CHAURICE SAUSAGES Copyright 2016 The Mobile Home Gourmet, MobileHomeGourmet.com, all rights reserved.

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1 CHAURICE SAUSAGES Makes about 12. By Dennis W. Viau; modified from several recipes. Having learned to make sausages, I wanted to make some chorizo. The Cajun/Creole sausage chaurice is a close relative, being Spanish in origin and also highly spiced. For the following recipe I combined what I thought might be the best seasonings, but there is no one way to season chaurice. You can choose your own preferred spices. Ingredients: 2 hog casings; rinsed, soaked, and rinsed again inside and out 2½ pounds (1.1kg) pork butt 2 teaspoons kosher or coarse salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper (medium grind) 2 tablespoons chili powder ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper 1 teaspoon dry thyme 1 teaspoon cayenne ½ teaspoon allspice ½ teaspoon fennel or anise seed, ground or cracked 1 teaspoon sugar ½ cup (70g) onion, minced 6 cloves garlic, minced ¼ cup (15g) parsley, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced ¼ cup (60ml) dry red wine 1 tablespoon brandy ½ tablespoon red wine vinegar (optional) Directions: If possible, assemble your meat grinder attachment with the medium or the large disk and store in the refrigerator overnight. Rinse two hog casings well, running water through the inside of the casing, and then soak in a bowl of clean fresh water. Store in the refrigerator until needed. Cut the pork and fat into cubes about ¾ to 1 inch (2 to 2.5cm) in size, arrange on a small tray, and place in the freezer for 20 to 30 minutes. Place all the seasoning ingredients in a large bowl. (I don t care for the sour flavor of vinegar; so I listed it as optional. ) Grind the pork and place the ground meat in the bowl with the spices. Turn and mix well to distribute the seasonings thoroughly in the meat. Cover and refrigerate for three hours to let the seasonings flavor the meat. Attach the spacer and sausage stuffing tube (no need for the blade) to the meat grinder and attach it to your stand mixer. Rinse a hog casing and gently feed it onto the stuffing tube. Start passing seasoned meat through the grinder. When it begins to fill the casing, tie the casing closed with a piece of kitchen string. Continue passing meat through the grinder, gently filling the casing to fill it completely without bursting the casing. This might require a little practice. When one casing is full, tie the end closed with a piece of string and repeat the filling process with the second

2 casing. (I found two casings to be just right for this amount of filling.) Pinch the sausage at 4-inch intervals, two pinches at a time, and twist the section between the two pinches 2 or 3 times to shape a sausage link. Repeat until all the links are formed. Cover and store in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight to rest the meat before cutting apart. These sausages contain no preservatives; so they should be cooked within 1 or 2 days, frying about 5 minutes per side, until cooked all the way through, or to an internal temperature of at least 160 F (71 C). Unused sausages can be wrapped and safely stored in the freezer for a few months. 2 1 STEP-BY-STEP Cubing the meat and freezing it for 20 to 30 minutes will help the fat pass through the grinder more easily. 2 Grind the partially frozen pork, cover, and store in the refrigerator until needed.

3 3 3 Combine all the seasoning/flavoring ingredients in a large bowl. Add the ground meat. Mix and turn gently to thoroughly distribute the seasonings throughout the meat. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator for at least three hours (or overnight) to allow the seasonings to flavor the meat. 4 My package of hog casings does not indicate a size. This is an 8-ounce (227g) package and the listing on Amazon says they are 32mm casings. There are many casings in this package. Note: They have a characteristic strong odor, which is normal.

4 5 4 Assemble your meat grinder/sausage stuffer attachment and attach to your stand mixer. Rinse a casing and thread it carefully on the stuffing tube. Start pushing meat through the grinder. When it exits the tube and starts filling the casing, tie the end of the casing closed with a piece of kitchen string. 6 Working carefully, fill an entire casing with meat. The goal is to have a smooth long sausage with few air pockets. (The skin at air pockets can be pricked with a pin or sausage pricker to release the air.)

5 7 5 Here are my filled casings. The meat in this recipe typically fills two of my packaged casings. 8 To make certain my links would all be the same size, I drew guide lines 4 inches (10cm) apart on the underside of a piece of parchment paper. 9 Pinch two places on the length of sausage, and then twist the section between the two pinches to form a link.

6 10 6 Here are my completed sausages. The meat was enough to fill two casings for a total of 13 sausages. Cover with plastic and store in the refrigerator for a few hours, or overnight, before cutting into individual sausages. 11 Here is another picture, photographed on a piece of granite. For only my second time making sausages, these turned out very well.

7 12 7 Conclusion The cooked sausages have a slightly spicy kick to them. If you like your food really spicy hot, you can increase the amount of cayenne and red pepper flakes. Notes Bacteria can be an important consideration with all ground meat. A solid roast, such as a leg of lamb, has most of its bacteria on the outside surface. You kill the bacteria when you brown the meat and/or roast it in a hot oven. Therefore, the meat is safe to eat rare or medium-rare. Ground meat has the bacteria distributed throughout the meat. Therefore, it must be cooked all the way through, preferably to an internal temperature of at least 160 F (71 C) to be safe for eating. Natural hog casings are the skin from the digestive track of hogs. Yes, intestines. The skin has been properly cleaned and well salted for preservation. Be aware that casings have a characteristic odor they smell like rotten fish. They re safe. After soaking and rinsing, the odor will be almost completely gone. Think of it this way: Some of the cheeses we love also have a characteristic odor, but we eat them anyway. 20% fat in the pork is recommended. However, you can use leaner pork. The sausages will be denser and be less juicy, but they will be healthier to eat. I prefer leaner sausages. Don t avoid all fat; the sausages would be dry and tough to chew not at all enjoyable. If you want to seriously take up the craft of making your own sausages, I highly recommend a book such as Mastering the Craft of Making Sausages by Warren R. Anderson. It contains a wealth of important and useful information. It is available on Amazon.