Maple Fennel Sausage

Maple Fennel Sausage

 

I carry recipes around like old baggage. I’ll very often find a recipe in a cookbook, decide I HAVE to make it one day, write it down and then hold onto it (for years if necessary). I’ve had a recipe for sausages I’ve been holding onto for the better part of a decade. I’m pretty sure the original recipe started off from Wolfgang Puck. As I didn’t have a sausage maker, I didn’t have an easy way to see it to fruition. I tried approaching a couple of butchers over the years, but they wanted to make such a massive quantity of them it just didn’t make sense.

Over the years I adapted it and decided I wanted to try making maple and fennel sausages as a spin on the original recipe. When Cuisinart asked me if I wanted to give their sausage maker a try I jumped at the opportunity. Finally, I could pull this recipe out, dust it off and take it for a spin.

The homemade sausages were really easy to make. I used collagen casings and my daughter helped me feed the meat in as I filled the casings and tied the sausage. It was easy to use and left nearly no cleanup. What more can you ask for really? I liked the fact that the motor was built to make sausage, as other appliance add-ons I’ve seen over the years for sausage making just didn’t have the horsepower for the job.

The results were as delicious as I’d imagined over the years. Served with finely chopped onion and mustard my kids and friends have been gobbling them up. I made 10 pounds, froze them and have been defrosting them a couple of pounds at a time as needed. The garlic and fennel give these sausages a wonderful flavour with the mellow sweetness of the maple just below the surface. Definitely worth the wait!

 

Cuisinart Sausage Maker

Maple Fennel Sausage

Ingredients:

5 lbs boneless turkey thigh, cut into 1-inch cubes
5 lbs veal, cut into 1-inch cubes
3.5 ounces curing salt
4 teaspoons black pepper
4 tablespoons fennel seeds, lightly toasted
1/2 cup chopped garlic
1/3 cup maple syrup
3 teaspoons cayenne pepper
approx 35 feet collagen casing

Preparation:

1. In a large bowl combine the meat along with remaining ingredients. Cover and marinate in the fridge at least 2 hours or as long as overnight. 

2. Pass the mixture through a meat grinder using the medium hole plate and form the sausages.

Suggested serving: mustard and minced onion

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