www.sausagemaking.org

I have just started making bacon and sausages (made my first batch 10 days ago and still alive!) and now discovered this site.
Looking forward to joining in.

Welcome to the forum. A lot of us on the forum make bacon, so you're in good company. Tell us about your first batch.

Welcome.

Phil

My apologies for not responding. I logged out and a few days later found that I had forgotten my username so couldn't log in again! I have just discovered that I had wisely kept a copy of the Welcome email with the registered username.

Progress so far:

I made a batch of dry cure bacon using the River Cottage recipe. The recipe calls for salt, dark brown sugar, black pepper, bay leaves. I used a 4kg piece of middle as I like both the back and streaky cuts! I followed the recommendation to keep the pork in the mix (belly for 5 days, then separated the loin and left it in the mix for an additional 5 days). Each piece,after curing, was air-dried for the 5 & 10 days they had been in the cure.

Whilst the bacon was curing I ordered a Graef Tendessa 10 slicer. What a difference it makes!

Sausage making:

I have made several batches using recipes from The Sausage Making book. The flavours are good, my only criticism would be that the large amount of breadcrumb( typically 150~200 gm to 1 kilo of pork shoulder gives a rather soft banger. I will look at some of the meatier recipes on the forum.
I started by using collagen and recently hog casings, I find both a bit chewy if fried. I found the natural casing much easier to use. Now that I understand the procedure in preparation and use, I will use sheep casing.

Comments would be useful

Regards,

I'm glad you found your way back!

Just a heads up: River Cottage recipes can be very salty.

As to the sausage, what was the liquid to crumb ratio? There's no real reason why (say) 10% crumb should give a 'soft' sausage. Perhaps it's just "The Sausage Making book's" recipes - is that the Paul Peacock one?

Phil