This is the recipe in one of my two sausage making books, that I just finished making. There seems to be a different Loukanika recipe for every Greek village, perhaps every house in every village. I was a bit surprised this one didn’t have paprika in it, but I resisted the temptation to meddle with it. This time…
Here we go! The meat has been in the freezer for an hour. You do that so it is cut up without all the juices escaping when you mince it. I don’t have any pictures of the mincing happening, as I really didn’t want to get raw pork all over my phone, but I promise you the mincing did happen. The garlic went in at this stage, to save the faff of crushing it separately. The box with the yellow lid contains the zest of two unwaxed oranges. Once the meat and garlic were minced, I added the herbs, zest, spices and salt. I very nearly forgot to add the red wine! Some days I worry about my sanity. All that gets thoroughly mixed, and the human hand is the best tool for the job. You can see the actual mistake I did make, in this next picture. That is a small sausage funnel, suitable for use with sheeps’ casings, but I’m using hogs’ casings, which are quite a bit bigger. Rather than shifting the casing to the right size funnel, I just held the casing back a bit more than usual, until the meat filled it.
And here are all 18 of the sausages, along with a little bonus. The last of the sausage meat doesn’t emerge from the nozzle, once it has passed the end of the helical thingy, it doesn’t advance any further. I took it out, and made it into a patty, and fried it. It was delicious. I’m really looking forward to sausages for tea…