I've been trying to make sausage for a few years and so far I have succeeded fantastically with a Weisswurst recipe, an emulsified sausage recipe I got from Ruhlmann's book but every other attempt has been a failure: the fat does not stay integrated in the sausage. It doesn't matter if it's an emulsified sausage or not. I end up with kind of dry meat in a pool of rendered fat.
Recently I made the Weisswurst, which calls for
1 lb beef
12 oz pork fat
8 oz water
spices
1 oz powdered milk
and as usual, it succeeded.
Then using the rest of the piece of beef (same meat) I made a different sausage with different spices using
1 lb beef
8 oz pork fat
3.75 oz liquid (of which 1.5 T was red wine vinegar and the rest water)
spices
I mixed the second recipe using exactly the same procedure. I ground it once at 1/4". Froze the result for a while, ground it again at 1/8" and mixed in in the mixer until I got a smooth paste. I've made the Weisswurst several times and this process has always worked for me. But with this other sausage, as usual, the fat did not stay integrated. I added powdered milk and that made no difference.
So I'm wondering: Is there something magical about the ratio of the ingredients in the first recipe? Is it really possible that I can only make a successful emulsified sausage if I have more water and/or more fat?
The only other explanation I have left is that the spices are effecting emulsification.