Sunday, April 22, 2012

Braai-ing Boerewors

A few days ago I found a thread on Chowhound asking what is the best sausage you ever had. The poster talked about boerewors, a South-African sausage. I decided I wanted to make it for my first sausage making attempt ever, and after a few days of reading online about sausage making techniques I went to buy the casings and meat yesterday. It turned out great! Here's the recipe I used. It was the first time I used the meat grinder I got last Christmas to make sausages and it worked really well.


Here's all 3 kilos of it:


And here's some of it after it spent some quality time on the grill following this advice:


Total and complete success! I loved it and I can't wait to make more :D

I added a handful of soaked hickory wood chips in a double-layered foil packet (pricked with a toothpick on top in several places) under the grill to smoke it, I cooked it like that for about 12-15 minutes and then when the smoke stopped I took the packet away and let it crisp up a bit before removing it, turning it several times during the cooking. It was easy enough to flip with a good pair of tongs and a spatula, it only broke in one place (on the blackened side). It got an amazingly smoky flavor.

The texture was quite loose, not sausage-ey at all but I figure that's just cause it was freshly made, the other half of the batch is in the fridge and I'll cook some more tomorrow to see how the texture has changed.

Soon I'll have to go buy some sheep casings to make those hot dogs I wanted to do!

6 comments:

  1. Wow, you are adventuresome! That looks amazing. I've fallen in love with my "barrel style smoker/grill" (in fact smoked 3 pounds of chicken thighs marinated in different flavors tonight). I love sausage but we have so many good butcher shops that make their own sausages in our town I almost don't see the point of making my own for at least another 10 years until I've tried them all. :)

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  2. My dream is to build my own smoker. I hear you can make one out of a trash can, and I'm planning on combining that with an extra compartment linked by some dryer hosing a la Alton Brown to be able to do some cold smoking too. I'm just hoping that the neighboring tenants don't pull the fire alarm... I'm staying in blissful ignorance of the rules of my apartment building regarding grilling on my balcony :D

    Yes here too there's a myriad of butchers selling awesome sausage, but I haven't seen boerewors anywhere yet :D

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  3. I really like the spices. I'm going to try to make a marinade out of it and do a smoked pork butt with it too.

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  4. Cool! Let me know how it turns out :)

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  5. Well done - Now try a gourmet Boerewors Roll. Similar to a hotdog but with fried onions, melted cheese and if you can get it - Mrs Balls Chutney ( a staple in all South African kitchens worldwide)

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