Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [50]
To mix using a standing mixer: Grind your meat into the mixer bowl, which should be set in ice. Remove the bowl from the ice and attach it to the mixer. Using the paddle attachment, mix the meat for 1 minute on low speed. Add the ice-cold liquid and mix on medium speed for 1 more minute, or until the liquid is incorporated and the mixture feels tacky and has a uniform sticky, almost furry, appearance.
To mix by hand: Grind the meat into a bowl set in ice: it should be big enough to contain the meat during vigorous stirring. Using a wooden spoon, stir and press and fold the meat for about a minute to begin the primary bind. Add the ice-cold liquid and stir vigorously until the liquid is incorporated and the meat mixture coheres and looks sticky. (It takes some muscle.)
THE TEST
It’s always a good idea to check your seasoning by making a tiny patty from your mixed sausage and sautéing it (or, in some cases, wrapping it in plastic and poaching it). If there’s not enough salt, add more, and be sure to mix long enough to distribute it evenly. If the other seasonings taste weak or out of balance, now is the time to fix them. If your sausage tastes too salty, your only option is to add more meat and/or fat, but sticking to the 1⁄3 ounce/10 grams of kosher salt per 1 pound/450 grams, we’ve never found oversalting to be a problem.
STUFFING
No hidden technique here. Soak your casings for at least half an hour, or for up to two days, before using, changing the water once or twice. Then hold them open beneath cold running water to rinse out the insides. Fill your stuffer and crank or press till the meat appears at the end of the tube. Slide the entire casing onto the nozzle (it helps to use a little of the water out of its soaking dish to lubricate the stuffing tube), and stuff away. Keep your work surface or baking sheet slicked with water too, so the sausage slides. When you’re finished, squeeze the sausage into links of the specified size and twist them in alternating directions (or tie off each link with butcher’s string, if you wish); this will force any air pockets out toward the casing, and then you can prick these air pockets with a needle or knife tip. Cover and refrigerate or freeze your sausages until you’re ready to cook or smoke.
Note: If you’re using the stuffing attachment of your standing mixer, do not grind right into the stuffer. Grind your meat, and mix it to create the primary bind and incorporate the liquid. Then refrigerate it until it’s chilled before sending it back over the auger and into the casing.
SAUSAGE: Seasoning, Grinding, Mixing, Stuffing, Linking
There’s more than one way to stuff a sausage casing. If your sausage mixture is pliable enough, it’s possible to stuff it into casings using a canvas pastry bag. It’s much easier, though, to use a metal stuffer. The above stuffers each have their advantages. The plunger (left) is the less expensive of the two (under $100 from The Sausage Maker: see Sources, page 301), but it can be messy, with sausage squeezing out around the disk that pushes the stuffing through the tube. The piston-and-crank model is by far the best stuffing device—it’s very easy and clean to use and makes stuffing a lot of sausage a breeze—but it’s more expensive (starting at about $200). If you make a lot of sausage, though, this model may be worth the expense.
The KitchenAid standing mixer (right) with a grinder attachment is an excellent tool for grinding sausage. Machines designed solely for grinding (left) are also available. The feeder tube trays on such models hold plenty of meat, and they typically come with a variety of dies. If the tube section surrounding the auger is metal, though, it can get very hot, so be sure to freeze this piece before you grind. Notice that the meat is being extruded through the die in distinct cylinders; if the meat bunches up and appears