Sausage Making
FORMATIVE PORTFOLIO ASSEESSMENT
Due Date: 15/03/13
House-made Chorizo Sausages and Pork & Apple Sausages
(Apologies that I don’t have any pictures of the cooked sausage)
In Workshop Session Four of the Bachelor of Culinary Arts Year 1 we butchered a 60kg pig, resulting in several kilograms of pork sausage being made. Each group followed one sausage recipe from their workbooks and created one recipe of their own. My group of Jason, Shane and Cameron chose to do the Chorizo Sausage from our workbook and a Pork & Apple Sausage of our own.
We cooked our sausages over a low-medium heat to allow for slow browning and an even cooking. The chorizo browned up beautifully due to the vibrant paprika colour coming thru. The Pork & Apple took a long time to lightly brown and had a rather ‘Albino’ appearance. When we chopped into the sausages they were firm with lovely thick chunks of pork meat and fat. On tasting, we discovered that our sausages were delicious but very over-salted!
The Chorizo Sausage was very tasty with the herbs and spices enclosed working well together to produce a very authentic Chorizo Flavour, it would have to be one of the nicest Chorizo flavours I have tasted. With the Pork and Apple we created a fantastic balance, the sweet apple compensated a little bit for the over salting. The allspice accentuated the overall flavour of the sausage. This was my favourite of the two sausages. Some reasons for over-salting may be that the recipe we were provided may have had slightly too much salt in it, we had salt on the bench to butcher the pig and some of our sausage meat could have potentially come into contact with that salt, the pig may have been slightly saltier than some to start with.
I believe the recipe we were given in our workbooks of 700g of meat to 300g was not enough fat as the sausages were dry, more fat equals more moisture and this would have improved the sausages to be juicy rather than dry.
Jason,
Due Date: 15/03/13
House-made Chorizo Sausages and Pork & Apple Sausages
(Apologies that I don’t have any pictures of the cooked sausage)
In Workshop Session Four of the Bachelor of Culinary Arts Year 1 we butchered a 60kg pig, resulting in several kilograms of pork sausage being made. Each group followed one sausage recipe from their workbooks and created one recipe of their own. My group of Jason, Shane and Cameron chose to do the Chorizo Sausage from our workbook and a Pork & Apple Sausage of our own.
We cooked our sausages over a low-medium heat to allow for slow browning and an even cooking. The chorizo browned up beautifully due to the vibrant paprika colour coming thru. The Pork & Apple took a long time to lightly brown and had a rather ‘Albino’ appearance. When we chopped into the sausages they were firm with lovely thick chunks of pork meat and fat. On tasting, we discovered that our sausages were delicious but very over-salted!
The Chorizo Sausage was very tasty with the herbs and spices enclosed working well together to produce a very authentic Chorizo Flavour, it would have to be one of the nicest Chorizo flavours I have tasted. With the Pork and Apple we created a fantastic balance, the sweet apple compensated a little bit for the over salting. The allspice accentuated the overall flavour of the sausage. This was my favourite of the two sausages. Some reasons for over-salting may be that the recipe we were provided may have had slightly too much salt in it, we had salt on the bench to butcher the pig and some of our sausage meat could have potentially come into contact with that salt, the pig may have been slightly saltier than some to start with.
I believe the recipe we were given in our workbooks of 700g of meat to 300g was not enough fat as the sausages were dry, more fat equals more moisture and this would have improved the sausages to be juicy rather than dry.
Jason,