Turkey Mozzarella Sausage

This sausage came from SGK's desire to have a more kid friendly sausage. She took this to mean no red pepper; I took it to mean cheese.

5lbs	ground free range turkey. The ground turkey was cheaper than the whole. I chose turkey as it is lean and with the addition of the cheese I didn't want it the sausage to be too fatty
5lbs	ground pork. I had this leftover in my freezer from the last time I made sausage.
2lbs	Precious brand low moisture mozzarella
1 entire bulb as big as my 5 year old's fist	garlic
21	pearl onions. Red, white, and yellow
14.5g	Fennel seed. The fennel (or Anise seed in a pinch) is what makes an Italian sausage Italian.
10g	Caraway seed (supplements the fennel)
10g	Black pepper, coarse ground)
8.5g	Peppercorns, multi-coloured (for texture)
30g	Corn sugar. In a fermented sausage the sugar would serve as food for the bio that you add; in a fresh sausage like this one it's to help bind the meat so it stays relatively firm.
6g	Coriander, ground
2.5g	Coriander seed, whole (for texture)
100g	Kosher salt. Kosher salt is not iodized. You don't want to cook with iodine!
¼ cup	2004 Cline ancient vine zinfandel
2 cups	Water
4¼ oz	Trader Joes brand sun dried tomatoes in olive oil (The sun dried tomatoes were SGK's idea)
8½ oz	Christopher Ranch brand Sun dried tomato pesto (The only kind of sun dried tomatoes they had at nob hill)
6g	Colmans yellow mustard powder
2g	Brown mustard seed
Several feet	32-35mm Hog casing

Grind the garlic, onions, tomatoes, and cheese with a coarse plate. Mix thoroughly and stuff.

I had a heck of a time with my little 5lb stuffer. I was using the medium sized spout, and I guess the cheese was clogging up the works. I switched to the large spout, which worked well, but it plumped the sausage thicker than I would have liked. I'm toying with the idea of getting a sausage stuffer attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer, which might help the problem as it has a continuous feed rather than a plunger like the 5lb stuffer.

The other problem I'm having is that the on a good number of the sausages, the links come undone, and when you cook them all the cheese comes out. I need to work on my linking technique.

Coriander Sausage

It's been a while since my friend Scott (different friend from the Kimchee Scott) and I last made sausage from the Mule Deer that I brought back from Colorado, so I figured it was time again. The Venison sausage came out on the dry side (despite liberal additions of Pork Fat) so this time I decided to follow a known recipe more closely. I chose one of Rytek Kutas's from his book "Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing" Now, I'm not really a fan of Rytek's; mainly because he recommends to not-culture fermented sausages and IMHO that is a recipe for disease. I simply chose his recipes to check the ratios in my ingredients. I started with about 20% more meat than his recipe calls for, so I bumped up his ingredients by about 20%. Since he uses household measure, this was hard to figure out until I decided to use the Blade scale that I bought for wine making to weigh most of his measures and then increase by ±20%. I would then fry some up and taste it so I could make any adjustments before stuffing. What I found was that following Rytek's recipe produced an incredibly boring sausage; so I pulled an Emiril and bumped it up a notch. Here's what I ended up with:

12.37lbs	pork shoulder but roast bone in.
1 entire bulb as big as my 5 year old's fist	garlic
17g	Fennel seed. The fennel (or Anise seed in a pinch) is what makes an Italian sausage Italian.
20g	Caraway seed (supplements the fennel)
8.1g	Black pepper, coarse ground)
1 Tbl	Peppercorns, multi-coloured (for texture)
25g	Red pepper flakes, crushed
2 Tbl	Corn sugar. In a fermented sausage the sugar would serve as food for the bio that you add; in a fresh sausage like this one it's to help bind the meat so it stays relatively firm.
6.3g	Coriander, ground
2.3g	Coriander seed, whole (for texture)
5 "throws" (a throw is the precision measurement where the wife pours some in her hand then dumps it in)	Kosher salt. Kosher salt is not iodized. You don't want to cook with iodine!
30gWhite onion
106g	Red onion
Splash	2004 Esprit de Beaucastel
2.5 cups	Water
Several feet	32-35mm Hog casing

I used the Meat grinder attachment on my wife's KitchenAid Mixer to grind the meat, onions and garlic. I used the large grinding plate as I wanted texture to my sausage.

I used a mortar and pestle to lightly crack the whole seed spices (peppercorns, coriander, carraway, and fennel). I prefer using a molcajete to a traditional ceramic mortar as the volcanic stone in the molcajete gives a texture to grind against.

Mix all ingredients thoroughly, then take a tablespoon full of what you got and fry it up to taste if it's going to be OK. If not, then adjust the spices to taste

Stuff and link.

Enjoy!
MRA

Update 15-Feb-09 Fried some up for breakfast. Next time I'll go lighter on the corriander.
Update 16-Feb-09 It needs more heat. More pepper flakes or perhaps chili powder next go