My Best Beef Sausage Yet!

[tristar]

Beef Sausage
Being in the minority in this forum by not eating pork, I have been searching for a sausage recipe, which could in some way replicate the bite, texture, and juiciness of the local butcher produced pork sausages of my youth. Working for the butcher on Saturdays and holidays secured prodigious quantities of these wonderful sausages, much to the delight of my dear mother!

I was inspired by a recipe for Jewish Hungarian Beef Sausages which I found on the internet and this is my modified version of that recipe, these sausages are lightly spiced, and the addition of the Mustard Seeds adds a delightful extra to the texture and they will from now on be the basis for further experimentation. They are absolutely addictive, the texture and juiciness are fantastic, and I plan to just modify the herb content to more suit my taste. Already my wife has warned me to be careful so as not to upset my calorie intake! They really are that good! Please don�t be concerned with the quantity of mustard as the cooking totally removes any heat and just leaves a slight hint of a nutty flavour to the sausage, in fact I will be increasing the quantity of mustard seed for my next batch.

I did have some problems with the suet, which clogged my mincer body and also appeared to give problems with stuffing the casings!, I may try to use brisket for my next batch and see how that works, unless somebody has some suggestions for mincing the suet without the grief!

Ingredients;
700 grams lean beef, very lean! zero 0% fat, cleaned of connective tissue
180 grams beef suet, actually real kidney fat and not prepared suet
1 tsp salt
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 tsp fresh ground tumeric root
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 ground bay leaf
6 freshly ground cloves
1 tsp Colman's Mustard
2 tbsp whole yellow mustard seed
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 tsp sugar
lamb casings

Preparation;
Grind lean beef through 8mm plate, suet through 3.5mm plate.
In large bowl, mix ground meat and fat with all other ingredients.
Add enough water to allow you to work the spices in, my minced beef was very soft and needed no additional water, knead till well blended.
Stuff into casings and tie into links.

Best Regards,

Richard

[Michelle]

Hi Richard! Thank you for posting your recipe,I have put it on my "to try" list! I have been looking for a nice beef sausage recipe,what good timing you have!Best wishes!

Michelle

[Oddley]

Hi tristar
Recipe looks good. partially freeze your suet this will stop it smearing.

[tristar]

Hi All,

Oddley,

I removed the suet direct from the freezer before mincing it, I suspect my problems arose due to the fact that I tried to mince it on my medium plate straight away, maybe it would have been better to pass it through the larger plate first? My mincer was also chilled prior to use but I still ended up with a mincer tube completely smeared with suet about 3mm thick! maybe it would be better to pass it through at the same time as the meat, because I also had problems during the stuffing phase where I would get nothing from the small stuffing tube unless I actually forced the plunger into the meat and held pressure on it, this in turn caused some of the liquids in my mix to be expelled and caused an awful mess on the kitchen worktop. Maybe I am expecting too much with coarsely ground mince combined with pieces of suet to be easily pushed through the small stuffing tube?

Your views would be much appreciated on this matter if you have time to share them!

Best Regards from a hot and steamy Jakarta,
Richard

[Oddley]

Hi tristar
It sounds to me that your mincer plates and blades are not sharp. I have had what you are describing when I first started, with my old Kenwood chef attachment. The meat would just mush up and take forever to come through. I sharpen my blades and plates by laying a mirror on a flat surface then taping a piece of Carborundum paper to it, I then rub the blade or plate back and forth until the blades are sharp and the plates are flat and sharp. I tend to use 3 grades of Carborundum to achieve this. Starting off with medium finishing on fine.

There are other ways of doing it, search the forum and you will see it has been discussed a few times.

[aris]

Isn't suet already rendered down somenow? Just use solid beef fat instead - i'm sure your butcher would only be too pleased to get rid of it on you!

[roseway]

With my last batch I experimented with adding some ordinary supermarket lard to the pork shoulder I was using. I chopped it up into cubes and mixed it in with the meat after half-freezing it all, and it went through the process OK. There was a little bit left in the mincer, but not much.

Eric

[Rik vonTrense]

have you tried chopping it out side the mincer with a large cooks knife and then flouring it ? Maybe a little added flour as it is going through the mincer will assist.

My mother used to buy her suet from the butcher and chop it thus for suet puddings.




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[tristar]

Hi Rik,

I haven't tried that yet, I think my mistake may have been to put the Suet into the mincer throat in too large chunks, it seems since that time, with a mix of smaller suet pieces and meat, that the process has gone better. However I am still having problems during the stuffing phase where for want of a better word the minced spiced meat mixture seems to be shearing in the mincer body and all the texture of the suet and meat is reduced to a fine paste, not exactly emulsified but not far off! this I believe is due to the back pressure in the mincer body at the nozzle caused by trying to use the small stuffing nozzle and sheep casings. frustratingly the first two links come out fine, nicely textured and coloured followed by the rest looking decidedly pale and sad!

I will be purchasing one of Franco's Chinese vertical stuffers amongst other items and having them delivered to Paris, where I will pick them up on return home to indonesia in three weeks time, so I should be able to let you have an update then as to progress!

Regards,
Richard

[Rik vonTrense]

I am looking forward to a write up on these chinese stuffers as I think that a vertical stuffer with a rack and pinion system would be far superior to the end winding square thread of the REBER.........although what would be best is a pull down lever system that drove the rack and at the end of it's travel free wheeled back up to the top. in this way there would be no opposing forces in winding a handle and eliminate any tendancy for the machine to jump all over the place or even the table it was screwed to.

Or better still a wind up spring that would release it's energy as you wanted it.

[tristar]

Hi Rik,

Have you looked at the Dakotah Stuffer:http://www.dakotahsausagestuffer.com/



I would think this could be a great advantage to those who have to work on their own or who have restricted movement or strength. I don't know if there is anybody else on the forum who has had experience of them, who wouldn't mind posting a small review perhaps?

Regards,
Richard

[Rik vonTrense]

Now that I do like Richard.......the only thing is I wonder where the water goes when you have finished stuffing.

Most probably the shipping would make it prohibitive to buy from the States.
Unless you could get someone you know to send it as a "Gift" otherwise it's VAT and customs duty etc etc.


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[DarrellS]

Hi All,

I have the Dakotah Water Stuffer. I use it mainly for ground beef jerky as I also purchased the jerky attachment.

You use 2 hoses not supplied. One you hook to the cold water faucet and the inlet valve. the other goes to the outlet valve and just rests in the sink.

It works well for stuffing sausage all you do is adjust the inlet and outlet valves to get the stuffing speed you are comfortable with and then it's pretty much hands free. You have both hands available for the sausage. When you want to stop it you just open the outlet valve to relieve the pressure.

To get rid of the water unscrew the head and close the outlet valve and slowly the water will push the piston out along with the water in a big splash. It's a little messy but does a good job.

One word of caution, be very careful you don't get any pieces of meat in the mixture that won't pass through the stuffing tube. I blew the head off mine one day. Around here we run about 125 lbs pressure at the faucet.

Oh yes max capacity about 7 lbs and you always have about a 3 or 4 ounce patty left as in most stuffers.

Hope this helps.

[Rik vonTrense]

Thanks for the Info Darrel......

.all we need is for some smart entrepeneur to market them in the United Kingdom who doesn't want to make a fortune and sell them for a reasonable profit.

I wouldn't mind paying $89 (�50) for a refurbished one anyday.

SO HOW CAN IT BE DONE ??





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[aris]

Franco was going to bring them in - and I recall he did bring in a sample.