Luncheon sausage

Aka Belgium (in the south of New Zealand's South Island), ham and chicken (when I was small), poloney (in Australia, except South Australia) and fritz (in South Australia). Children love it, especially in sandwiches with tomato sauce.

My grandkids are coming to stay in a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd have a go at making some. Normally you just buy it - it's cheap as, and made from floor sweepings I think.

I got some pork shoulder and a turkey leg …


… actually I got two turkey legs because they came in packs of two, but I only used one for this sausage. I boned out the turkey leg …


… what a chore. Those things are full of tendons.

Then I boned out the pork and cut it up (saving the skin with all the other pork skin in the freezer. One day I will make that Thai pork skin sausage):

I minced the meat (it was about 1kg all up), added half a cup of milk powder, half a cup of iced water, 20 g salt, a minced onion, half a teaspoon of #1 curing salt (I finally bought some from America so I don't have to raid the labs at work any more) a teaspoon or two of pepper, same of nutmeg, and half as much of allspice.

Then I mixed it in the Kenwood, whizzed it in the food processor in three batches, and mixed it again in the Kenwood …


… before stuffing it into some synthetic casings, vacuum packing it, then cooking it in the waterbath at 70°C overnight.


I made a tiny tester first, wrapped it in glad wrap and put it in the waterbath for 10 mins or so:


It tasted pretty much like luncheon sausage:


And it all looked pretty much like luncheon sausage in the morning too, although it's not as plump looking as the bought stuff. Probably because it contains no breadcrumbs and very little fat:


You will notice I made two "sausages". That's because I had my daughter-in-law's sister with her husband and one-and-a-half year old staying for the weekend. The smaller one was for Mackenzie. We tried it and it met with approval, but Mackenzie is teething and not eating very much at all at present, so it will go with me on Thursday when I visit my friends in the North Island who have a small daughter. The bigger one is in the freezer waiting for Emily and Caitlin.

I gave the turkey leg skin to the cats. They were so funny, each one had an end in his mouth and they were eating it towards the middle - like spaghetti. But of course by the time I got the camera Eddie had let go and Lucas was licking his chops: