Beef, Water, Salt, Dextrose, Spices, Sodium Erythorbate, Lactic Acid Starter Culture, Sodium Nitrite, Bha, Bht, Citric Acid.
Bridgford beef summer sausage is made from the very highest grade ingredients available. Seasoned, cooked and dried to perfection, Bridgford beef summer sausage is surely the highest quality meat product around.
Are you fed up with buying the same old mass produced sausages that have no real flavour to them, are full of additives and preservatives as well as this you have no idea what meat has gone into the production?
If so maybe you should have a go at making your own sausages, it really is simple. You will need some specialist equipment but this can be bought relatively cheaply on the net and as with most people I've know who've made their own sausages, once you've made your own you'll never go back to buying the mass produced factory produced ones on offer in the super market.
The equipment you'll need is as follows.
A meat mincer is obviously required to produce sausages. If you don't have the spare money for a machine you can always ask you butcher to mince the right amount of meat for you when you buy it. Whatever machine you buy ensure it will be able to process enough meat without over heating, this can be a stand alone machine or it can be an attachment that you add to your food processor. It is important to ensure that the mincer has the right gauge of blade for mincing as it's important that your mince isn't too fine for sausages, you you're your sausage to be quite meaty.
After the meat is minced, mixed and flavourings added you'll need to stuff your sausages, surprisingly enough, with a sausage stuffer. These are available in various types but mainly vertical or horizontal screw thread stuffer's which are basically a large plunger that goes inside a metal tube, is fixed on a stand and is pushed through the tube by means of a screw thread. Pretty simply stuff really.
You can get sausage stuffing attachments for food processors but I'd always recommend a hand operated one until you get to a point where you are making so many sausages that an electric screw thread machine is an option but you need to be making a lot of sausages to justify one of these or very lazy.
When you have minced all of the meat you need you mix it to ensure that you have the correct consistency of fat to meat. Although your sausage may appear to have a higher fat content that the mass produced super market version when you cook your homemade sausages you'll be amazed at how little fat drains out.
When you are happy that the meat and fat are properly mixed it is time to add the flavourings.
Now this is where it gets interesting and is purely down to personal taste. I'd recommend adding 10 - 15 grams of salt to each kilo of meat but only if you are adding all of your own flavourings and not a bought in sausage mix as these will have the salt added already.
From here you can take your sausage recipe [http://www.ceramic-knife-sharpener.com/The_News/Latest_News/Cumberland_Sausage_Recipe/] to where ever you want. You can keep it simple by adding fennel seeds and rosemary, or spicy by adding coriander, chilli powder and garam masala. It really is up to you. There are many forums on the net with sausage recipes, just keep looking until you find one.
When you think your happy with the flavours that you've chosen just take a bit of the mix and fry it off in a pan and taste, if you are happy with it you can go ahead and stuff the mix, if not you can keep adding to it until you've got it right.
One final thing that you'll need for your sausages is the casings. These are available in various sizes and styles. You can have collagen casings, sheep casings or hog casings.
I'd recommend using hog casings to start with as they are easier to work with than the delicate sheep casings and produce a good thick sausage. These casings should be soaked in water for at least 2 hours prior to using. These are usually supplied in a moist salt solution. Use what you need and once resealed in the Ziploc bag provided, casings can be stored for months in the fridge.
Sheep casings produce a very delicate thin sausage but care must be taken not to overstuff them. Once you have got the hang of sheep casings they are well worth the effort. Again, these casings should be soaked in water for at least 2 hours prior to using.
Collagen casings are the complete solution for all sausage applications, including freezing, deep fat frying, grilling and oven cooking. Collagen casings are supplied on a shirred stick and the amount needed for each application can be cut off. These casing are suitable for hand-linking provided the appropriate sausage mix and recipe are used. When hand-linking, the casing is dry, so we suggest using a vegetable oil to help with the process. Oil has the added benefits of leaving a lasting sheen on the sausage and helps with cooking. No soaking is required and they have an indefinite shelf life if stored in a cool dark place, refrigeration is not necessary.
Stuffing is the easy part, as long as you don't over stuff the casings, which will make them spilt, you can't really go wrong.
When the sausages are stuffed you can either have a go at linking them as you see in butchers or you can refrigerate them or freeze them as a long link.
Either way you'll have the best sausage you've ever tasted.
