Pork and Leek Sausage

[58limited]

This came up in my youtube feed and I thought: "I like pork, I like leeks, and I like sausages so why not?" This is historically a Welsh sausage but it is popular across Great Britain. You can make it by simply adding leeks to a classic British banger recipe. I viewed a few videos and recipes and combined elements from several of them to come up with my recipe. It is mild with a great leek flavor. I have only eaten a patty of the leftover mix from the stuffer and it is already one of my top 5 sausages.



Pork and Leek Sausage

Yield: 3 +/- lbs
Time: About 2 hours start to finish
Special Equipment:

Meat grinder
Sausage stuffer
Sausage casings

1000 grams ground pork (80/20 or 75/25 fat ratio)
125 grams leeks, washed and minced
100 grams bread crumbs
200 grams water (add to bread crumbs)
15 grams salt
2.5 grams ground white pepper
1 to 3 grams ground fennel (to taste - I used 2 grams)
1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
0.125 grams nutmeg

Combine all ingredients and mix well until a big piece sticks to your hand when lifted. Stuff and link to desired length or make into patties. Freeze or cook by your desired method. You can let the links dry in the fridge overnight before cooking or freezing.

In Great Britain they use a form of bread crumbs called "rusk" as the binder. I just used store bought plain bread crumbs. If you want more of a breakfast sausage taste add more sage and maybe some thyme along with some red pepper flakes.

[Manxman]

Excellent recipe, and you have clearly mastered the art of forming sausage "links"! I actually went to my local butcher years ago and he gave me an hours tutorial, it is harder than you might imagine!

On this side of the pond any butcher worth his salt would have a pork and leek in his repertoire, although the variety of pork breakfast sausage is staggering... my most recent butcher tryout was pork and black pudding whilst Cumberland and Lincolnshire are also favourites.... plenty of recipes online.

However pork and leek are hard to beat and great to see you were using fresh leeks, there are a host of dried ready mixes available that never quite taste the same. Even the difference between coarse ground and more finely ground pork makes a difference, I tend to prefer a more coarse grind using a 2:1 ratio of pork collar and pork belly which my butcher said would give me a roughly 75:25 fat ratio.

You used exactly the same ratio of meat to breadcrumbs that I use. Apparently the reason behind using rusk / yeast-less breadcrumbs is because it allows for the absorption of more moisture without becoming soggy, giving a more succulent, juicy and plump sausage. However I think that is more relevant to the mass producers of cheap sausages that have way more breadcrumb / rusk filler to keep costs down! At the ratio you quoted I have never noticed a difference.

Anyway, to cut to the chase those sausages look very good indeed!

[58limited]

Thanks for the feedback! This was my first attempt, I'm glad to know that I got it right. I had about 7 lbs of pork butt and about 3 lbs of pork belly in the fridge that needed to be used up so I used both. The ground pork not used for this sausage was used to make Mexican chorizo. The belly was leaner than most but I still got 25% fat. Texture, moisture, fat content - all perfect. I'll make this again!

[texastweeter]

Bet that is great. Making some venison jalapeno cheddar sausage today

[58limited]

Cool! I'm trying to figure out what I want to make next. I have two whole pork butts and a bunch of already ground venison and beef in the freezer. I still have a bunch of Hatch Cheddar venison and beef sausage plus the 20 lbs of Jalapeno Cheddar summer sausage that I made last month. Hungarian paprika sausage came up in my feed, that might be next.

[58limited]

I let the links rest and dry in the fridge overnight. Vacuum sealed 7 bags of fresh sausage, 4 links each. I cooked the two blowouts that I had, I still think this is one of the best sausages that I've had. It is mild and today I can taste a hint of the other seasonings in addition to the leeks; I couldn't taste the seasonings when I cooked the patty yesterday and they are pleasantly in the background today.



I cooked the two blowouts in a skillet and finished in the oven for about 8 minutes. This sausage was very juicy and had a perfect bite to the skin.

[SheilaAnn]

Awesome!! At the old job, we always let the sausage rest unwrapped for a day prior to packaging.

[bbqLuv]

I never sausage a recipe

[Stonebriarfarm]

Oh this sounds very good, I much prefer British style sausages. How fine did you grind the meat? I few years ago I made rusk but now I just use bread crumbs.

[58limited]

Stonebriarfarm I used a 4.5 mm grinder plate.

[Murdy]

Do you know, is this traditionally a breakfast sausage? or something served on a bun? or a dinner sausage (like a ring polish or bologna)?

[58limited]

Murdy It is an all purpose sausage but I think mostly eaten at breakfast.

[58limited]

I changed the recipe above to base it on 1 Kg of meat in order to make conversions easier.

I'm making 20 lbs of this right now: I ground a 10 lb pork butt and didn't really think about how much the additional ingredients weigh. I was thinking I'd get 13-15 lbs of sausage but in reality the additional ingredients weigh about as much as the meat, I'm getting 20 lbs which is a lot but this is a really good sausage so no harm no foul.

I'll add pics later after I stuff the sausage.

[58limited]

Here is the 20lb batch that I made today. I was multi-tasking this weekend so mistakes were made which is why I changed the recipe above from a 2 Kg batch to a 1 Kg batch to make scaling up easier. Basically I added a little to much salt (but I did calculate the other seasonings correctly). When I upscaled the the recipe I forgot that I had enough premade seasoning for a 2 Kg batch plus my brain was converting from about 10 lbs of meat to about 4.5 Kg. I needed enough seasoning for 4.5 Kg total and should have multiplied the salt by about 2.25 instead of 4.5. Its not so salty that the batch is ruined but the salt does stand out a little - not really a big deal but noticeable. This probably would not have been a problem if I had based the recipe on a 1 Kg batch instead of a 2 Kg batch - doing math when I'm busy with several other things is not a good idea so simpler is better. At least I didn't multiply by 10.

The test patty was pretty danged good so its fine.

The casings are ones that were given to me by Amir, owner of Redbird BBQ. This is the first time I've used commercial quality casings and I'm hooked. The quality is so much better than the dry packed ones from the grocery store. I only used one casing for the whole 20 lb batch, I have enough for at least 150 lbs of sausage.

The casings that I've used in the past were about 28-32mm, these casings are 35-38mm so the sausages are pretty thick. From what I've seen British bangers are usually thinner but the size difference doesn't bother me - these are really good so more is better in my book.

[klflowers]

I’m sure you answered this before somewhere else, but what do you use to stuff them? I tried using the kitchen aid attachment a couple times but I couldn’t get the hang of it; that must mean I need a new appliance lol

[58limited]

klflowers I use an LEM 5lb stuffer. I had bad luck with the stuffer on my grinder. I have not used the KitchenAid.

[58limited]

One time I tried to stuff boudin with the grinder - it turned the rice into mush. A 5 lb stuffer is the way to go.