Meat sausages fried on a grill or frying pan are one of the most delicious snacks to accompany beer, as evidenced by the menu of the world's largest beer festival - Oktoberfest. This time we will understand the general intricacies of preparing sausages at home, and also consider the simplest and most quick recipe homemade sausages in the gut in a meat grinder.

Of course, each cook has his own recipes, subtleties and tricks: some like dishes made from minced meat, some like well-ground meat, some add a lot of spices, while others make do with salt and black pepper. So first we'll just look at general principles, which will help you prepare juicy, satisfying and tasty sausages at home.

Meat selection

Almost any meat is suitable for homemade sausages: chicken, pork, beef, lamb, duck, turkey, etc. Either one type of meat can be used, or several types can be mixed in different proportions, depending on taste preferences. Thus, fatty pork is often mixed with beef, and poultry is most often used in its pure form or with the addition of lard for greater juiciness.

When choosing pork, you need to pay attention to lard: if it is tasty, aromatic and has a thin skin, then the meat from this animal will also be good quality. When choosing lamb, you should look at the veins: if they are soft, then the meat will be quite tender.

If dry meat with a minimum of fat was chosen for the sausages, then you can add cream or ground lard to make them more juicy.

Cooling

Before starting cooking, it is advisable to cool the meat cut into small pieces and the meat grinder a little in the freezer, which will ensure better grinding and will also help preserve the taste of the meat. The meat grinder can be placed in the freezer an hour before cooking, or in advance, overnight. The meat must not be overfrozen: it should freeze around the edges, but the center will remain soft.

Grinding

As soon as you have taken everything you need out of the freezer, you should start immediately, and you need to grind it as quickly as possible, while loading the meat in small portions. During grinding, there is no need to force the pieces into the neck, as this may disrupt the consistency of the future minced meat. The ideal fill level is ¼ of the neck volume.

Kneading

After grinding you should get minced meat with a visible texture. Spices and other additives are added to the finished mass, if they are provided for in the recipe, after which the minced meat must be kneaded with your hands so that it becomes denser and excess air is removed from it. You can check the taste of the resulting minced meat by frying a small amount in a frying pan. You should fry until cooked, but do not wait until the crust is golden brown, as it will slightly “eclipse” the main taste of the product. After the “test”, you can add the missing ingredients to the minced meat and knead it again.

Shell

Today it is not difficult to buy casings for homemade sausages in the store; they can be natural or artificial. Natural are specially processed pork, beef or lamb intestines. They can vary in diameter, length, and section of the animal’s intestine. When choosing intestines, you should pay attention to their characteristics: there should be no nodules, large holes, greasy odor, the color should be light, without gray shades. Beef casings are stronger than pork casings, so they may be easier to work with if you're making sausage for the first time. But lamb is more suitable for boiled sausages and ham. However, the choice is yours.

Before use, the intestines should be rinsed with warm water and soaked in water at 20-25 o C for an average of 2 hours (freshly canned ones can be soaked for only 5-10 minutes). Next, they are washed in water (30-35 o C). Next, the intestines are disassembled into pieces and their quality is checked by passing water through them. If there are holes in the womb, then it is in these places that the intestine should be cut into separate parts.

There are also artificial shells various types, including cellulose, polyamide, protein. Collagen casings, which are made from protein raw materials and are edible, are well suited for homemade sausages. To prepare, the collagen “gut” should be soaked in water (with the addition of 1 teaspoon of salt per 1 liter of water) at 35-40 o C for 2-3 minutes, then rinsed with running water.

Filling the casing, forming the sausages

When the minced meat and casing are prepared, you can begin the process of forming homemade sausages. A simple way is to change the attachment on the meat grinder to a special cone and put the intestine on it. You need to tie a knot only after you start serving the minced meat, otherwise an air bubble will form. As for density, a golden mean should be maintained: a very densely stuffed sausage can burst at high temperatures, and if the density is insufficient, voids will form. You can find the optimal degree of density experimentally 😉

Tip: If you doubt the density of the stuffing or could not avoid the appearance of air bubbles, it is better to prick the sausages with a thin needle or toothpick so that steam escapes during cooking.

The second option is in case you do not have such a special attachment or even a meat grinder. A cropped top will help plastic bottle. It can be secured in a meat grinder or used as a hand tool, pushing the minced meat through the neck and adjusting the density of the stuffing.

Tip: If you want to make one large sausage, you can immediately lay it in a spiral; if it is small, then you should leave enough space between portions of minced meat so that it is convenient to tie or twist the intestine. You can tie it with cotton twine.

Heat treatment

At home, sausages can be fried, boiled, baked, or a combination of these processing methods. With any method, a certain temperature regime must be observed: to keep them juicy, they should be cooked at a temperature of no more than 80 o C.

In a frying pan, fry over medium heat, first on one side, then, slightly increasing the heat, on the other side. The indicator of readiness is the clear juice released when the sausage is pierced. While frying, you can try putting a sprig of rosemary in the pan and periodically removing it from the fat and rubbing it over the sausages (this will give the dish a subtle rosemary aroma).

You can cook sausages in the oven either on an open baking sheet or in foil. In the first case, you should periodically baste them with fat or oil so that they are not dry, in the second case, unfold the foil towards the end of cooking so that a golden brown crust appears.

Tip: Instead of vegetable oil, you can use beef fat for frying and baking sausages; it will make the dish more juicy and tasty.

You can cook sausages in different ways, for example, put them in slowly boiling water, turn off the heat and leave covered for 20 minutes. Boiling is often used before stewing or frying in a pan.

Spices and additives

Recipe for making homemade sausages without intestines

If you don’t have a natural or artificial casing on hand, you can prepare homemade sausages in cling film, foil, parchment, etc. For example, let's take a recipe with minced meat from a mixture of chicken fillet and pork with the addition of eggs, baked in foil. You can use other combinations of meats and their proportions, and add spices and other ingredients at your discretion.

Ingredients:

• Pork (tenderloin) – 1 kg
• Chicken fillet – 0.7 kg
• Pork lard – 0.2 kg
• Eggs – 3-4 pieces
• Starch - 4 tbsp. spoons
• Garlic – a few cloves
• Salt, pepper, spices

Preparation:

1. Beat the eggs in a bowl, add spices, chopped garlic (pass it through a garlic press or finely chop it), salt. Then we begin to gradually add starch, stirring constantly and avoiding the formation of lumps.

2. Make minced meat from chicken fillet, pork and lard. If you want a more delicate grind, then use a nozzle with small holes. You can also make “chopped” sausages, for which you just need to cut the meat and lard into very small cubes. Place the minced meat or chopped ingredients in a bowl with eggs, mix well until a homogeneous mass is formed.

3. Take the foil, cut it into equal pieces of approximately 20x30 cm. Spread the minced meat with a spoon on the shiny, mirror side of the foil and form sausages of the desired shape and size, after which we begin to wrap it like candy. We twist the edges tightly so that there is no air gap between the minced meat and the foil. It is advisable to twist it tighter than shown in the photo.

4. Preheat the oven to 180 o C, place a baking sheet with sausages there and set aside for 1 hour. Homemade sausages without intestines can be served hot or cold, with a side dish and simply aromatic bread.

02

Then the meat needs to be marinated in spices. Let's prepare a special mixture. For this we will need a mortar, but if you don’t have one, you can grind the spices with a blender or wooden masher. So, first, peel the garlic and grind it in a mortar with salt, beating it into a homogeneous mass.

03

Then add fennel seeds and ground black pepper and grind the seasonings again. After this, throw in red pepper flakes, ground red pepper, oregano and marjoram, as well as coriander, mustard and sugar.

04

Then we fill it all with regular cold water and mix thoroughly with a spoon to obtain a homogeneous mixture. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

05

Let the mixture brew a little, 10 minutes will be enough, and then add it to the meat and knead the pork well so that the spices are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

06

At the end you need to add a little more salt to the meat and stir. Cover with cling film and put it in the refrigerator to brew for a while and allow our pork to mature properly.

07

While the meat is brewing, let's take care of the intestines. It is very important to clean them well, and although they go on sale in a cleaned form, it is still better to be on the safe side and rinse them thoroughly again. They need to be washed in cold water, preferably under running water. Some housewives soak it in a solution with vinegar to neutralize the odor. We leave clean intestines in a container with water so that they do not stick together.

08

After the meat has steeped a little, take it out of the refrigerator and grind it into minced meat in a meat grinder or using a food processor.

09

Now all the necessary ingredients are ready and you can start filling the sausage. To do this, meat grinders or food processors have a special attachment on which we put the intestine, the other end of which is tied in a knot or tied with thread.

10

Place the minced meat into the bowl of the meat grinder and thus stuff the sausage. Pay attention to the intestines for damage, and if you find a hole, you just need to bandage it. It is also very important when filling the intestine not to fill it too tightly, because it will burst during heat treatment. When pressed with your fingers, an optimally filled sausage is soft and easily pressed through.

If you like minced meat dishes, then this simple recipe for making homemade sausages is just what you need. Meat sausages are an excellent alternative to the usual homemade cutlets. Without much difficulty, an excellent hot dish from minced meat will delight your family. To prepare such sausages, I do not use a special casing in the form of intestines. I suggest making homemade sausages from minced meat in cling film. These sausages taste very good, soft, tender and very juicy. You can add your favorite spices according to your taste and discretion.

This dish is perfect for a family menu for any occasion. They are good both hot and cold. And very often I prepare these homemade sausages for grilling at a picnic. I boil them at home, but I fry them on the grill, on the grill. And quickly and very tasty. Try it!

By the way, even when boiled, cold homemade sausages are very tasty, so if you are too lazy, you may not even get to the barbecue outdoors!

Pork 500 gr. Chicken breast 500 gr. Lard 200 gr. Onions 2 pcs. Garlic 4 teeth. Egg 2 pcs. Milk 150 gr. Salt to taste Freshly ground pepper mixture to taste Ground coriander to taste Paprika to taste Nutmeg to taste Butter for frying sausages

Rinse the meat, dry it and, together with the lard, pass it through a meat grinder twice or grind it in a blender.

1. Peel the onion and garlic and also pass through a meat grinder to the meat.

Then add eggs, spices, salt, pour in milk and mix everything well.

Cover the minced meat with cling film and refrigerate for 2-3 hours (overnight is possible).

Lightly beat the cooled minced meat to fill it with air.

Place 2 full tbsp. prepared minced meat onto baking film, roll into a sausage shape, tie on both sides with a thick thread. Do this with all the minced meat.

Place the sausages in salted boiling water and cook for 20-25 minutes.

Then remove the meat sausages, let cool completely, remove the film.

Fry the already cooled sausages on butter on all sides until browned.

Serve the sausages hot, with any side dish, garnished with herbs, or chilled, cut into pieces, as an appetizer.

Real sausage is made from meat. Don't believe me? Then let's prepare it with our own hands according to a very simple and understandable recipe, without special equipment or professional skills.

• Preparation time: 3 days.
• Quantity: 4 loaves of 300 g.

Required Ingredients

• pork neck – 1.5 kg;
• fresh garlic – 2 cloves;
• bay leaf – 1 large or 2 small;
• table salt – 30 g (for 1 kg of pork you need 20 g of salt);
• spices optional (black pepper, coriander).

Required equipment

• wooden board for cutting meat;
• large sharp knife;
• a bowl with a volume of at least 2 liters;
• cling film;
• baking sleeve;
• blender (or meat grinder);
• scissors;
• small saucepan;
• baking tray;
• aluminum foil.

Step-by-step cooking process