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My next sausage adventure

PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 1:25 pm
by aris
I fancied something spicy - perhaps Thai, so I bought a jar of Thai green curry sauce at the weekend. Has all sorts of ingredients which you would not normally find unless you went to a specialist asian supermarket.

I thought i'd mix this in with some pork and salt and see how the sausage turns out.

Anyone tried using jars of sauce/paste to flavour sausage?

PostPosted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 8:53 pm
by Spuddy
I've used tubes of sun dried tomato paste (from Sainsbury's) and added grated parmesan cheese with ground pork belly before and it worked well.
Also tried Thai Tom Yum paste with pork, chicken, prawn and mushrooms.
I think most pastes and marinades will work well but "cook in" sauces may not.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:06 am
by aris
Thanks for the feedback. The only part i'm worried about is what proportions of paste to meat I should use. I suppose some experimentation is in order here.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 12:45 pm
by Shaun
I have also used tomato paste, pesto, and ready made mint sauce. I usually fry some of the mince befor stuffing to give me a rough idea on the taste. This is not an exact science as the taste does differ, but you can tell if it is too stong. I tried a chilly one the other week and it about blew my head off so just added more meat and rusk to calm it down.

Shaun

PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 3:56 pm
by Spuddy
Absolutely.
Everybody has a different idea of what is the right concentration of flavourings (you've only got to look at the people who have bacon in their tomato ketchup sandwiches to see what I mean) I prefer added flavours to be suble and enhance the flavour of the meat rather than mask it out altogether.
I usually start small and scale up when I think the flavour is right.
Like Shaun I like to cook little patties off as a test but find that sometimes the finished sausage can still be quite different (I think the skins somehow hold in the moisture and so aren't as strong as the patties were).

PostPosted: Thu Oct 14, 2004 6:12 pm
by aris
I fry little patties too - but the flavours do tend to mature over time. If you keep the sausage for a few days in the fridge, or if you freeze them, the flavours do come out stronger - so you have to take this into account.

PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 1:46 pm
by aris
Thai green curry paste was a bit of a disaster. Didn't taste nice at all.

Here is a lesson for you all - if you're going to experiment with new recipes, do it on a small batch - like 1kg or so. :-)

PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:27 pm
by _Darkstream_
Good advice here.

But try grinding your own spices, and chopping your own herbs.

Making suasage is not unlike making kebab (the minced ones), fry a little first. And make small batches.

But I would be a bit wary of using a commercial spice paste for a suasage. It may well not have the effect that you think it should.

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