Making Sausage

Despite the setbacks with the butter, I have been able to figure out some good substitutes for other items from America that I miss. It's actually been rather fun, having to cook everything from scratch. Of course, I don't always have time to do this kind of cooking... But it's been a learning experience!

I recently made sausage, and several friends have been asking how I did it. Being a bit of a food geek, I read a lot about making sausage online, and combined several different recipes to come up with a pretty good blend! Of course, you can adjust the spices for what you have in your kitchen, but this is what I use.

2 lbs of ground pork (you want to find pretty fatty pork, so the cheaper the better! For readers in Korea - you can get a really good ground pork for this at Costco)
2 tsp dried sage (I use ground, not rubbed, but it probably doesn't matter)
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano (if you like a milder, sweeter sausage, try marjoram instead)
2 tsp sugar (if you like a maple flavor, substitute 1 tbsp brown sugar)
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (this does give it a bit of a kick, so adjust accordingly!)
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp salt (I use kosher salt, so if you're using ordinary table salt, reduce to 1 1/2 tsp)

That's basically it! Just mix everything together. It takes awhile to mix, because you want to get the herbs and spices mixed really evenly. I usually use my hands to mix this up. You can let it sit and cure in the fridge for a day or two if you want, but this isn't necessary.

From here, it just depends on what I'm making my sausage for. You can roll out the meat to cut it into patties and freeze them for breakfast sausage. You can cook it loose for gravy, lasagna, soups, etc. You can freeze it in rolls to decide what to do with it later. I usually try to let it sit in the freezer at least a week before I use it, but that's not always the case.

The sausage I made today will be used for biscuits and gravy tomorrow, so it's still ok if you just want to make it fresh.

That's it! Sausage isn't so very mysterious. If you get meat that doesn't have enough fat in it, you can get pork fat from a butcher. This is important to help it taste more like sausage. I've never seen ground pork in Korea that didn't have a good meat to fat ratio. If you look at the package of meat, and you can see the fat mixed in the meat, you're probably ok.

The beautiful thing about sausage is that it is very forgiving. You can add all sorts of different spices and in different amounts. But I really love this sausage recipe. It's definitely better than the store bought sausages in America!