Tips for making sausages

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Preparing sausages is an art and a pleasure, each sausage can be prepared with different seasonings and types of meat, bringing unique flavors to each creation. Use your creativity and use the basic tips to get great results.

  • For the sausage to be juicy, ideally it should contain between 20 and 30 percent fat;
  • Don't use too much salt, the ideal is a proportion of 10 grams of salt for every 500 grams of meat, but depending on personal and regional taste you need to adapt the measurements. Remember that excess salt is bad for your health.
  • Always keep all equipment and utensils cold.
  • Freeze the fat if you are going to add it separately to the meat.
  • Season the meat in 1 or 2 cm cubes and let it marinate for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator before grinding.
  • You can leave the meat almost frozen before grinding, this will reduce fat loss, consequently making it juicier.
  • If you add liquids when mixing the ground meat, choose liquids that are very cold or frozen and scraped.
  • Mix the ground meat well to work with the protein and obtain a homogeneous and firm final consistency. Sausages that have not been mixed very well will have more brittle meat. The same happens with hamburgers, for example.
  • When filling, compact the dough well in the cannon to prevent air bubbles from entering the middle of the dough;
  • After embedding, let the sausages rest for 4 to 12 hours in the refrigerator for the dough to compact and firm up.
  • When cooking or roasting the sausage, preferably use a temperature between 65 and 72 degrees.

If you want to know more read How to make sausage?

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Goodnight !!!! I have some questions about sausage production:

1) the ideal is to make the seasoned dough and leave it in the fridge for 2 days so that it cures and absorbs more seasoning?

2) after making the sections, do you need to make a hole in the sausage to avoid air pockets?

3) I bought some LF curing salt. (quick) which is marked on the packaging: refined salt + preservatives ins 250 (0.7%) … Is it low nitrite?

Thanks

In truth no. It just says that it is quick-curing salt and to be used in accordance with legislation. But, the manufacturer does not provide guidance.
And it was the store owner himself who sold it to me. But, reading your tips and instructions I became a little suspicious.
Just in case, would you recommend a brand that is safer in terms of the percentage of nitrite and nitrate?

Hug

My sausages, after packaging, come out with a lot of juice.

Renato,

I don't know if you make sausage commercially or homemade. I will take on home production.

First: Do not let the temperature of the meat mass exceed 12ºC during any stage. Up to this temperature, the fat present in the meat forms a natural gel with the protein and water. Above that, it loses this property and stops holding water, making the product no longer tender.

Second: To form this alloy, it is not enough to just grind the already seasoned meat and touch it inside the casing. The fat requires to be mixed with the protein and water to form the dough. For this you need to mix either with a planetary mixer or by hand. Mix with your hands until a meaty mass sticks to your hand.

I make salami, but in a short time it becomes hard like a rock, I want to know what to do to keep it soft for longer.

I saw in several recipes that it is necessary to keep the grinder cold, but the grinder I have at home is an electric one from Britânia and there is no way to freeze all the parts and I don't even know if I can freeze the moving parts because of the water that condenses afterwards. What is the purpose of keeping utensils cold? If I don't do this, what losses could I incur?

Pedro, To freeze your grinder, simply grind a few ice cubes before grinding the meat. Use the disc with the largest hole and add ice cubes in a proportion that your grinder can handle without much effort. This will freeze the parts of the grinder that actually come into contact with the meat. I imagine at this point your question: Why keep meat cold? The meat must be kept cold not because of contamination but because of what I call the “magic” temperature. The magic temperature is between 4ºC and 12ºC. Below 4ºC to 0ºC, liquid water begins to expand until it forms ice crystals. This expansion breaks the cell structure of the meat, reducing the liquid retention capacity and consequently the final product will not be tender. Above 12ºC, meat fat loses the ability to bind with water and protein and form a paste that, when cooked, has a pleasant consistency, that is, in popular words we say that it “loses its binding” and crumbles when cooked. At this point you're already thinking, at least my refrigerator won't cool below 4ºC, so… Read more "

Good morning, I would like to know if I keep the utensils, and the protein very cold when handled, guarantees that the sausage when fried or baked will not burst or open?