Wild Cajun Breakfast Sausage
 | Author:
Eileen Clarke - Rifles and Recipes
Author: Rifles and Recipes |
Wild Cajun Breakfast Sausage
Eileen Clarke - Rifles and Recipes
Makes 1 ½ pounds
This sausage is quite vibrant as it’s written. You can make it hotter with more cayenne. Even when you stick to the recipe as written, cayenne varies in heat. The cayenne in my kitchen may be fresher, or it may just have come from a hotter batch of peppers. (Or it may be less hot than yours.) So, add the cayenne a little at a time, and let it sit for 2 to 3 hours to taste test before adding more. Remember, it’s a lot easier to add heat than to subtract it.
A few choice words about mixing. To convert ground meat into sausage, you have to create a bond between fat and lean. That’s what gives you sausage texture rather than crumbles. For small batches like this, I use the Classic KitchenAid mixer, whose bowl tapers at the bottom. For up to 20-pound batches, I use a hand-crank Lem meat mixer. Both take about the same amount of time to create the ‘wasp’s nest’ in the photo. The mixed meat will hang on the mixer blade for several minutes when the bond is good enough to be called sausage. Even if you mix by hand, don’t give up until you get there. And don’t feel you have to case it. Sausage patties taste just as good as links.
If you don’t have game, you can grind a pork shoulder roast, mix in the spices and somehow, magically, the bond about creates itself. Something meat packing companies add, which is not on the label, or the length of time it’s been stored before it gets to the consumer, something--you don’t have to mix it very much to get that bond. I’ve tried making that magic happen with wild pig, but it doesn’t work.
Here’s a recipe to get you started. If you like this Cajun Breakfast sausage, feel free to multiply it.
12 ounces ground venison
12 ounces ground pork or beef fat
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon dried leaf oregano
½ teaspoon dried leaf thyme
½ teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
pinch or two of cayenne pepper (to taste)
1. Grind together the venison and pork meats.
2. In a small bowl, combine the garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, thyme, black pepper, salt and cayenne. Add the spice mixture to the water, then mix thoroughly into the meat.
3. To taste test: before adjusting the flavors, chill the mixture 8-24 hours to let the flavors fully develop, and the salt work on the meat protein (myosin).
Once chilled, microwave a ½-inch ball of sausage in a coffee cup for about 15-20 seconds on high, or fry a small patty until all the pink is gone.
4. Now, to change it from ground venison to sausage, transfer the meat mixture to an electric mixer bowl, and add 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 3 tablespoons cold water, plus 1 large egg, beaten. Mix at medium speed for 2 minutes.
5. Shape into patties and cook on medium in a cast iron skillet, with a small amount of oil added, turning it once, after the first side has browned, until the pink is gone from the middle, 165°F.
