British BBQ Society Forums

Ah I'm totally not buying the no rusk thing, where's the love for the traditional banger?

If anyone's interested - here's that boerewors recipe. Just type in the weight of the meat and the spreadsheet will do the rest - http://www.filedropper.com/boerewors

Edit - there's a slight mistake, cells B15 and B16 should be in ml, not grams

YetiDave wrote:Yeeeeah it's just the percentages I like to have - I'm never going to be using exactly that quantity of meat so it's nice knowing that I've gotta use .00507% coriander seed, for instance. It's a habit I picked up from baking

His recipes have percentages too. Al least the ones I looked at

YetiDave wrote:Ah I'm totally not buying the no rusk thing, where's the love for the traditional banger?

It's fine for British sausages. Horses for courses.

Yeah there's a percentage of total weight but not a percentage based on considering meat to be 100%. Like in this recipe - http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/DroeworsKeith.pdf - vinegar's listed as 1.89%, which is pretty useless. Consider meat to be 100% and the percentage of vinegar is 0.02% - much more useful because you can use any amount of meat, say 500g and multiply by 0.02 and you know that for 500g of meat you need 10ml of vinegar. So you don't need to go out and get exactly 1475g of beef and 775g of mutton to make the recipe work

Sorry if I'm getting too geeky

Ok, that makes sense. For droewors or boerewors I tend to use a bought premixed spice. Tastes great, and predictable results.

With regard to rusk, it has been a part of the traditional British sausage since WW1 (or earlier) to enable the use of fattier cheaper cuts of meats as Aris rightly pointed out. When I was a butcher back when the world was in Black & White my boss tried different recipes with and without rusk. The consensus amongst customers & staff was that the texture without rusk wasn't as nice as those with the rusk.

Certainly rusk gives a different texture. Softer and absorbs some of the fat, keeping the sausage moist and succulent. Not a bad thing - just a trademark of the British Banger. Doesn't seem to lend itself to low-and-slow though. Maybe because the temperatures don't allow the fat to render out in the same way?

I think i'm going to make some of Bigwheels hotlinks this spring. I've had something like these at Bodeans in London - and they are quite nice.

The Booker 13.6kg box of pork neck fillets makes great sausage and at a great price. I find it has the right amount of fat too - if not, you can add a little bit of belly, or back fat if you have it.

What temps do you mean by low and slow? The American method of 140F for a few hours, then bring up internal, or the standard 250ish? At 250 I still find sausages with a filler to be jucier and with a nicer texture. I've not tried that whole pre-cook, then cool in ice water etc etc.. (Andoille type sausages, pre-cooked hot links to go on the grill, so on so forth)