[County Dangler]

First time making some chorizo this evening.

I started with 10lb our very own free range pork. This is the top half of a leg joint and loin joint. I purposfully saved this piece of loin as it had loads of fat and the recipe calls for 1/5th fresh back fat.



Next I minced the meat, added the back fat chopped into 5-10mm cubes and added red wine, fennel seeds, smoked paprika, garlic and some home smoked sea salt (2%)



And used the sausage stuffer to fill these! It's a fair amount of chorizo. Now a month or two hanging.



A quick question though. Will the tiny air pockets do any harm? I've also read about wiping the surface with vinegar and transferring mould but the book I used for reference made no mention of this? Any thoughts? I also borrowed a friends kenwood chef with mincer attachment to see if they are up to the job and was very impressed. Now I need to decide if its a chef I go for or a Kmix. One thing is for sure though, I won't be paying the butcher £1/lb for sausages anymore.

[SallyintNorth]

Great picture story!   

And interesting to hear your thoughts on equipment too.  Please keep it coming!

[County Dangler]

The general consensus is that if you want the blender then go for a chef and if your bothered about aesthetics then the Kmix is an awesome machine. The kitchenaid is the best looking machine IMO but given the choice between American and British engineering I know where my money will go. They are all expensive but if they last a lifetime, which they should then its a bit easier to justify. Add into that the offset of the cost of the butcher producing my sausages and it makes it even easier. Now to find a bargain. I pretty much never buy anything until I find a bargain. If you look long enough you always do.

[Bionic]

The chorizo looks great. Don't forget to let us know how it tastes when the time comes.

[cloddopper]

Go look on " Weschenfelder  Direct " website there is a small pricker device for sale ... we used corn on the cob forks to prick our salamis etc.

 We puchased a cheap £ 40 electric mincer c/w stuffer tubes with stuffing plate and various sized mincer plates from Aldi ( or Lidel)  last year ..
We already have a processor and a mixer set up with a mincing head but it was not really man enough for 20 lb of meat in a single batch . The cheap electric mincer simply tore through it with out any problems once I'd go the hang of things .. ( read about me making sausages in this site and have a laugh )

 There  is also some stainless steel pasta  forms in the accessories kit so you can make hollow pasta's or pretty spaghetti type shapes .

 I found that if I put a teaspoon of olive oil in the skins just before I shirred the skins they went over the stuffing tube very easily .
Because of only running batches of 30 pound of meat through the machine the stuffers were more than satisfactory  not only for sausages but also for filling 2 inch salami .

So far we have whacked over 90 pounds of various meats through it and it's not showing the slightest of  difficulties or signs of fatigue ... we decided we'd rather ruin a £40 electric mincer doing lots of sausages than knacker a £ 1400 over all cost Kitchen Aid type set up.

[Sudanpan]

Nice looking piccies 
Question re your ingredients though - no mention of any starter or curing salts (as in nitrite)? Are you fermenting the sausage before then hanging to dry for a couple of months?
I am hoping to do our own chorizo and salami this year - have some 'kits' for each type of sausage from Weschenfelder plus I got an old fridge to use as a drying chamber (with hygrometer and thermometer sensors plus a humdifier) but haven't got round to setting it up yet.

[County Dangler]

No other ingredients. I've just followed the instruction in dick strawbridges curing book. Just a basic recipe and not much other instruction. Just make it and hang it for a month or 2. Other then that I havnt got a clue. sometimes the simple methods are best though. Mine are currently hanging in my landing and look to be drying out nicely.

[Caroline1]

Look forward to seeing the final product.

[cloddopper]

Do  check the drying weekly especially as your drying yours indoors where the heat & humidity are likely to be warmer & dryer than outside . ..
The first batch i made were left outside under a fly & fox proof shelter for 8 & 1/2 weeks... ..they were like broom sticks , had to use the boning knife & lots of pressure to cut them as the chefs & meat carving knives barely touched them .

 I feel they should have been checked from about the 4 week period  .

The next batch I made were good at week 6 and ended up being separately vac packed & heat sealed labelled then bunged in the freezer till wanted.

[cloddopper]

No other ingredients. I've just followed the instruction in Dick Strawbridge's curing book. Just a basic recipe and not much other instruction. Just make it and hang it for a month or 2. Other then that I haven't got a clue. Sometimes the simple methods are best though. Mine are currently hanging in my landing and look to be drying out nicely.

 I followed the recipe in the  Sawbridge book including using salted smoked back fat .. They were way too salty for us .

The second batch I made was with home smoked unsalted back fat & adding slightly less salt than they suggested in their recipe & they were delicious ..weight loss was almost bang on 30 % from fresh made .

[County Dangler]

Yeah i thought that might be the case so I didn't salt the back fat either, just used the recommended salt which i cant see will make them too salty. They're approaching 2 weeks now and are drying out nicely with a bit of mould on each. I read that the surface mould isn't a bad thing? the sausage under the skin looks great. It's jst a case of wiping the mould off before you eat it isn't it?

[artscott]

Well done on your chorizo, they look really good, it’s great to see this sort of charcuterie done, when you make it  yourself it’s so much better than shop brought.
We have made various batches of chorizo, air dried hams, mutton, coppa, etc and been pretty successful with them.  We have used both cures with and without nitrates.
What sort of casings did you use, are they natural or collagen?  If they are collagen you may find the sausage starts to shrink away from the casing after a while.  It didn’t seem to cause a problems when we tried collagen, but natural holds to the sausage better.
Mold is OK if it’s the white penicillin kind you find on cheeses like brie.  Other sorts, especially dark hairy molds need to be removed.  Wiping the outside with vinegar should help stop them coming back.
Drying should really be carried out in the cool.  Chorizo needs to be warm for the first 2-3 days so it can ferment and lower the PH within the sausage, this is what stops spoilage.  But once fermentation is over it’s better to move the sausage to a cool area so that it can dry more naturally.  You may find if you keep it inside that the outside dries out creating a skin stopping the inside drying and leaving the centre soft and squishy.

[County Dangler]

Thanks for that. It is a white powdery mould that's on them. Is it better to keep wiping it off or just leave it to it?

These were the casings that i used-they seem to be shrinking/drying with the sausages.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fibrous-Casing-Sausage-Chorizo-Pepperoni/dp/B00E4PM6C2/ref=sr_1_22?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1423752270&sr=1-22&keywords=Butchers-Sundries

[artscott]

They look like good casings, you will have to let us know well they perform when your sausage is fully dry.


As for the mold it sounds like the right stuff and those casings your brought may even encourage it.  I would try getting some on my nail and tasting it, if it tastes like the outside of a cheese and not nasty it should be OK.


I'm sure you can't wait for them to be ready!


Don't forget to make some more when you are about half way through these ones.  We are down to our last few bits of coppa and guanciale as we did not keep pigs this year.  We will get some this spring and are looking forward to autumn with lots of curing and sausage making.

[County Dangler]

After a month of hanging i cracked a sausage open this weekend. They looked dryer and were much lighter then when hung.



The skin had come away from the filling after i gave the whole sausages a wipe over with a vinegar solution. There was a fair bit of blue/green fluffy mould on them as well as the white chalky mould so I gave them a wipe rather then risk it. It seemed to work actually as the white mould came back but the coloured stuff didn't.

I peeled the skin off (very papery) and gave the sausages a quick wipe off as a little of the mould had penetrated through the skin but was only sat on the surface. The looked really good after that. I cut myself a lump off and put it in the frying pan to give it a test before I potentially poisoned the family. And it was bloody lovely. As I'd cut the skin off i decided to slice the whole thing, portion out and freeze.



I'd say they were a touch too salty. Not overbearing but just a bit too much. And slightly lacking in the flavour dept-i think a bit more garlic/wine/paprika wouldn't go amiss. I also guess that this is a very basic recipe and there should be some much more refined recipes available? I still haven't done a whole heap of research but I'll have a look over the coming months whilst we demolish these.