and seeing "genuine English sausages" with up to 60% pork and loads of filler and water. The other thing that prompted us was noticing that the 90%+ pork seemed to include quite a few bits of chopped up bone and gristle. Nice to know more or less what goes into your sausages.

Anyway, we have at least 2.5 Kg of sausages (of various lengths and thicknesses) and hopefully we are embarking on a long and juicy sausage making career.

TL;DR - the Lidl machine seems pretty good, but you only get one horn and that is tapered, so collagen cases can be difficult.. Assembly needs care and practice. Sausage stuffing even more so.

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2016 8:30 pm
by NCPaul
Welcome to the forum. :D Your experience is very similar to that of many members here.

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Wed May 04, 2016 11:00 pm
by wheels
Welcome. As NCPaul has said, your experience is similar to many others.

However, please don't rule out the (judicious) use of rusk - it can add to the Great British Sausage experience!

Phil

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 8:56 am
by kil2k
wheels wrote:Welcome. As NCPaul has said, your experience is similar to many others.

However, please don't rule out the (judicious) use of rusk - it can add to the Great British Sausage experience!

Phil


Completely agree. I use rusk in all of mine, and the results are stunning. You also get more sausages for your money! :P

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 8:59 am
by kil2k
Also, if you can find a nice big fatty pork shoulder, you don't need to add belly at all.

If your butcher will sell you some back fat, you can add that if you feel it necessary. I bought some from my butcher ages ago and still have loads in the freezer.

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 4:12 pm
by fredfish
kil2k wrote:If your butcher will sell you some back fat, you can add that if you feel it necessary. I bought some from my butcher ages ago and still have loads in the freezer.


Can I just ask - if you make a batch of sausages that includes previously frozen back fat can you freeze the resulting sausages?

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 2:15 pm
by kil2k
fredfish wrote:
kil2k wrote:If your butcher will sell you some back fat, you can add that if you feel it necessary. I bought some from my butcher ages ago and still have loads in the freezer.


Can I just ask - if you make a batch of sausages that includes previously frozen back fat can you freeze the resulting sausages?


Well, I'm still alive :P

As long as any meat is defrosted in the fridge, you can freeze the end product :)

Re: Lidl mincer/sausage maker

PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:35 pm
by fredfish
kil2k wrote:
fredfish wrote:
kil2k wrote:If your butcher will sell you some back fat, you can add that if you feel it necessary. I bought some from my butcher ages ago and still have loads in the freezer.


Can I just ask - if you make a batch of sausages that includes previously frozen back fat can you freeze the resulting sausages?


Well, I'm still alive :P

As long as any meat is defrosted in the fridge, you can freeze the end product :)


Thanks - good to know!

Cheers

John