A Beginner's Guide to Making a Great British Banger

Tim takes us through his sausage-making experience as a complete beginner over in Hungary. Born in the UK but now living in Hungary with his partner and children, Tim simply missed the taste of humble British Banger, so as a guest blog he is taking you on the journey of what it's like to be a beginner sausage maker and maybe some of the challenges you come across.

ABOUT ME   

I’ve loved saus­ages for as long as I can re­mem­ber. If I think about it, I didn’t just eat them for break­fast. There was also the humble saus­age sand­wich, toad in the hole,  saus­age cas­ser­ole, bangers and mash, and battered saus­age from the fish and chip shop or a hot saus­age roll, but noth­ing could beat that crisp bite into a tra­di­tion­al Brit­ish break­fast saus­age.  

Since I moved to Hun­gary 2 years ago with my fam­ily I’ve been hav­ing a great time ex­plor­ing the loc­al cuisine - there is a lot more to Hun­gari­an food than goulash, but I do miss the taste of the great Brit­ish Banger.  

Of course, Hun­gari­ans be­lieve un­flinch­ingly that their saus­ages are the best in the world. To be fair, they have a very strong claim, I just love the mildly spicy kolbász, and the Hurka blood saus­ages are to die for. But you cer­tainly can't buy Brit­ish saus­ages here.  

Drastic times call for drastic meas­ures. Time to re-cre­ate tra­di­tion­al Brit­ish sausages at home. In Hun­ga­ry!

MY SAU­SA­GE MA­KING EX­PE­RI­ENCE  

Right, so I’ve con­vinced my­self I am a ‘Be­gin­ner Saus­age Maker’! Now what! 

I’m not a chef or a butcher. I have broken down a side of pork a couple of times. But now I think about it, I’ve nev­er ac­tu­ally made saus­ages. In truth, I’ve always wanted to have a go. But the thought of try­ing to con­trol a stream of pro­jectile saus­age meat into fiddly saus­age cas­ings al­ways in­tim­id­ated me.  

So can I make a saus­age? And can I achieve the same res­ults at home as butchers who have years of train­ing, spe­cial­ised equip­ment and are pro­du­cing  saus­ages in com­mer­cial quant­it­ies?  

Let’s find out!  

INGREDIENTS 

Saus­ages are made the world over - each coun­try‘s na­tion­al saus­ages in­clude  ground or chopped meat with some kind of fla­vour­ing, but they all taste dif­fer­ent.  What is it about a Brit­ish banger that makes it uniquely Brit­ish? 

1. Meat  

Brit­ish saus­ages are typ­ic­ally made with pork, lamb, beef or game. Saus­ages are a great way to use up any lower qual­ity cuts of the an­im­al. The trim­mings from the  but­cher­ing pro­cess are also used, mak­ing saus­ages fun­da­ment­al to the ‘nose to tail’ eth­os of the butchery pro­cess. 

2. Fat  

Fat is a crit­ic­al in­gredi­ent in saus­ages. It keeps the saus­age juicy and helps bind the saus­age mix­ture. Most im­port­antly it adds a lot of fla­vour. Porkback fat is the best fat to use. The meat and fat ra­tio is tra­di­tion­ally about 25%-30% fat.  

3. Rusk  

If you had asked me what rusk was be­fore I star­ted look­ing into saus­age in­gredients, I would have told you that rusk is a dry bis­cuit that you give to ba­bies. But it turns out it is also a very im­port­ant in­gredi­ent in tra­di­tion­al Brit­ish saus­ages. And rusk is per­haps the thing that makes Brit­ish saus­ages uniquely Brit­ish. Rusk is made from a yeast­less bread which is dried and ground into a fine crumb. It acts as a bind­er, pulling to­geth­er all the oth­er in­gredi­ents and it is re­spons ble for the uni­form tex­ture in your Brit­ish Banger.  

4. Sea­son­ings  

Here‘s where the fun be­gins. How you fla­vour your saus­ages is really up to you. Tradi­tion­al Brit­ish saus­ages are known for their sa­voury fla­vour pro­files, of­ten fea­turing a blend of herbs such as sage, thyme, and pars­ley, along with a hint of nut­meg  and black pep­per. There are of course the re­gion­al Brit­ish clas­sics such as Cum­berland, Lin­colnshire, and Old York­shire. And of course fa­vour­ite fla­vour pair­ings such as pork and leek, chilli and gar­lic, and herby ‘Itali­an’ saus­ages. But you are only lim­ited by your ima­gin­a­tion. Just re­mem­ber that get­ting the season­ing just right is the dif­fer­ence between an OK saus­age and a great saus­age. 

5. Cas­ings  

Let’s be hon­est, the meat, fat, rusk and season­ings don’t ac­tu­ally be­come a sausage un­til you have squeezed them into a cas­ing of some sort. Without a cas­ing,  you only have a patty. But it is the cas­ings, and filling them that has al­ways been the men­tal block for me.­ Saus­age cas­ings after all just a eu­phem­ism for anim­al in­test­ines, which al­ways struck me as a bit icky. And try­ing to load a long sticky in­test­ine onto a saus­age filling nozzle, then wait­ing for saus­age meat to shoot out the end seemed like a re­cipe for dis­aster. Nev­er­the­less, hog and sheep cas­ings have been stuffed with meat all over the world for thou­sand of years. Those produced com­mer­cially are thor­oughly cleaned, and are not sticky to touch, as I had  al­ways ima­gined. They are also much stronger than you would think.  

6. Wa­ter  

I wouldn’t nor­mally in­clude wa­ter in an in­gredi­ent list. But it is im­port­ant to men­tion  it here as it per­forms such an im­port­ant func­tion in the saus­age mak­ing pro­cess. It dis­trib­utes the season­ing through­out the mix and helps bind everything to­geth­er.  The rusk ab­sorbs most of the wa­ter, mak­ing it swell and blend in with the oth­er ingredi­ents, and so is cru­cial to the over­all tex­ture of the saus­age.   

WHAT EQUIP­MENT DO I NEED?  

When you break it down, there are ba­sic­ally two core pro­cesses in­volved in mak­ing  saus­ages. You need to be able to mince the in­gredi­ents and you need to fill the saus­age cas­ings. Your friendly loc­al butcher will hap­pily grind your meat, provided you buy it from him. But he cer­tainly won't stuff your saus­ages for you. If you are an as­pir­ing saus­age maker, you really need a min­cer and some kind of saus­age stuffing tool or at­tach­ment. As with all things, you get what you pay for and if you make the right in­vest­ment, these tools will last a life­time.  

The first time I made sausages I happened to have a cheap Amazon-type min­cing ma­chine with some ba­sic min­cing attach­ments which I use to make my mince and (be­lieve it or not) make chut­ney.  This cer­tainly doesn’t fit into the ‘qual­ity in­vest­ment that will last a life­time’ cat­egory but it made do for my first at­tempt.  

REAL BRITISH SAUSAGE RECIPE

Now it’s time to choose a re­cipe and source the in­gredi­ents. Pork saus­ages are my  fa­vour­ite, and pork is the most pop­u­lar meat in Hun­gary, so it is very easy to source. But au­then­t­ic saus­age season­ing and rusk just aren’t avail­able here. And in any case, if I want to make saus­ages that taste like those you buy from a Brit­ish butcher, then I need to source the same season­ings and in­gredi­ents that Brit­ish butchers use to make their saus­ages.  

And as you already know if you are read­ing this, it doesn’t take long to come across Wes­chen­feld­er and learn that they saus­age-mak­ing spe­cial­ists, and sup­ply  butchers up and down the coun­try with everything saus­age re­lated. Their web­site is a great re­source for any be­gin­ners, as it in­cludes sev­er­al saus­age mak­ing videos and they are also ex­tremely happy to provide ad­vice on any­thing to do with sausage mak­ing, in­clud­ing equip­ment, tech­niques and where to start as a be­gin­ner. But per­haps best of all - they ship to Hun­gary?  (and pretty much every­where else too!) 

I want to keep things simple for my first at­tempt, so I de­cided to go with Weschen­feld­er’s Old Yorkshire Season­ing and their Yeast­less Bread Rusk. Old Yorkshire is a herby seasoning that isn't too overpowering and makes an excellent breakfast sausage which is exactly what I was after. For the cas­ings I op­ted for the Home Pack Spooled Hog Cas­ings. These are pre-spooled on a plastic rod which I am as­sured makes it very easy to slide on to the saus­age stuff­ing nozzle. Per­fect. To make things even eas­i­er, the de­liv­ery ar­rived with Weschen­felder’s ‘Guide to Nat­ur­al Cas­ings and Recipes for Sausages and Burg­ers’ which in­clud­ed a recipe de­signed to work with a full 227g sea­son­ing pack. 

BASIC SAUSAGE RECIPE FOR 227G PACK OF SEASONING

TIME TO MAKE SOME SAUSAGES

Now I’ve com­pleted my re­search, de­cided on a re­cipe and sourced my in­gredi­ents  and I’m ready to go. The re­cipe ac­tu­ally looks quite straight­for­ward.  

Min­cing and Mix­ing  

Firstly I minced my lean pork through my min­cer’s largest plate. I then did the same with the pork fat and ad­ded the meat, the fat and the season­ing into my large bowl and gave it a rough mix. I then ad­ded the wa­ter and gave it a thor­ough mix for 30 seconds un­til it be­came evenly moist and sticky, and didn’t look like minced meat any more.  

I then ad­ded the rusk and mixed it un­til well com­bined. This was ac­tu­ally quite hard work as by this point there was around 6KG of in­gredi­ents in the bowl. The con­sist­ency and tex­ture looked good to me so I de­cided not to pass the mix­ture through the min­cer a second time.

Pre­par­ing the Cas­ings  

This is the stage I was both ex­cited and nervous about. First of all the cas­ings need to be soaked in warm wa­ter, partly to re­move the salt that they are stored in, but also to soften and lub­ric­ate them making them flexible enough for when it comes to filling them with meat.

It was then just a case of taking the blue washers off, slid­ing the cas­ing off the end of the plastic rod and onto my saus­age nozzle. I used the home pack ready spooled hog casings. Each spool has 10 metres of cas­ing, so I cut the cas­ing when I de­cided there was enough on the nozzle.  

Filling and Link­ing the Saus­ages  

I loaded up the min­cer’s hop­per with the saus­age mix­ture, turned on the min­cer, and star­ted to push the meat into the min­cer with the plun­ger. It took a few seconds for the saus­age meat to get to the busi­ness end, but sure enough, the saus­ages star­ted to star­ted to un­furl from the nozzle, filled with the saus­age mixture.

I’m mak­ing saus­ages!!!  

Link­ing is an art form. After watch­ing sev­er­al videos on­line, I found one I  thought I could just about fol­low. But this is def­in­itely an art form that needs a lot of  prac­tice. And one I knew I wouldn’t per­fect on the first try. At one point it felt like I was ty­ing my­self in knots, and not the saus­age!  

Yet I must say, how sat­is­fy­ing to watch the saus­ages take shape. It was a lot of fun. And the end res­ult was a lot of what looked to me like very Brit­ish Bangers!  

HOW DID I DO?  

Over­all, I’m ex­tremely happy with my first at­tempt at saus­age mak­ing. It was a lot of fun. I knew things wouldn’t be per­fect. My saus­ages were a bit un­even in a few places, and I man­aged to tie them into vary­ing lengths but def­in­itely looked like prop­er Brit­ish saus­ages.

What blew me away was the taste. These Cum­ber­land saus­ages taste just like the ones you can buy from Brit­ish butchers through­out the UK.  To have made these at home, in Hun­gary is amaz­ing. I think it is worth re­peat­ing that if you want to make tra­di­tion­al Brit­ish butcher’s saus­ages then it makes sense to source your in­gredi­ents from the same place that Brit­ish butchers do.  

10 TIPS FROM A BE­GIN­NER SAU­SA­GE MA­KER  

1. Soak­ing pre-spooled cas­ings: the plas­tic spools float, so spin them  around oc­ca­sion­al­ly dur­ing soak­ing so that the tops soak too. 

2. Make your sausages in bulk and freeze them in batch­es.  

3. Always use the best quality ingredientsIf you want to make sausages that taste like those you buy from a British butch­er, then it makes sense to buy the same sea­son­ings and in­gre­dients that British butch­ers use to make their sausages. 

4. The plas­tic rods that the pre-spooled cas­ings come on were just a lit­tle bit too long the con­tain­ers I had; however, it was easy to trim a few cen­timetres off the plas­tic rod so that it fit­ted
per­fect­ly in a 1/3 ho­tel pan. 

5. Make sure the meat and fat are very cold when you mince them to avoid it go­ing mushy and clogging up your mincer. 

6. The key to link­ing sausages is prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice. This is the video I used.

7. Rest your sausages in the fridge for a few hours to al­low the flavours to de­vel­op before cooking. 

8. You don’t need semi-pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment to make sausages, but a  sausage stuffer will re­al­ly im­prove your ex­pe­ri­ence. 

9. In­vest in a big mix­ing bowl. Not only does it need to be big enough to hold the ac­tu­al in­gre­di­ents. But you also need some space in your bowl to work your mix­ture.  

10. The noz­zle should be 10-15mm small­er than the di­am­e­ter of the casings to aid the flow of the sausage meat into the cas­ing whilst also ensuring you don't split or damage your casing trying to get it onto the end of the nozzle. For example, if your casing has a diameter of 34mm, use a nozzle that is 20mm. 

Side Note

After making my first batch of sausages, I have since bought the Tre Spade TC-12 El/160 Electric Mincer, which has made life so much easier and will help speed up my butchery adventures. 
Below is my latest batch where I minced the meat and fat together to create an evenly distributed mixture.

As a keen cook, Tim has a recipe blog where you can find out about his other cooking adventures. Heavily influenced by Hungarian, British & Italian foods, you will be hard-pushed to resist trying some of his mouthwatering recipes here.

Check out his website: www.timransome.com