Homemade Semi-Dry Cured Sausage
Description
Tired of low-quality store-bought sausage? I'll tell you — the appetizer is ready. Serve immediately.
Instructions
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Step 1
1. After trying various meats for making dry-cured sausage, I concluded that lean pork or veal works best. We will need 1,200 g of meat. Essentials: spices, salt, and cognac. We will stuff the mince into pork casings, which can easily be purchased today at any hypermarket.
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Step 2
2. Mix the spices. I use one tablespoon each of paprika, ground black pepper, dried garlic, and hot pepper. If you don't like it too spicy, add just a little hot pepper.
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Step 3
3. Cut the meat into pieces. In the photo, the pieces are shown large. However, I recommend mincing them as finely as possible (like chopped cutlets). You can run them through a coarse meat grinder.
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Step 4
4. Now add all our spices, salt, and cognac. Lightly sprinkle with nutmeg. The meat needs to be mixed very thoroughly—so that every piece is infused (mix the meat with clean hands).
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Step 5
5. Now put our meat in the refrigerator to marinate for two days.
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Step 6
6. Natural casing in the form of pig casings looks like this. It swells quickly in warm water and is immediately ready to use. The days are gone when this was a scarce item and casings had to be cleaned long and painstakingly. Today they are sold in large hypermarkets and are ready to use right away without any additional processing.
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Step 7
7. Now tie one end of the prepared casing and begin stuffing it very tightly. You can stretch the casing over something to make it easier. Be sure to tie both ends. Shape and size the sausage however you like. I make mine medium length.
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Step 8
8. Now we hang our sausage in a dark place. For me, that's the balcony. Ideally, the sausage should dry-cure at a temperature no higher than 18 degrees. Salt and cognac are certainly excellent preservatives (cognac also gives semi-dried sausage its distinctive, recognizable flavor), but it's still better not to dry it in the heat. Another point is keeping out flies and other pests. To do this, prepare the windows (mosquito screens, cheesecloth, etc.). Leave the sausage to dry for 3 weeks.
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Step 9
9. It hardly shrinks in length (if packed tightly), but it shrinks noticeably in width. If you want the finished product to have a more aesthetic appearance, roll it out with a rolling pin once a week, thereby giving it shape. I never do this, because the taste of this sausage outweighs its outward appearance.