Bread vs rusk

[SGK]

Hi. I am new to sausage making and while I have made several batches now I am not happy with the taste of the results. For example, my last batch used the recipe posted here

http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/node/12091

cut down pro rata to the amount of meat I had and the meat being pork shoulder. I feel like the issue is the use of rusk. I used the following

http://www.tongmaster.co.uk/rusk-and-br ... -user-pack

The sausages taste "okay" cold but I dislike them hot.

I'm wondering how many of you use dried breadcrumbs rather than rusk.

Regards

Steve

[wheels]

Hi SGK, welcome.

Can you be more specific about what you didn't like? What makes you think it was the rusk?

That said, I use dried breadcrumbs in some recipes. You need to use crumbs from well cooked bread to ensure that there's no possibility of fermentation - not squashy supermarket stuff!. You also need to use a different ratio of water to crumb. You'll notice that in your recipe you used more water than rusk. The ratio needs to be equal when using breadcrumbs. Use the same total amount of water/crumb as you did water/rusk, but do it in a 50:50 ratio.

Hope this helps.

Phil

[SGK]

Hi

Hard to describe but when they're hot I feel like all I can taste (and smell) at the immediate bite is rusk. I've not got the texture right either. The sausages aren't as firm as I would expect (very spongy). The last batch I did I ground the pork shoulder on my grinder's fine setting, mixed everything and then ground it all again.

They tend to ooze liquid in storage and split in the pan. Ordinarily I would cook sausages in a simple le Creuset cast iron pan with corrugated bottom. With these they seep, stick and eventually split or get torn when turning.

I've been reading that I should mix the meat and seasoning first and add the rusk dry. What's the proper sequence for mixing the filling? Any other tips here?

I guess that if it came to replacing rusk with breadcrumbs I would order the breadcrumbs (in the first instance) from the likes of the Weschenfelder site.

We have a Saturday farmer's market near us where Grasmere Farm sell their sausages. My favourite is a relatively mild, plain old Cumberland or Lincolnshire. I've tried a number of mixes and I don't seem to be able to get close to what I would call a basic English sausage...

[NCPaul]

Welcome to the forum SGK. We have a good Cumberland sausage recipe here:
viewtopic.php?t=3542

and a good Lincolnshire one here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=431&p=2936&hilit=lincolnshire#p2936

my favorite "basic" sausage is on Wheels' blog here:
http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?e=359

I've made all of these using breadcrumbs instead of rusk (reduced the water). What you describe sounds as if you might not be getting a good bind when mixing your sausage. The meat should be very cold and it should be "hold upside down" sticky. The bind will help the sausage hold water when it cooks. Try once through the grinder with the fine plate, mix with seasonings, breadcrumbs and water, then stuff. Or you could grind twice, but use the larger grinder plate adding the seasonings and salt to the meat before the second pass(I tend to do this). As far as cooking them goes, I prefer poaching them at 170F for 15 minutes then frying them.

[yotmon]

Also, instead of paying £5.99 for a kilo of rusk, try this recipe.

viewtopic.php?t=339&highlight=rusk+economy

I've used it several times and never had any complaints, plus its a lot cheaper than buying it in.

[SGK]

Hi. I bought 10kg of rusk for £20 rather than 1kg for £5 so let's just say I have quite a lot of the stuff...it's a shame I don't seem to like it!

Okay so meat well chilled. (I've just taken the joint out of the fridge to grind it, placed it back in the fridge over night and then taken it out to mix ingredients and stuff.) I also see that many recipes call for iced water so will use that. My mix has typically been exceedingly sticky but I'll focus on this a bit more. I also read here about when to add the water and so will follow that from now on. http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/faq

On my last attempt I used the "fine" plate on my grinder (just a KitchenAid food grinder attachment) but I will stick to the larger one for the next attempt. I was using the second pass more to help ensure the ingredients were mixed well.

I think I will order some breadcrumbs http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/content/ ... read-crumb for my next attempt to simply take that variable out.

Thanks for the recipes. I will check them out. (Good tips there re freezing - I've just been tossing them in a vacuum bag.) At the moment I have mixes from Weschenfelder and Tongmaster just to try to get off scratch. But I will try the blends posted - my wife would like me to make a good Italian sausage (she's always wanting me to just toss in some fennel seeds).

I've typically just used pork shoulder and not a mix of shoulder and belly but I don't think what I am experiencing is due to lack of fat. Am I wrong?

(Btw as heinous as it may be, I like my Cumberlands linked. )

[SGK]

Oops. Sorry for the double post - not sure what happened there. (Perhaps a moderator can delete it.)

For the Lincolnshire recipe linked to above, if one were to replace the rusk with breadcrumbs would you drop the weight of water to match the rusk weight (replaced with breadcrumbs) or increase the breadcrumbs to match the water weight?

[wheels]

Hi, I'd do neither of those. From the original recipe, I'd add the weight of rusk to the weight of water and divide that by two to get the weight of crumbs and water for the new one. That way the total weight of sausage will be the same in both recipes so the level of salt/seasoning won't be thrown out of balance.

HTH

Phil

[SGK]

That makes much more sense. Thx

[wheels]

No problem, please let us know how it works out, on the off-chance that it's not the rusk that's the problem, I'm sure that we can help further.

Phil

[SGK]

Where do you guys buy your herbs and spices, superphos and dextrose? Good online source?

[NCPaul]

This forum is hosted by a website that carries those supplies, maybe give them a try? Shipping costs are a little steep for me, so I can't give you a personal experience.

[SGK]

Hi. I managed to find everything except Superphos - when I search for this I just get fertiliser adds and while I understand phosphate is an important nutrient for plant growth I'm not in a rush to add fertiliser to my sausages. I see from the discussion I can easily leave this out. I've made up 500g of the seasoning mix for the Cumberland recipe linked to above. Next Saturday will be another sausage making session.

[wheels]

You don't actually need Supaphos, but if you want it, it's here:

http://www.sausagemaking.org/acatalog/Ingredients.html

HTH

Phil

[SGK]

Well I gave the Cumberland recipe a go and made about 7kg of sausages. I think that Cumberland recipe is really rather nice. I might lower the level of spice next time slightly but the flavour is good to me. My biggest problem seems to be that I am still overstuffing the skins. The either ooze out the ends or, more often, burst as well.