With a base of black pepper, Aleppo pepper, and cumin, this recipe incorporates a few other spices, including fenugreek and sumac. This semifresh fermented sausage should be sliced and cooked before eating. Fry the slices in a skillet for a quick preparation. No added oil is necessary because the sausage will cook in its own fat.
Yield: About 5 pounds.
Fermentation Time
Fermentation Type: Lacto
Primary Fermentation: Up to 3 days
Aging: About 5 days
Total Time: 8 days
Shelf life: Cook and eat within 1 month
Ingredients
- 3-1/2 pounds lean beef trim
- 1-1/2 pounds pork or beef fat (beef fat will produce a more traditional, slightly greasier sausage)
- 1.4 ounces sea salt
- 0.32 ounce freshly ground black pepper
- 0.4 ounce garlic powder
- 1.1 ounces freshly ground Aleppo pepper
- 1 ounce ground fenugreek (I used a combination of leaves and seeds)
- 0.64 ounce ground sumac
- 0.3 ounce ground cumin
- 0.68 ounce ground allspice
- 0.24 ounce ground cinnamon
- 0.3 ounce freshly ground dried rose petals
- Pinch ground clove
- Roughly 15 feet of hog casings, rinsed and soaked until they’re softened
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except hog casings. Grind the meat mixture twice through the coarse plate of a meat grinder. Reserve one-quarter of the mixture, and send the rest through the coarse plate a third time. Recombine all of the meat mixtures, and mix thoroughly with gloved hands to ensure the meat and spices are combined and the mixture is very sticky. Chill the mixture while you prepare a stuffer.
- Stuff the mixture into the hog casings, linking sausages into groups of 2, roughly 10 inches long each. Tie them off securely with butcher’s twine.
- Press the sausages between heavy cutting boards in the fridge overnight, or up to 24 hours.
- Remove the weight. Let the sausages ferment for up to 48 hours at 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent humidity.
- Transfer the sausages to a low-light location, such as a curing cabinet, and let them rest for at least 5 days at 50 to 60 degrees with a humidity of 65 to 75 percent. Vacuum seal sausages and freeze, or keep in a charcuterie cabinet, and cut off slices as needed, when you’re ready to cook.
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Over the past 17 years, Meredith Leigh has worked as a farmer, butcher, chef, teacher, nonprofit executive director, and writer, all in pursuit of good food. Meredith works part time for Living Web Farms, where she travels extensively teaching charcuterie and food production and processing. For more information, visit Meredith’s blog!
