Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [46]
This chapter divides sausages into three categories—fresh, emulsified, and smoked—though many sausages actually fall into more than one category. All the recipes, because they are based on ratios, can be successfully halved or doubled according to your needs. Brian and I decided to develop these recipes mainly for five-pound quantities because since making sausage is a project and because sausage freezes well, it’s wise to make plenty; but five pounds is the maximum amount most home equipment can handle in a single batch. Each recipe yields about twenty 6-inch/15-centimeter links if using standard hog casings.
About Casings
What would seem to be a trash part of the animal—the inner lining of the intestine—is actually an extraordinary cooking vessel. It’s very fine and light but very strong. It is a receptacle for the meat and juices and yet when the sausage is hung to dry, the casing is porous enough to allow moisture to escape so that we can have dry-cured salume, saucissons sec, arguably the pinnacle of the sausage-maker’s art. Casings brown beautifully, adding flavor and color to sautéed or grilled sausages. And there’s nothing like the bite a casing gives when you’re eating a sausage from a bun—that snap, before the plunge into fatty juiciness. If you took away that snap, the fatty juiciness would still be good, but that pop, that almost crunch before you get there, is a pleasure unique to sausage eating.
Hog casings, which come from the small intestine, are easy to find, and, thanks to the salt in which they’re usually dry-packed, will keep for a year in your refrigerator. Casings packed in brine will last about a month refrigerated. The meat department at your supermarket should be happy to order casings for you (and most other hard-to-find products, for that matter, such as fresh fatback). Specialty markets and butchers who make their own sausage are often willing to sell you casings over the counter. And numerous companies now offer casings by mail (see Sources, page 301).
Hog casings, which are about an inch and a half in diameter when stuffed, are used for most of the sausages in this book, from fresh brats to Italian to smoked kielbasa. Most other types of casings need to be ordered from sausage supply companies: sheep casings, which are smaller and more delicate, used for breakfast links, chipolatas, hotdogs, and smoked andouille; larger hog casings, which include hog “middles” and, from the lower part of the intestine, hog bungs, the very end of the digestive tract (this is what’s used for the famous rosette de Lyon); and beef casings, the big boys—rounds for blood sausage and ring bologna, bungs for salamis and large bologna, and the bladder for traditional mortadella.
All casings should be soaked for at least 30 minutes before using, or for as long as 2 days. This will remove the salt and any residual odor as well as rehydrate them. If you soak for only 30 minutes, do so in tepid to warm water, to hasten the process. If you are using bungs, from the lower part of the intestine, or other larger casings that have an odor, soak them under a thin stream of running water or in frequent changes of water until all of the odor is gone. Once the casings are rehydrated, hold them open under running water to flush out the insides. All casings should be completely clean and odorless before you use them.
Caul fat, the veil-like connective membrane that surrounds the stomach and other viscera of sheep and pigs, called the omentum, can also be used as a kind of casing. Essentially a layer of collagen and fat that melts away during cooking, caul fat is an extraordinarily useful kitchen tool. Roasts can be wrapped in it for extra moisture. Braised items can be wrapped in it and reheated. And sausage patties can be wrapped in it and roasted. The caul fat serves the same function as the casing, retaining moisture, maintaining shape,