Monte Burch - The Complete Guide to Sausage Making: Mastering the Art of Homemade Bratwurst, Bologna, Pepperoni, Salami, and More

Copyright 2011 by Monte Burch

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61608-128-7

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H ome sausage making is a fun, interesting, and satisfying endeavor. It can be a hobby, a means of saving money, a way of creating foods that are suited to your lifestyle, and a way to control the quality of the foods you and your family consume.

Our family has been making sausage for generations. Growing up on a farm in Missouri, I well remember butchering days and the taste of fresh pork sausage. After working for a few years in the city, my wife, Joan, and I eventually acquired and moved to our own farm. Home butchering pigs, cattle, and chickens once again became a way of life. Then came the proliferation of white-tailed deer in the Ozarks, and venison became a staple food for our growing family. Turning venison into jerky and summer sausage was the next step in sausage making. We soon discovered other sausage recipes, such as making our own bologna, braunschweiger, and others, all great uses for homegrown venison and pork.

You can make your own sausage from any number of recipes; there are literally thousands from all over the world, many handed down from generation to generation. In addition to the basics of sausage making, this book also includes recipes for a variety of different types of sausage. Experimenting with seasonings and meat mixes is half the fun, so use these recipes as a guide to the basic ingredients as you create your own repertoire of sausage recipes.

Some sausages are easy to make, while others take quite a bit of effort and not a few tools. Yet when you are able to serve your family and friends great-tasting homemade sausages, you'll experience a great deal of satisfaction knowing exactly what's in the food you are serving.

K nown as a staple food for almost a thousand years before Christ, sausage is one of mankind's oldest forms of processed foods. Homer's The Odyssey describes a form of sausage made from a goat stomach filled with fat and blood, roasted over an open fire. A Chinese sausage made of lamb and goat meat, called lachang, is recorded as early as 589 BC. The word sausage comes from the Latin word salsus, meaning salted or preserved; salsus was an extremely common food for the Romans. Sausages became so popular during the beginning of the Christian era that Roman emperor Constantine banned them.

National varieties of sausage originated in various regions and cities. Sausages are made with herbs, spices, and meats and include traditional ingredients that create special regional dishes. Through the Middle Ages, the English called it sausage. In France, the term is sausis-sons, and in Germany, wurst. During the Middle Ages, sausage making became an art, with numerous commercial sausage makers scattered throughout Europe. In fact, these wurstmachers, as they were called in Germany, produced a number of distinctively flavored and spiced sausages that became known by the names of the cities or regions from which they originated and eventually became world famous.

The extremely popular frankfurter, or hot dog, came from Frankfurt, Germany. The wiener, however, is a product of Austria, the word meaning Viennese in German. Almost as popular, the luncheon meat bologna came from Bologna, Italy. Other famous sausages with city names include Arles, from France; Goteborg summer sausage, from Sweden; Genoa salami, from Italy; and braunschweiger, from Brunswick, Germany. With over 1,500 varieties of wurst, Germany has to be the sausage capital of the world. Sausage making was and is a serious business in Germany. During the fifteenth century, the Bratwurst Purity Law outlawed the use of rotten or wormy meat. Other famous German sausages include rindswurst, knockwurst, and bockwurst.

Sausage, in all its varieties, is one of mankind's oldest and most important foods. Making your own sausage is not only an enjoyable hobby but also a valuable skill that can provide delicious food for your table.

Sausages are also a very popular breakfast dish in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with well over 400 known recipes. A sausage, dipped and fried, is very common in Britain, as is saveloy, a precooked sausage similar to (but larger than) the hot dog. Colored with brown dye, the sausage has a very distinct red color. A very popular snack food is the pig in a blanket, a sausage cooked in a pastry. Another version is toad in the hole, or sausage baked in Yorkshire pudding and served with onions and gravy. Square sausage is a popular breakfast food in Scotland. Seasoned mostly with pepper, it is formed into a block and cut into slices for cooking.

Scottish black pudding is similar to German and Polish blood sausages. The national sausage of Switzerland is cervelat, a cooked type of summer sausage. Falukorv, a traditional Swedish sausage, is made of pork and veal and contains potato flour and mild spices. It originated from the city of Falun. A fermented sausage called sucuk comes from Turkey and the neighboring Balkans. It is made primarily from beef and is placed in an inedible casing that is removed before consuming. Some varieties may also contain sheep fat, chicken, water buffalo, or turkey meat.

Chorizo, a fresh sausage made of beef or pork salivary glands, is the most popular sausage of Mexico. It is often fairly dry, loose, and crumbly and used as a filling for torta sandwiches, tacos, and burritos. A moister and fresher version of chorizo is very popular in much of Latin America. A number of Philippine sausages include varieties of longaniza and chorizo. The traditional sausage of South Africa is called boerewors, or farmer's sausage, and is made of game and beef with pork or lamb and usually contains fairly high amounts of fat. In Australia, English-style sausages called snags are popular, as is devon, a pork sausage quite similar to bologna. New Zealand sausages are similar to those from England.

In Asia, popular sausages include Chinese lap chong, a dried-pork sausage that has some of the flavor and appearance of pepperoni; a ground-fish sausage from Japan; and sundae, a blood sausage and popular street food from Korea. Saucisson from France is a dried sausage, containing pork, wine, and/or spirits and salt. A number of regional varieties are made. Italian sausages are typically made of pork only and usually contain fennel seeds, black pepper, and sometimes chilies or parsley. Swedish sausages are also typically made of mostly fine-ground pork and are lightly spiced. In Denmark, the popular hot dog stand serves polser, a very popular national dish. In Iceland, traditional sausages have been made of mutton and horse meat. Poland is well known for its variety of sausages, beginning with wild game meat from the royal hunting excursions. The sausages of Portugal, Spain, and Brazil, called