hot links

(continued from Eating Out)

As an expatriate Texan who has traveled across the real Southern hot-link states (Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi), I admit that the designation is confusing and I have realized that the perfect hot link is in the eye of the beholder.

"Hot links" come in fine-grind, coarse-grind, smoked, unsmoked, beef, pork, mixtures of beef/pork/chicken, mild to eye-wateringly spicy, meaty to grease-bombs, thumb-sized to rings to long continuous chained links.

I love them all, and have never met a sausage that I didn't like (with all due credit to and apologies to the spirit of Will Rogers). My personal favorite is a coarsely ground all-beef smoked ring.

Here's a link to a nice source for sausage-making recipes.

Harvey's Recipes

If there's any interest, I'll gladly post links to mail-order sources for various kinds of TX/Southern hot links.

Cheers,
Wade

Wade,

Here's are some non-commercial go to sites for sausage recipes:

Making Sausages at Home



Northwest Smoking

Please post the resource links. I may not use them, but I will like to have them.

My favorite hot links recipe is:

Genuine Texas Hotlinks
6-7 lbs. Boston Butt
1 bottle beer..Shiner Bock works good
2 T. coarse ground black pepper
2 T. crushed red pepper
2 T. Cayenne
2 T. Hungarian Paprika
3 T. Pickling Salt (1 1/2 t. per lb of meat)*
2 T. Mustard Seeds
1/4 cup minced fresh garlic
1 T. granulated garlic
1 T. MSG
1 t. Modern Cure
1 t. ground bay leaves
1 t. whole anise seeds
1 t. corriander
1 t. ground thyme

Mix all the spices, cure, and garlic into the beer
and place in refrigerator while you cut up the meat
to fit the grinder. Pour the spiced liquid over the
meat and mix well. Run spiced meat through the fine
plate and mix again. Stuff into medium hog casings.
Smoke or slow grill till they are done.


I do increase the heat a little by adding some habaneros occasionally. If using within a couple of days I also leave out the cure. I don't use MSG either. DON"T GO OVERBOARD ON THE ANISE SEED!! Ask GWIV, how to ruin a 10 lbs of sausage!

Hi All,

Just began trying my hand at home sausage making. Yesterday I made a recipe from Paul Kirk's "Championship Barbecue" book. It's called Beginners Chilli Sausage, and it's basically ground pork shoulder seasoned with chilli powders and other spices. I started with 3.5 lbs of pork shoulder that was quite fatty as I cubed it and ground it. However the resulting sausage after cooking was rather dry.

I know there are a lot of guidelines about the proper fat content for making proper sausage, but I've read a number of recipes like Paul Kirk's and yours below that use straight pork butt (as I did) with no additional fat. Wondering where I went wrong? Does the amount of mixing/kneading you do to the meat prior to stuffing it affect the final moisture? Because I donned a pair of rubber gloves and really mixed it well.

Thanks for any tips.

Looking forward to making the hotlinks below!!

Mike

Here's a very good Sausage Making email list. The traffic is moderate, with mostly good information. There is one chatterbox named Bigwheel, who can get off topic, but you can either filter him or delete quickly if he is not talking about sausage. If he is talking about sausage he is worth reading.

The Smokering Sausage List