Homemade Pork and Fennel Sausage

Directions

1. Add garlic into a saucepan with the red wine and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for 5 minutes and then cool immediately. This is best done at least a few hours before making the sausages.

2. Bone out the shoulder and reserve the bones to make a stock.

3. Trim the pork and separate meat from fat. Try to remove anything that might result in gristle (a simple test is if your sharp knife won’t easily slice through it, it will probably be gristle in your mouth). Cube the meat and fat into roughly 1-inch cubes (too big is hard on the mincer and can result in uneven filling).

4. Mix salt, pepper, fennel and garlic wine thoroughly with meat and fat.
5. Mince to desired coarseness. You are ready to use this for a fennel sausage pasta!

6. If you are going to stuff the mince into casings for sausage, mix the sausage meat with your hands to evenly distribute meat and fat, and to emulsify to help the proteins bind so you don’t get crumbly sausage. It is important to keep the sausage meat cold through this process to prevent the fat from smearing, so you may want to chill the mix in the freezer for 20 minutes before attempting this. You can also add crushed ice to the mix to keep it cool during this proccess, which also aids the emulsification process. When done, test the mix by forming a patty and seeing if it sticks to your palm when held palm side down.

7. Place natural casings over your funnel and stuff firmly. When breaking the sausages into segments, always twist every second sausage in the same direction so they don’t come unwound. There are some great videos on Youtube that explain how to do this.