A few weeks ago Ruthie was invited to dinner at a friends house. I arrived a bit early and got to sample the home made gluten free sausage made by Brona's dad, Moss. They were fantastic! Armed with a recipe of sorts, I had a go at home. The first attempt was a disaster, Ruthie took one look at them and burst into tears. To be fair, they did look a bit nasty but they tasted okay, though not as good as Moss' . I went back to Brona's dad and asked for further instructions. I had used an electric mincer which couldn't quite cope with job and ended up in the bin. According to Moss, I needed to first put the cut up chunks of pork and back bacon into a food processor and blitz them, then put them through the mincer. He showed me the attachment for his Kitchen Aid. I was smitten. The problem was, I don't have a Kitchen Aid mixer so the mincer was out of bounds. I decided to go for one of those old fashioned cast iron mincers. I managed to find one in a shop in Wallingford and lugged it back home with great anticipation.
Today I assembled all of my ingredients, set up the new old style mincer and got to work. The problem was I chose the wrong time to do it and very quickly the whole thing descended into anarchy. Two tired, grumpy, hungry children were banished to the living room to wait for their supper. The mincer was misbehaving too and I ended up throwing the whole thing into the sink, cursing madly and ranting like a lunatic. I salvaged a few bits I had put through the food processor, shaped them into sausages then shallow fried them in olive oil, I was expecting the worst and was surprised when I saw the children tucking into them quite happily. They were delicious- not as good as Moss' but well on their way. So do you actually need a mincer to do the job? I think you can get quite a good result just using the food processor but I will give the naughty mincer another go tomorrow when I am in a better mood. It will be interesting to see if the texture is that much better. Cleaning the damn thing is a real pain, so whatever you do, buy something which is dishwasher safe. Then you can throw the whole thing in the dishwasher and be done with it.
Moss' secret recipe is 3 parts pork loin (boneless chops) to 1 part back bacon, I used a maple cured thick cut bacon which gave the sausages a smokey, slightly sweet flavour. You don't need to add any seasoning as the bacon will be quite salty. To shape the sausages use a little cornflour. Don't be tempted to trim off all the fat as this will make for dry sausages. All of the fat from the pork chops and the bacon should go in the mincer/food processor. Most of it will be rendered out during the cooking process. You will notice that there is no mention of casings either. That's because you don't need them. The sausages will hold together well without them.
