God forgive me for this video. It will either get passed around the Internet as a valuable guide to making sausage or used in 7th grade sex education classes. Even if I do rot in hell, it was a lot of fun to make. Very Satisfying.

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Stuffing sausage is a little like crafting. It takes time, some specific knowledge, and is more fun to do with at least one other person. I made the traditional French sausage, Boudin Blanc, but added foie gras and black truffles. Tse, my blogging friend from Chez Tse, made two different types of Italian sausage: sundried tomato & basil, and traditional pork. All of our sausage turned out delicious.

We bought natural sheep casings, or intestines, from our butcher. He loves me because I make my own saucisse. I’m telling you, if you really want to know the quickest way to a man’s heart, make him sausage. He also offered us his favorite recipes and a few kisses behind the meat counter. What a ham! Sheep casings are smaller than hog or cow. Make sure to buy the size that best suits the recipe or style of sausage.

If you stick to the basic measurements, experimenting with sausage and flavors can be a lot of fun. For 1 kilo of ground meat add 20 grams salt and 4 grams ground pepper. I used ground veal in my boudin blanc so I had to add some ground fat back or pure pork fat to my mixture so it would taste juicy and survive the cooking procedure. Tse did not add any fat to her ground pork shoulder.

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I recommend letting the sausages refrigerate for at least 4 hours and overnight if possible, before cooking so that all the flavors blend. We poached our sausages in barely simmering cooking liquid before browning in olive oil. Fresh sausage tends to be delicate, and I find that poaching them first insures they won’t explode over high heat. Make sure to prick them several times before poaching.

Happy sausage stuffing!

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Boudin Blanc

Ingredients
500 g pork leg, shoulder, or loin (veal or chicken can be substituted)
100 pork fatback
15g potato starch
1/2 onion, finely diced cooked and cooled (not browned)
4 egg whites
80 ml whipping cream
200 ml milk cooked with an onion and the peel of 1 orange (for flavor)
bay leaf and thyme
pinch nutmeg
10g salt
2g white pepper
2 meter sausage casing
kitchen string
optional: 1 black truffle minced, 100g foie gras chopped

Cooking liquid:
500 ml milk
2 litres water
30 ml orange flower water

Instructions
1. Sweat onions with just a little butter over low heat (don’t brown). Add a pinch of salt & sugar.
2. For aromatic milk simmer low (60˚C maximum) with orange peel, bay leaf, thyme, and sliced onion.
3. Mix ground meat with onions, pepper, salt, potato starch.
4. In a cuisinart or blender put meat mixture and blend in egg whites, milk, and then cream till just mixed. Don’t turn cream into butter.
5. Start cooking liquid simmering. BUT NOT BOILING!!!
6. Load up your pastry bag with meat filing and pastry tip and scrunch casing over the tip then tie off the end of the casing. Gently squeeze. Make sure not to overfill so you can tie off links with cooking string. Once finished poke a few holes in casing with toothpick, especially if there’s any air bubbles.
7. Poach in cooking liquid for 20 minutes. Put in ice bath to cool. Then fry up in some olive oil until golden brown.