Ready?
This is not what you think, folks. A banger is a British sausage, and they’re goooood.
Dressed for the indoor weatherLast Saturday afternoon, a bunch of folks from my local Vermont area got together at the home (or rather, in the garage) of friends Charles and Carol Cooley, who very graciously hosted a sausage-making workshop. As in, from recipe to finished product.
These sausages are going to be GOODTogether, we made:
- Lamb, Ginger and Fruit sausage
- Polish Kielbasa
- Italian Sausage with Wine and Cheese
- British Bangers (there they are again!)
- Chorizo, Red Wine and Brandy sausage, and
- Basic Breakfast sausage
Apricots and cranberries!! Oh my.We started with the cubed meat – which I had cut up before, because who wants to watch anyone (even the best-looking butcher) chopping away for an hour.
I explained how to grind the meat, and what kind of utensil is best for this … because you can bet that not everybody owns this Mother of All Grinders.
It’s so easy.Here’s what you get:
Two kinds of meat, for wonderful sausages.After the meat was ground, we added the various spices, and everyone had a turn mixing. With bare hands in a very cold garage. Luckily, the lovely Carol had hot cider to warm us all up. This is the lovely Carol mixing sausage meat.
Cole and Carol’s cold fingersAnd this is the masked sausage mixer, ready to attack that meat.
Oooo, scary masked man.Everyone decided to get into the act … can’t stop these Vermonters.
Let’s all mix!The peanut gallery …
Egging on the butcher.Then I demonstrated how to flush the hog casings, to make sure they were absolutely clean. These are hog casings (try not to retch):
Long and white, and very very clean.And finally, we actually stuffed sausages…
Stuff me.Resulting in…
Ta Dah!With a taste test for all.
Eat me NOW.It was fun, and everyone went home with ten pounds of lovely delicious sausages.
And as a reward to you for reading this far, here’s the recipe for British Bangers:
British Bangers
6 lbs fresh pork butt
4 tsp salt
4 C fresh bread crumbs
3 tsp ground white pepper
¾ tsp ground mace
¾ tsp ground coriander
1 tsp nutmeg, ground
6 egg yolks, beaten
1 sausage casing, hog, narrow
PS: If any of you are interested in hosting your own sausage workshop, leave a comment on this blog and we’ll get back to you. Lots of fun.
