ronnie_suburban wrote:That's quite different from Fritz Sonnenschmidt's method, which I saw him demonstrate at Kendall College some years ago. He didn't use the soy additives, which is a method I'm much happier with. In my mind, when sausage making first came to be, I don't imagine soy protein concentrate was part of the process, which is why I prefer to work without it.

Here is where soy protein concentrates do the job. They help to bind the met together as well as retain the natural juices of the meat. The job that non-fat dry milk or soy protein concentrates perform in making sausage is very useful indeed. These products are rarely used when making a fresh sausage, because it would give the sausage that bland and greasy look. If this doesn't bother you, however, it's really a good idea to use them. These items are only used in sausage that is going to be smoked and cooked, and the milk or protein has no effect on the appearance of the sausage other than making it look nice and plump.

For example, let's make 100 lbs of sausage to see what effect soy protein concentrates or non-fat dry milk have. In a 100 lb formula we would use 100 lbs of meat, about 2-3 lbs of salt and spices, about 3 lbs of soy protein concentrate, 1 lb casings and 10 lbs water. After the sausage is made we have a net weight of 117 lbs of sausage.

We now take this 117 lbs of sausage and smoke it. The sausage is then removed from the smoker, cooled off and weighed , and our end result will be around 105 lbs. What happens here is that during the smoking process the sausage will have shrinkage. The 10 lbs of water you have used to lubricate the meat for stuffing has left the sausage in the process, but we retained the natural juice of the meat.

If we didn't use non-fat dry milk or soy protein concentrates the end product would be about 85 lbs of sausage, and it would be quite dry. So the soy protein concentrates or non-fat dry milk help to retain the natural juices of the meat as well as bind it together.

Meat selection

Lean beef, veal, lean pork. Keep in mind that the color of the sausage will depend on the type of meat used (myoglobin content) and to a smaller degree on spices.
Fat
About 20% of fat is needed for good texture, taste and flavor. Hard and soft fats can be used. Pork fat, beef fat, mutton fat, chicken fat or even vegetable oils can be utilized. Beef and lamb fat have a very strong flavor which can be masked by a careful choice of spices. Examples of typical low cost meat formulas:

Formula A
Beef trimmings - 60% (80% lean, 20% fat)
Pork trimmings - 40% (80% lean, 20% fat)
Formula B
Beef trimmings - 50% (80% lean, 20% fat)
Pork trimmings - 50% (80% lean, 20% fat)

riddlemay wrote:Re Mariano's giardiniera and habanero jack brats, which have come in for praise here...A friend tells me he's had Mariano's brats and found them excessively salty; in other words, conceding that brats are always salty, he found the Mariano's brats he had to be saltier than the norm for fresh brats and saltier than they need to be. So I guess my question to the Mariano's brats aficionados is, do you just not share my friend's perception? Or would your answer be instead, "Yeah, they are significantly saltier than other fresh brats, but I don't mind that."

As someone who doesn't mind saltiness but definitely does feel there is such a thing as too-salty, I'm trying to figure out if I'd like these. (Of course one answer is "try them and find out," but I'd rather get a read on it before making a purchase if possible.)

BrendanR wrote:I tried the Mariano's giardiniera brats after reading about them here on the board.
I excitedly brought them home and promptly got busy overcooking them on the grill.
Ah well, they were still good.
However, they aren't brat-y t all.
In fact, they had fennel seeds, perhaps the defining characteristic of Italian sausage.

Binko wrote:I was actually wondering about that. It seemed a bit weird to me to be mixing the more delicate flavors of a brat with giardiniera, and that it would work better with an Italian sausage, and it seems like that is, in fact, what they do. I haven't tried one yet, though.