Homemade Pork Sausage
What separates homemade sausage from shop sausage is not the recipe but the knife. Minced meat gives up its juice and sets like pâté; hand-cut meat stays meat — visible at the cut and felt between the teeth. The second rule is the overnight rest: the salt distributes itself, and the sausage binds on its own, with no additives at all.
- Prep
- 1 h
- Cook
- 1 h 10 min
- Rest
- 12 h
- Total
- 14 h 10 min
- Servings
- 10
- Level
- Challenging
- Per serving
- 420 kcal
Ingredients
Makes: about 1.8 kg, 10 portions
Shopping list
The ingredients for the servings you chose — copy them or send them to a messenger. Tick what you already have at home: only the rest goes on the list.
Method
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Step 1: Cut the meat by hand
Cube the pork at 1 cm and the fat at half that. It is dull work, and it is exactly what gives the sausage its texture; a mincer turns everything into one paste.
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Step 2: Season and work it
Add the salt, garlic, spices and ice water and mix by hand for 5 minutes, until the mass turns sticky and strings from your fingers. That drawn-out protein is what holds the sausage together.
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Step 3: Rest it overnight
Cover and refrigerate 12 hours. The salt spreads evenly and the garlic and spices reach all the meat.
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Step 4: Fill the casings
Soak the casings in warm water for 20 minutes, slide them onto the funnel and fill loosely — the filling expands as it heats, and a tightly packed sausage bursts.
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Step 5: Twist and prick
Twist into 20 cm links or coil it into a spiral pinned with skewers. Prick every 3–4 cm with a needle so steam escapes instead of tearing the casing.
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Step 6: Dry the surface
Leave the sausage on a rack at room temperature for 30 minutes. A dry casing browns evenly; a wet one browns in patches.
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Step 7: Roast slowly
Forty minutes at 160 °C, then 15–20 minutes at 200 °C to colour. The centre must read 72 °C — the temperature at which pork is safe and still juicy.
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Step 8: Rest before cutting
Take it off the tray and leave it 10 minutes under foil. Cut straight away and the juice runs onto the board.
Tips & variations
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Tip
Salt is calculated by the weight of the meat: 15–17 g per kilo. Less and the sausage crumbles and spoils quickly; more and it is oversalted beyond rescue.
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Tip
A thermometer is not fussiness but the only way to know: colour and juices mislead, 72 °C in the centre does not.
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Variation
Instead of the oven, fry it in lard over low heat for 40 minutes, turning, or bake it covered in a cast-iron pot, where it braises in its own fat.
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Storage
Four days in the fridge. The traditional method is to cover the cooked sausage with melted lard in a jar, where it keeps a month cold. Raw, it freezes for three months.
Nutrition
| 1 serving | Whole dish 10 servings | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 420 kcal | 4,200 kcal |
| Protein | 24 g | 240 g |
| Fat | 35 g | 350 g |
| Carbohydrates | 1 g | 10 g |
Approximate values calculated from standard ingredient data.
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