My favorite breakfast sausage is the Thurlaston formulation developed by our good friend wheels.
http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?e=359
I pondered one morning, probably while eating it, how it might taste as a dry cured sausage. To my knowledge, the United Kingdom is not represented by any sausage in the dry cured class and it is time for that to change.
To make the recipe suitable for dry curing the water and rusk were dropped and cure # 2, starter culture, dextrose and some mixed peppercorns (for color) were added. In addition, the salt was increased to a suitable level. This is a basic roadmap to convert a fresh sausage recipe to a dry cured one.Back fat 268 g
Pork shoulder (lean) 1120 g
Salt 29.1 g
Cure # 2 3.2 g
Dextrose 2.5 g
Sugar 3.8 g
White pepper 2.9 g
Mixed peppercorns whole 4 g
Nutmeg. 0.8 g
Mace. 0.36 g
Black pepper 2.1 g
Ginger. 0.8 g
Mixed Italian herbs. 1.3 g
F-LC culture 0.36 g
Ground once through course plate, mixed with seasonings and stuffed into 62mm synthetic.
pH = 6.0 at 20 hrs. at 70F
pH = 5.15 at 44 hrs.
10/19 1226 g
10/30. 1037 g. 15.4 %. 46F/64 %
11/6. 980 g. 20.1 %
11/14. 928 g. 24.3 %
11/21. 894 g. 27.1 %
11/27. 868 g. 29.2 %. 46F/66 %
12/3. 842 g. 31.3 %
12/11. 823 g. 32.9 %
12/29. 779 g. 36.5 %. 49F/69 %
The taste gives first the nutmeg / mace followed by the meat and pepper. The ginger, which is easily picked out in the fresh sausage, has faded into the background or is covered by the acidity of the fermentation. Next time I will increase the ginger. Unfortunately I can't send samples to the UK for wheels to try, so he'll need make some to see if I should change the name or not.
