Recipe of the Week: Pork Sausage with Apple, Mint, and Cayenne
Work in progress, but pretty awesome.
First of all, a note: I know I did “Food History Friday” for the last two weeks, but that has moved to the VIP section of RedState, where it will be behind a paywall. If you’re interested, head over to RedState and subscribe to the VIP section, and use the promo code “JOE” to get yourself a discount.
Now, as far as this week’s recipe goes, I have been wanting to try my hand at some homemade sausages for a while. I just happened to be off from work on Thursday and had my chance to do so with no interruptions.
This recipe is a pork sausage, though you can use a meat grinder and sausage stuffer to make a sausage out of any meat you have available. Of course, different meats have different spice and flavor pairings that elevate them. In this case, pork matches with sweeter combinations that beef simply rejects. One of the best pairings for pork is apple. It also works well with mint and, luckily for us all, apple and mint also go together.
Made sense to me.
So, here’s what we’ve got: pork roast a little more on the lean side, Honeycrisp apple, crushed mint, cayenne, and salt.
The roast being lean, though, means we needed a little more fat to add in. There are different oils and fats you can try, but I decided to stick with the pork flavor and used rendered bacon fat.
Here are the ingredients:
3 lb. pork roast
1-2 large Honeycrisp apples
5 tbsp. (or more) rendered bacon fat
2 tbsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. rosemary
1.5 tbsp. crushed mint
1 tbsp. sea salt
7-9 ft. hog intestine for stuffing
There are two processes here. The first is the grinding and mixing of the ingredients. I use a KitchenAid stand mixer with a metal meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment. Before grinding, you need to do put the meat grinder attachments and the meat in the freezer for about two hours. This keeps the meat from smearing in the grinder. This is typically more important for making burgers, but I prefer to keep the meat looking pretty and coming out loose from the grinder. This, to me, makes it easier to mix all the spices in.
Dice the apple into chunks.
Pull the meat from the freezer and dice it into 1-1.5 inch chunks.
Pull the meat grinder from the freezer and attach it to the mixer.
Alternate handfuls of the meat and apple and force them through the grinder into the bowl.
When the meat and apple(s) are ground, add in the spices and mix thoroughly with your hands. Really get into it. Feel that meat as it mashes together. It’s kind of therapeutic.
Feed the hog intestines onto the sausage stuffing tube. Leave about two inches at the end of the tube.
Start forcing the ground meat into the feeder. After you get a few inches into the intestine, get some more slack on your intestine and tie it off.
Feed the meat into the intestine slowly. Don’t worry about air bubbles, as you’ll fix that shortly.
When all of the meat is fed through, tie off the other end of the sausages. Twist new links every 6 or 12 inches, and tie off with butcher’s twine if you have some (it looks nicer to me, for some reason).
Examine the links, and for every air pocket you see, take a sewing needle and poke a couple of holes in each one. Those holes will seal up when the sausages cook.
Prep a smoker to about 150 degrees. I used lump charcoal, but however you heat yours is fine. The smoke is what’s important.
Using either the racks or, if you have them, meat hooks, put the sausages in the smoker and add wood chips to the fire. Since it’s pork, a fruit wood works perfectly here. Apple wood would complement the apple already in the sausage, but cherry wood is also great.
Cook for 4-5 hours at 150 degrees. At this point, it’s done, but if you want to add a little more color and flavor, get the heat up to 200 degrees and go for another hour or two.
The end result is fantastic. I’ll be taking some back home for Easter and sharing the remainder with some friends. If you want to experiment with flavors, sausage is a great canvas to try.