Mastering the Craft of Making Sausage (3 page)

GRINDER OPERATION

All meat choppers operate in the same way: Pieces of meat are put into the hopper, and an auger (worm shaft) forces the meat into the holes in the plate. A four-bladed knife lies flat against the back of the plate, and it rotates to cut off the meat that has been forced into the holes by the rotating auger. If the grinder is not chopping the meat properly, or if it is chopping the meat too slowly, it may be because the plate collar is not screwed down tightly, or it may be due to something preventing the knife from lying flat against the plate (gristle, sinew, etc.).

The size of the holes in each plate determines the coarseness of the chopped meat. You should have three plates with some combination of the following four hole sizes: ⅛ inch (4.2 mm),
inch (4.8 mm), ¼ inch (6.4 mm), and
inch (9.5 mm). Additional plates with holes smaller or larger than the holes mentioned above are sometimes useful, but they are not required.

CARE OF MEAT-GRINDING EQUIPMENT

No matter what kind of grinding equipment you are using, it should be washed in hot, soapy water as soon as the grinding work is finished. If the particles of meat remaining on the equipment become dry, they are very difficult to remove. If the equipment cannot be washed immediately, spray it with water or soak it in water in order to keep the meat particles moist.

After the various parts have been washed and rinsed, they may be air dried unless they are made of unprotected cast iron or steel. Unprotected parts should be dried with an absorbent cotton cloth to prevent rust formation.

Take particular care of the plates and the knife. If they are made of carbon steel, they can become corroded and pitted if left in contact with the sausage paste for an extended period. In addition, these carbon steel parts should be dried immediately after washing, and then wrapped individually in heavy, oiled paper such as brown paper from a paper bag—or, paper towels may be used. Put salad oil or mineral oil on the paper, plates, and knife; do not use petroleum-based oils. Salad oil will become gummy and sticky when it oxidizes, so make sure that the parts are separated with the paper; otherwise, they will stick together. These parts, wrapped in oiled paper, are conveniently stored in a small plastic food container or in a wide-mouthed jar.

If a grinder knife becomes dull, professional sharpening is strongly recommended; special sharpening equipment is required. Some grinder knives cannot be sharpened, particularly those used in electric grinders, and buying a new knife is the only recourse.

Mortar and Pestle, Electric Spice Mill

Chemists, primarily, use the mortar and pestle. A pharmacist might use them occasionally, but not as much as he or she would have used them in the old days.

The mortar and pestle are also useful for a person who makes sausage or smokes food. Use them to powder spices that season sausage or smoked foods. Powdering a spice will cause more flavor to be released. Powdered spices are good for making sausage because they are less visible and are more uniformly distributed.

The mortar and pestle can be obtained from a laboratory supply company or a chemical supply company. A pharmacist may be able to order a set for you. Because they are popular with gourmet cooks, they are also often available at a large culinary supply store.

Nowadays, the electric spice mill is gaining in popularity because it is much faster and easier to use than the mortar and pestle.

Refrigerator Thermometer

The internal temperature of a refrigerator is
very
important; the proper temperature retards spoilage and helps to prevent food poisoning. The refrigeration compartment should be kept within a range of 36° to 40° F (2.2° to 4.4° C).

There is a temperature adjustment dial in your refrigerator. The easiest way to measure the temperature is to use an inexpensive refrigerator thermometer. Leave this thermometer in the refrigerator so the temperature is easy to monitor.

A refrigerator thermometer is specially designed so that the reading will not change the moment the door is opened and warm air rushes in. It will take fifteen seconds, or so, before it begins to change. During that time, the thermometer will show the temperature
before
the door was opened. You can find these thermometers in any hardware or culinary store.

Rubber Gloves

A pair of rubber gloves will be useful to protect your hands from salt when mixing sausage. In addition, when ground meat is taken out of a 38° F (3° C) refrigerator to be mixed with seasoning, the hands may be in contact with the cold meat for several minutes. The pain caused by bare hands touching cold meat for an extended time is considerable. Rubber gloves will insulate the hands from the cold very well, even if the rubber is thin. Additionally, it is obviously far more sanitary to mix meat while wearing rubber gloves than it is to use bare hands.

Disposable latex or nitrile gloves made especially for food handling are excellent, and a box of 100 of them can be obtained at a wholesale grocer or restaurant supply store.

Rubber gloves of the type used to wash dishes and do light household cleaning are also effective, easy to use, inexpensive, re-usable, and obtainable almost anywhere. Of course, these gloves should be reserved exclusively for making sausage.

Food Mixers

It is not at all difficult to mix up to five pounds of sausage by hand. If you intend to make more than that, or if you have some kind of physical limitation, you might want to consider a standing mixer with a paddle attachment. KitchenAid makes good, heavy-duty mixers for home use. They also offer a meat grinding attachment that works well. The sausage stuffing attachment is not recommended (see
Sausage stuffing tubes and sausage stuffers
, below).

Sausage Molds

In Chapter 5, please see the section
Making sausage patties
for information about sausage molds.

Sausage Stuffing Tubes and Sausage Stuffers

OLD FASHIONED STUFFING FUNNELS

Before the early 1800s, when levered and gear-powered sausage stuffers were invented, sausage casings were stuffed by hand using a special kind of funnel designed for that purpose. These funnels were known by several names:
stuffing funnels, cones,
or
horns.
They are increasingly difficult to buy, but you might be able to find one on the Internet.

MODERN STUFFING TUBES

The various words that were used for the handheld stuffing funnels are now used for the modern sausage stuffing tubes that are mounted on a mechanical or an electric stuffer. Consequently, in addition to
tubes,
they are called
funnels
,
stuffing cones,
or
horns.
The words nozzles and spouts, too, are sometimes used.

A mechanical or an electric stuffer is usually supplied with three stuffing tubes. The exact diameter of each tube varies with the manufacturer, but ⅝ inch (16 mm), ¾ inch (19 mm), and 1 inch (25 mm) are common. The tube with the smallest diameter is used for sheep casings, the medium one for hog casings, and the large-diameter tube is used for large casings, such as fibrous casings. The tube used for collagen casings depends on the size of the casings.

STUFFER ATTACHMENT ON A MEAT GRINDER

Some stuffing tubes are designed to be attached to a meat grinder. Most electric meat grinders, and some hand-operated meat grinders, come with one or more sizes of stuffing tubes. Stuffing sausage with a meat grinder will do the job, but when stuffing tubes are used with a grinder, two people are required to stuff the casings. One person must keep the hopper full of the sausage mixture and try to keep it packed firmly to reduce the number of air pockets; the other person tends the casing as it is being stuffed. Because two people are required, and because air pockets in the sausages are more likely to be created with this method, using a stuffing tube that attaches to a meat grinder is not recommended.

However, if a grinder is used as a stuffer, make sure that a
spacer plate
is used in place of the knife and grinding plate; this prevents the sausage from being ground again as it is being stuffed.

LEVER POWERED SAUSAGE STUFFERS

Three-pound/1,360 g (or five-pound/2,270 g) cast-iron or stainless steel lever-powered sausage stuffers are popular. (They are also called
push stuffers
.) They are called three-pound stuffers because the manufacturers claim that they will hold three pounds of ground meat—they won’t, but that does not cause an insurmountable problem. (In fact, if a three-pound stuffer is loaded with more than about 1½ pounds/680 g of sausage paste, it is very difficult to push the lever handle down: If the stuffer is more than half-full of sausage paste, the leverage decreases significantly.) These lever-powered stuffers will do the job; they are very durable, are reasonably priced, and can be operated by one person. They will allow the stuffing of any size of sausage casing.

The feet of these sausage stuffers have notches so that the stuffer can be mounted on a platform with bolts. If it is not mounted on a platform, it is certain to slide on the countertop and even tip over when the casing is being stuffed. Mounting on a board, or directly on a tabletop, is imperative.