Sausage Making: Easy as Biting into a Brat
04 March 2013
The U.S. renaissance in charcuterie coupled with diners’ love of sausage makes housemade sausages a customer-satisfying, brand-building notion.
By Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE, HAAC
More and more chefs at U.S. restaurants, hotels and clubs are wowing diners with interesting sausage inspirations that perfectly balance savory, sweet, spicy and smoky. Americans’ ever-increasing desire for good sausage is why culinary students enrolled at the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts in Chicago learn sausage-making during their first year of study.
Indeed, today’s sausages—as links, patties and crumbles—can showcase any ground meat combined with sufficient animal fat and any combination of a vast array of seasonings and other flavoring ingredients.
Thanks largely to chefs’ sausage inventiveness, the homemade-sausage trend is also propelled in part by growing consumer interest in enjoying fresh, locally grown and raised ingredients. European and other heritage sausages are enjoying a renaissance, too.
Good news is that sausage-making is easier than you might think, although there are a couple hard and fast rules: (1) use very cold meat, fat and equipment and (2) always use a meat thermometer to ensure food safety.
To illustrate that creative sausage making is both uncomplicated and limited only by the imagination, here are several tasty ideas to consider, with recipes formatted for download at the bottom of this page:
- Begin your sausage-making sojourn with an easy-to-make favorite: Spicy Breakfast Sausage. And while the accompanying recipe recommends a seasoning mélange to give ground-pork patties a perk, experiment with spices you and your customers love.
- You don’t have to live in Wisconsin to enjoy a brat—especially your own. Sheboygan-style Bratwurst features mild-tasting veal, which can be replaced with ground pork if desired. Either way, you won’t want to wait to fire up the grill for these mouthwatering links.
- Marco Polo couldn’t do better: Moroccan Merguez capitalizes on an array of cross-cultural flavors that marry to delight the taste buds, particularly when plated with cous cous and a Mediterranean orange/black-olive salad. Though terrific snuggled in a bun, this delectable sausage that starts with ground lamb can also be made into patties.
- Oh-so-easy Green Chorizo celebrates the color contributions of baby spinach, cilantro and parsley in this Mexican favorite. When nestled in a soft tortilla with sliced red onion, bell pepper and refried black beans with freshly sliced avocado on the side, this tantalizing pork sausage is a veritable fiesta of flavor.
Download, KC Sheboygan-style Bratwurst
Download, KC Spicy Breakfast Sausage
Christopher Koetke, CEC, CCE, HAAC, vice president, Laureate International Universities Center of Excellence in Culinary Arts and the Kendall College School of Culinary Arts.