Sausage recipes

I was so dismayed by the additives, chemicals and other nasties that sausages in the supermarkets contained that I decided that there must be an easy sausage making method for me to make my own. I read a lot of articles on easy sausage making methods, then decided to go on a one day course with a butcher who made dozens of different flavour sausages. It was money well spent and I haven't bought a supermarket sausage since. Buy pork shoulder and belly pork, dice it up, then blitz the meat in a food processor. Add herbs, spices, rusk, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly. You can make your own rusk by putting slices of bread on a tray and baking them in the oven for an hour or so on a low heat. The bread becomes lovely and crispy. Blitz it up and you've got rusk. Herbs and spices can be anything that you fancy trying, after all this is experiment time, and sausage making recipes are what you want them to be. I've just made some pork, garlic and thyme sausages but the combinations are down to you.

Once you have the mix ready and you've got sausage skins either from your local butcher or from the many suppliers on the internet, you are ready to stuff the sausages. You can buy a machine to do this and I do use one when I'm making a lot of sausages, but its easy to do it by hand if you're making only a few. A piece of plastic tube of a diameter that you want your sausage to be is OK, and a rammer made from a piece of wood is fine. Oil the outside of the tube and slide the skins over it, bunching them up as you go. Tie a knot in the end of the skin, then feed the mix into the tube with your thumb and gently ram it down into the skin. Keep going until all the mix is used up. You can gently squeeze the long sausage and twist the skin to form individual sausages or just cut them to length.

Congratulations, you've made your first sausages. There are countless combinations of sausage recipes that you can try. Have fun making the best sausages you've ever tasted.