Dwarven Smoked Sausage
by RobinWith the stew/Stampot season, the smoked sausage season has also started again. Dennis Lonis and his wife Petra Lonis from the Wyrwarf clan(Real World; I kept the original name as it sounds Dwarvish. He is from Opmeer Netherlands) always makes their smoked sausages themself: first he makes the sausages, then he smokes them in his smoker. He gives away his personal recipe and all kinds of extra tips.
This is what you need:
± 5.5 meters of pig intestine (caliber 32 – 34, ask your butcher)
1,150 g chaps
500 g streaky beef
500 g ham steaks
4 g white pepper
2 g coriander
2 g nutmeg (fresh from the nut)
2 g ground mace
0.5 g cayenne pepper (= pinch)
35 g sodium brine (colorozo salt 0.6% nitrite)
220 ml of ice-cold water
This is how you proceed:
1-Cut the meat into cubes and make sure that the meat is really cold, almost frozen.
2-First, run the beef through the meat grinder. Place it in a large bowl and mix in the spices. Run the bacon and ham steaks through the grinder. Mix all the ingredients together in the bowl with the ice-cold water until a homogeneous mass is obtained (if necessary, you can run it through the grinder again, but first let the meat become ice-cold again). Cover the meat with cling film and let it cool thoroughly. Tip from Dennis: “We like a reasonably fine sausage, that's why we use the three-millimeter plate. If you want a coarser or finer sausage, you can adjust the plate accordingly.”
3-First place the intestines in a container of water for an hour to desalt them. Then rinse them well. Slide the intestine around the filling spout and carefully fill the intestine with the meat. Dennis uses a special stuffing box to fill the intestines. Meat grinders often also have an attachment for filling intestines.
4-Dennis works with his wife Petra to fill the sausages. “It really is a team effort and fun too. We try to make sausages of equal size, about 300 grams each. We also try to keep them nice and round: if they get creases, it's not a big deal, but the smoke doesn't get there.” Dennis and Petra make sausage by sausage, not one long sausage. “We find that the most pleasant way to work. This way we get the most beautiful sausages, we want to make something we can be proud of.”
5-Tie the sausages with kitchen string. Let the sausages hang out for 24 hours in a place that is as cold as possible (not warmer than 5 degrees).
Smoking the sausage
1-Collect the wood and start a fire at the bottom of the smoke box. Dennis uses unpainted, dry oak wood here.
Tip from Dennis: “We think that oak goes well with these smoked sausages, but the taste can be a bit overpowering with other dishes. Other types of wood are also possible. Cherry wood, for example, is sublime for smoking. Personally, I love it with mackerel.”
2-First smoke the sausages cold for 24 hours, the temperature should not exceed 25 degrees. This cold smoking really gives the sausages flavor. After cold smoking, let the sausage dry for about half an hour at 40 degrees. This can simply be done in the smoke box with the door open.
3-Now slowly increase the fire to 60 degrees and create extra smoke by putting smoke moth on the fire. The smoke moth that Dennis uses is a mixture of oak and beech.
4-Raise the temperature a little higher, to 80 degrees. Let the sausages cook for about 20 to 30 minutes at 80 degrees. If the core temperature of the sausages is 80 degrees, they are good.
Tip from Dennis: “I have a kind of chimney on top of the smoke box. While smoking I leave this slightly ajar, so that fresh smoke continues to be produced.”
5-You can eat the sausages immediately, then let them warm up with the kale for the last five minutes. Or save them for later. Tip from Dennis: “We store leftover sausages in a weckjar, and store them in ice or lower Temperature magic" Real World"We vacuum-pack leftover sausages and store them in the freezer.”