Sausages

 
Recently I had the urge to make sausages from scratch, maybe it was the sausage meat that home minister made a long time ago after she returned from her vacation in the United Kingdom. She just made the meat without stuffing it into a casing and it tasted good but it was just like eating flavoured minced meat.
I don’t actually care for commercialised sausages because they are really boring. I eat it because it’s there and the only sausages that I did thought of wanting to eat were those from Euro.Deli until I made my very own – yummie!!!
First problem encountered is getting casing because nobody sells the casing here. Hmmm…… no casing, sausages not in casing just don’t feel right to me even though many web sites do have recipes without the casing. Like I mentioned earlier, eating sausages meat without stuffing into casing is just like eating flavoured minced meat. I guess I had to make it myself ……….. OK.
Did a lot of research both on and off the web, pork intestine was my bet because it is easily available and I had eaten like thousand of miles of it.  It is really nice to eat and the large intestine cooked with pineapple ..WOW!!! is really yummie!! which is a dish that only my mum used to cook.
Got my first length of intestine from Tesco and I cleaned it by myself which is my very first time. Hey, it is kind of a fun and real easy too!! Lots of salt inside out, that’s it!!
For the filling mix I consulted my best friend Google, there tons and tons of recipes for sausages and it was a difficult choice at first. After awhile with lots of imagination to the taste and checking what ingredients are available and Bratwurst was elected. With some modifications to the recipe, I proceeded to making the sausages manually …… yes all with my two bare hand.
Now the hardware, yes besides the usual kitchen hardware like cleaver, chopping board, mixing bowl ………. a special tool is required that is the sausage stuffer. Well I thought we did not have one so I improvised and made a very simple one and managed to stuff all the 1 kilo of Bratwurst. It wasn’t easy and my arms felt like they were about to drop out of their sockets after I finished….ouch!!
Wow!!! homemade sausages are sausages, they are really good and worth every drop of sweat, err……… no sweat dropped into the mixture in case you were wondering. Princess cooked a sausage meal with the sausages I made and it was really ………….. mmmm……. yummie delicious.
My mind was working on the next flavour of sausages to make immediately  after having tasted the very first one I made. People says that the cook usually don’t like to eat their own cooking, yes I guess they are just cook but Chefs will always love their own food and that’s me ……… hehehe!!!!!
I was also thinking how can I improve on the improvised on the stuffer.  Currently it takes like a whole lot of time and muscle power to stuff them. I was thinking of a giant syringe kind assisted by a some kind mechanical thingy to press the plunger …… then I remembered that home minister mentioned about some meat grinder she got like ages ago and it is not functional. I had a look at it and it is like a toy, all plastic and guess what, it has a sausage stuffer attachment …….. what a delightful discovery.
With the discovery of the stuffer, I started working on the next batch to test out the toy like thing and it worked!!!! Yahooo!! making the stuffing process almost breeze. From then on the mileage of sausage of different flavours just keep on increasing, one thing for sure they are all so yummie!!!!

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Check out Princess blog for her part of the action in sausage making and eating!!

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BACON

 

Every morning all around the world for a very very long time, there is definitely at least one person will be having bacon and eggs for breakfast, if not hundreds, thousands or even millions. Yes bacon, eggs and croissants is the king of breakfast, well at least to me is the breakfast of all breakfast. It must be real pork bacon or else it is just nonsense.
In the past I used to look at the bacons that were sold in the supermarkets but were more disgusted with them than wanting to eat them. Looks OK in the packing, super thin slices and lots of fats when opened, disappear when fried!!! This is what you get in this part of the world.
It was about a year or more ago that I first thought of making my own bacon since I wasn’t able to enjoy those store bought bacon like thingie which should be labelled as cured lards!!! I googled and was discouraged on doing so because of the many equipments and refrigerator space required. To make matter worse I was thinking of smoked bacon which means more equipment is needed.
Everything seems impossible then and had to drop the whole idea. The thought of having to eat store bacon is still a NO NO for me and the burning desire to have real bacon becomes silently stronger and stronger day by day. Then late last year home minister asked me about making bacon again while cleaning a beautiful piece of pork belly which she just bought from the butcher. With the pork belly in sight, the burning desire to have real bacon was really strong and I could just taste it!!
I started to google “Making bacon at home” and once again the same disappointing site appear on the screen. This time I am much more determined and search further ……... Dry cured bacon, WOW!! it is really easy to make with a bit of common sense.

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Self-made bacon is indeed a real joy to eat, it is super delicious and I can never get enough of it ….. yum yum!! Try it and you’ll never want store bought bacon anymore!!!!
Now I am thinking of self-made croissants …….. the King of Breakfast!!!

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