Charcuterie_ The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing - Michael Ruhlman [53]
6. Adding ice-cold liquid when mixing the ground meat helps distribute the seasonings and results in a moister sausage.
7. Cook your sausage to an exact temperature, 150 degrees F./65 degrees C. in general, or, for sausages containing poultry, 160 degrees F./71 degrees C.
8. Savor every bite: A great sausage is a special creation.
SERVING
On a bun—that’s among the most common ways to serve a sausage—and if you pile on some roasted peppers and onions, you’ve got three major food groups right there, a complete meal you can hold in your hand. Sausage is fantastic with pasta, of course, and loose sausage is perfect here, for those who like the idea of making sausage but don’t have the time or tools to stuff it into casings. Moreover, making your own sausage for your own pasta dishes allows you to choose your ingredients and seasonings to suit the dish. A chicken-basil-tomato sausage or a French garlic sausage might suit a pasta far better than a coil of store-bought “Italian.”
Other starches work just as well. Merguez, a Moroccan spicy lamb sausage, goes great with couscous on its native turf. Bangers and mash are a classic combo in Britain; you can elevate that tradition with your own sausages and a smooth, buttery potato puree. Or, with rice as your backdrop, you can take sausage any direction you choose, from Asian to Spanish to American Southwestern cuisine, all depending on the seasonings you use.
Loose sausage can be cooked in many dishes—scrambled eggs, polenta, or a rice pilaf—or added to corn bread batter. Links or slices or chunks of sausage will transform a pot of beans or soups, flavoring the broth as they cook.
And of course many sausages, such as kielbasa and knackwurst, add incomparable flavor to braised sauerkraut, braised cabbage dishes, or any one-pot preparation in which the juices of the sausage can flavor the other ingredients.
Sausages also make the perfect hors d’oeuvre, whether a summer sausage sliced and served cold, or simply a fresh sausage served hot. People love sausage, it’s easy to serve, and it’s easy to eat standing at a party.
Sausages make the perfect snack—especially, believe it or not, if you’re on a low-calorie diet. Because of its high fat content, one small sausage will keep hunger pangs away for hours. If you ever munch on rice cakes and carrot sticks, you know they don’t quash hunger for long. The hard part, of course, is not eating too many sausages.
Even sausage fanatics don’t usually think of sausage as a high-end item, something that would appear on the menu of a four-star restaurant, but often they do. At the French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley, former sous-chef Eric Ziebold used to fashion a French sausage called a cervelas, speckled with pistachio and truffle, served sliced into disks with green lentils. Another of his dishes was a boudin blanc that was served with orange confit, fennel, and a pale-green pistachio vinaigrette. Bistro dishes elevated to four-star cuisine. Paul Bocuse, at his Michelin three-star restaurant outside Lyon, often serves a garlic sausage cooked en brioche as an amuse-bouche.
At Five Lakes Grill, Brian often makes sliced sausages a thematic component or garnish in a larger plate. He might serve a chicken sausage with a roasted chicken breast, a duck sausage with roast duck, venison sausage with loin of venison, or shrimp-lobster-leek sausage along with a grilled shrimp entrée.
STORING
Most fresh sausages, if they are made with fresh ingredients and well wrapped, will keep for 1 week in the refrigerator without a significant compromise in flavor. Sausages also freeze well, as do most high-fat items when well wrapped. Double-wrap them before freezing, or wrap them in plastic and store in freezer bags (keep a marker handy—it’s wise to note the type of sausage and the date on the bag itself; don’t think you’ll remember). Sausages can be frozen for up to 3 months, depending on the freshness of the sausage, how well they are wrapped, and the temperature of your freezer, but they’re at their peak if eaten fresh.
FRESH SAUSAGE