[cloddopper]

I almost denuded our big sage plants earlier this year , by cutting off as much leaf as I dare , then with new  pair of hard red industrial gloves on took off all the leaves by pulling lengths through one hand from the tip backwards .

Dried it on several trays in the airing cupboard turning it twice a day till crisp . Then with the same  pair of red rubber gloves rubbed it down  between my hands &  put it through a 1/4 inch square stainless steel mesh garden sieve. We got the sieve our local Aldi three or so years ago specially for this sort of purpose .

Once sorted it was gently put through the next small size grid  , what was left was whizzed in the food processor to make it smaller & then everything was recombined and bagged in 25 gram heat sealed vac pack bags . 

It's great done this way as it's nice & handy for when you start your sausage making .
Plus it keeps the flavour in the small packs  rather than having a massive big bag or jar open & exposing the contents to the air every time you use some.


 

[Possum]

What a good idea! How much do you put in your sausages?

[cloddopper]

three 25 g packs of sage in 5 pound of lean pork  2.5 pounds of belly pork coarsely minced ,.
Also adding  25 g of dried celery leaf and about a teaspoon of ground up in the mortar rosemary 1/4 teaspoon of white pepper  three teaspoons of salt ,  some times adding a teaspoon of fresh fine grated ginger & a couple of grates of nutmeg .
the rest of the recipe is add 3/4 pound of pinhead rusk , a pint of ice cold water ( sometimes another  1/4 of a pint if things are too dry . 

Once the herbs have been sprinkled on the minced pork that's laid out on the draining board and rubbed in  we add the rusk then add the water to the mix that is now contained in a big plastic bucket sat in the sink as our normal mixing bowls were too small

Filling skins .
 Before shirring the skins on the stuffer tube I open the skin and pour in about 1/2 a teaspoon of olive oil in the skin ... this lubricates things really well as the oil is continually running down inside the skin .  This helps the skin slide off the stuffer when it is full .  Prior to this we often found we had a skin split both when putting it on and when filling them .

once made in a long run  that lays in the sink I link the sausages and place them in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm them up ready for the next exercise .
 I  wipe / grease three plastic dinner trays with a bit of kitchen roll  soaked in soft butter and then cut the links into individual sausages and lay them like little soldiers in rows on the trays , slipping full trays uncovered into the big chest freezer till they are individually frozen . Then I pack them in threes or fours  in heat sealed vac pack bags and indicate type & date made with a super permanent marker pen before putting them in the right pecking order in the freezer baskets in both kitchen freezer & the chest freezer out in the garage .

 I tried vac packing them before freezing them but the vacuum depression simply squashed the skins flat and made a " cowpat"  of sausage meat .

[Possum]

Wow! That is one of the best sausages recipes I have yet seen.


Monday sees me collecting this year's pork from the butcher's, so sausage making is first on the agenda. Happy days.

[tattycat]

Well done waterbuffalowfarmer!! Couldn't have said it better myself!
Nd as for the sausage recipe mmmmm

[Treud na Mara]

I've just hade some delicious butternut squash and sage soup. I confess it was ready made from the Co-op but one of the most toothsome uses of sage!

[Possum]

Have just made the sage sausages. Absolutely delicious! I used 80g of fresh sage as the bunches that I cut in December still haven't dried properly. (I don't have an airing cupboard. ) I also doubled the amount of fresh rosemary as we like our sausages quite tangy. They are so much better than the sausages that we made last year. Thanks cloddopper.

[cloddopper]

Let's know how the fresh sage works out towards the end of the sausages please , for I was led to believe it should be dried to absorb some of the meat juices of the uncooked sausages .
 
Drying sage , hang or stand it in a bucket it near the fire for a week or so  or over the aga/multifuel cooker if you have one. or hang it in  your main living room .

As a kid in the early 1950's to 1960's we had all manner of things hung up on the living room walls as that was the only room in the house to be reasonably dry /warm for that is where the fire place was . The driest & warmest place we had in winter was the store cupboard  at the wall side of the fireplace /chimney breast .