butcher vs supemarket

Hi their

I am a qualified butcher with more than 30 years of experience. I am here to share what I have learned over the years and what to look out for. As I update my blog, I will post pictures of sausages and important considerations.

One tip at the moment is to avoid sausages that are in a plastic skin, also known as synthetic casings. Yes, it is safe for us to eat edible plastic, but it takes a while for our bodies to break down this product. Additionally, sausages in synthetic casings will often be rubbery and hard, which is not how a sausage should look.

Always look for natural casings, as they will give you a far better product. A well-made sausage should give a “snap” sound after cooking, and these sausages will not split open.

The most common reason sausages split is due to too much filling or excess water, similar to the mushy paste sausages from the supermarket. A good sausage should be a pale reddish-pink color; if it's brown, don’t touch it, as the meat was likely meant to be thrown out or the skins had gone out of date or gone off. This is bad practice on the butcher's part.

BBQ sausages should not be pasty, fatty, or watery. A good rule of thumb is: 8% natural fat with beef, up to 10% water, and around 5%.

For a 5 kg batch of Italian sausages, you would use 2.5 kg of beef chuck steak and 2.5 kg of pork neck or shoulder. Add 100 ml of water per kilo, which totals 500 ml for this recipe. You'd also need 18 g of salt per kilo, 6 g of pepper per kilo, and 20 g of garlic and fennel per kilo. I always go by eye with garlic and fennel because I love these flavors. I also add a handful of chilies and parsley to give those green flecks characteristic of Italian sausages throughout the mixture. I would typically replace half of the water with red wine, so in this case, I would use 250 ml of water and 250 ml of red wine.

For a one-kilo binder, you can use rice flour, arrowroot flour, or breadcrumbs. Some Italian sausages don’t require a binder, but for me, as a butcher, it’s not there to make the sausage go further; it’s there to absorb the natural fat from the meat, which gives you a juicy sausage. 

Oh, and please, for heaven's sake, don’t prick your sausages! 

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Feel free to make any additional tweaks or let me know if there's anything else you'd like to change!