To paraphrase, ‘Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made’. However when making sausages yourself you have greater control over the ingredients. My friend Bill got a KitchenAid sausage making attachment for Christmas and he has been churning out some fantastic delicacies for the last couple of weeks. We talked about making Bangers, as he had tasted them when he lived in Northern Ireland and I had found a suitable spice mix last year when making Scotch Eggs.
String of Bangers
The name ‘Banger’ comes from the fact that the sausages used to ‘explode’ (bang) when cooking. Bill and I discussed that this might have been because they used to be made with real pig casing which are quite strong, and unlike modern cellulose casings, would allow pressure to build up inside the skin leading to an ‘explosion’. Since we were going to use real casing they they may very well be ‘real’ bangers!
For the banger seasoning I mixed together
10 tsp Ground white pepper
5 tsp Mace
4.5 tbsp Salt
4 tsp Ground ginger
4 tsp Rubbed sage
1 tsp Nutmeg
We ground up 4lbs of lean pork shoulder with 1.5lbs of pork fat and mixed it together with 6tsp of the seasoning mix. As an experiment we decided not to include breadcrumbs, traditionally used as an austerity filler, but just use the meat instead.
Grinding the pork
The mixture was fed through the sausage stuffer into natural pig casings, making sausages approximately 5 inches long.
Filling the sausage casing
Banger Sausage Recipe
Bangers and Mash
Last night I grilled the sausages and served with with mashed potatoes and onion gravy. The smell and the taste of the mace really comes through and as a Brit living in the States they were certainly a nice reminder of home.
2 comments
Maybe it was the flavoring of the mace or nutmeg in my youth that I did not enjoy or possibly even the finer texture of the bread crumbs added but these sausages that we produced were superior to any bangers that I had eaten previously. When paired with mashed potatoes and homemade onion marmalade the bangers were elevated to a whole new dimension.
I think that today may have been the first time I have gone into the blogs themselves to reference a post in preparation for making a recipe. I will go with a heavy TSP for every pound of ground pork I set aside for the Banger Sausages. We need to remember to add more salt before filling the casings.