Working with Sausage Casings

I have been teaching myself how to make sausage at home. The process is incredibly straightforward after you have the correct equipment. A single of the a lot more important choices you have to make when creating sausage is how the final product will be stored.

If you are generating a bulk sausage like a standard American breakfast sausage then you can retailer the finish solution directly in vacuum sealed bags. If you are generating either link or rope sausage (Polish, Italian or Bratwurst) then you will want to use a casing.

There are three sorts of sausage casings readily readily available natural, collagen and fibrous. Fibrous casings are made from plant fibers and are usually dyed dark red. This is the kind of casing you would use when generating a significant diameter solution like Summer season Sausage. In basic fibrous casings are inedible and have to have to be removed from the sausage ahead of consumption.

Collagen casings are a synthetic item produced from the collagen extracted from animal hooves. This form of casing is desirable as it is shelf stable with out refrigeration which signifies a lot of sporting goods retailers carry them as portion of their regular inventory. In addition to being readily available this variety of casing is ready to use out of the package without any rinsing or flushing. Also considering the fact that this is a manufactured item it is highly consistent from and is consistent from package to package.

Natural casings are essentially the modest intestines of a hog. Prior to becoming packaged the intestines are reduce into two foot sections and speedily flushed with water. The sections are then packed in salt and are then packaged for sale.

Organic casings are by far the most difficult to use. It is complicated to come across organic casings for sale and if you do it will be at a modest nearby grocery retailer. As soon as you get them residence you will want to soak them in water for an hour to eliminate the salt. Afterwards they need to have to be detangled and flushed on the inside to make sure they are perfectly clean prior to getting stuffed with sausage.

The advantage of natural casings is that it is exceptionally quick to form links. If you simply twist sausages created with all-natural casings you can kind quite good hyperlinks that hold. This is in contrast to sausages made with collagen casings exactly where the links need to normally be tied. Yet another fantastic benefit of natural casings is that they will naturally curve in the course of stuffing. When the shape of the sausage does not influence the final taste it is good to be able to make spirals of sausage. The final advantage of all-natural casings is that, when cooked, they snap when bitten. From time to time collagen casings will turn out to be chewy, especially when overcooked.

Producing your personal sausage can be very rewarding. If sheep casings decide to take up this hobby I recommend you experiment with all-natural casings. They are a little more perform than ones made from collagen but I really feel they generate a superior sausage.