Adrienne got gammon for a really good price last week and we thought why not make homemade pork sausages ?We bought some fresh pork leg while we were at it and decided to mix the two – 80:20 ratio gammon to pork for a spicy chili, paprika, garlic sausage with a smoky flavour (chorizo sausage batch #1) and 20:80 ratio gammon to pork for a more traditional style pork sausage (pork sausage batch #1) with lots of spices. First we had to grind the meat – always the hardest work.  We took the skin off the gammon and pork before grinding. After that it was definitely time for a beer.

Then it was time for the fun part – mixing in all the spices and of course tasting to make sure nothing needs to be added to the mix. Tasting we normally do by making small patties and frying them in a pan.

We then left the ground meat with spices in the fridge overnight so that the flavours could develop and the next day we made the sausages – lots of sausages.

Finally it was time to braai the sausages with some coriander lime marinated chicken kebabs and have a well deserved glass of wine.

We were very happy with how it turned out. It had a coarse texture and you could still see bits of spices in it. The chorizo style sausage did not taste like gammon as expected but the gammon added to the smoky flavour that the smoked paprika gave the sausage.   The chili was just enough so that you could taste it but it did not overwhelm the taste of the paprika.  We’ll add a little more garlic powder next time. The traditional sausage had just the right amount of spices.

We enjoyed this with coriander lime marinated chicken, a green bean, red pepper, olive and danish feta salad and a very good wooded Chardonnay from Rhebokskloof

Spicy garlic and paprika pork sausages (Chorizo sausage batch #1)

Ingredients

• 5kg gammon (without bone or skin)
• 1.2kg pork leg (without bone or skin)
• 3TS garlic powder
• 9TS chili powder
• 6TS smoked paprika.
• Sausage casings

Instructions

• Grind the meat and mix well with rest of ingredients.
• Leave to rest in fridge overnight.
• Stuff into casings – we used 28/30 hog casings.

Traditional style pork sausages (Traditional sausage batch #1)

Ingredients

• 1.2kg gammon (without bone or skin)
• 5kg pork leg (without bone or skin)
• 135ml coriander seeds
• 10ml allspice
• 10ml mustard seeds
• 5ml ground cloves
• 3ml ground nutmeg
• 30ml garlic powder
• 45ml freshly ground black pepper
• 60ml salt
• 300ml apple cider vinegar
• 30ml brown sugar

Instructions

• Grind the meat.
• Roast the coriander seeds, all spice, mustard seeds, cloves and crush in a  mortar and pestle or in a spice grinder.
• Mix the meat well with the ground spices and rest of the ingredients.
• Leave to rest in fridge overnight.
• Stuff into casings – we used 28/30 hog casings.