Sausage making, seasoning, and preservation

Sausage making is some of what makes the butcher's trade truly a craft with room for creativity. Here you transform scraps, forcemeat, and spices into sausages, cold cuts, and specialties — but behind the good taste lies precise knowledge of seasoning, salting, and preservation, which is just as important as the recipe itself.

§From farce to finished sausage

Regardless of whether it is a classic manual gearbox or a modern AMT, the principle is the same: power must be transmitted smoothly and durably, and your task is to understand where in the chain something starts to give way before it develops into a breakdown on the road.

§Salting, nitrite and safety

Throughout history salt has been the most important way to preserve meat because it draws water out of the meat and makes it harder for bacteria to grow. In many salted and smoked products, nitrite (potassium nitrite E249, sodium nitrite E250) or nitrate (sodium nitrate E251, potassium nitrate E252) is also added. Nitrite has a preservative effect and especially inhibits the growth of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which can cause serious food poisoning — at the same time it gives the characteristic light pink color in for example ham and dried sausage.

§Smoking — flavor and shelf life in one

Smoking adds flavor and color, but also works as a preservative because the substances in the smoke settle as a protective layer on the surface and help inhibit bacterial growth. You work with both cold smoking, where the product is not heat-treated during the process, and hot smoking, where the product at the same time reaches a temperature that makes it ready to eat. Smoking temperature, time and wood type all help determine the finished product's flavor and structure.

• 01Salting draws water out of the meat and makes the environment harder for bacteria.
• 02Nitrite/nitrate preserves and gives the typical colour in cured products.
• 03Cold smoking imparts flavour without heat-treating the product.
• 04Hot smoking adds flavor and makes the product ready to eat at the same time.

§From craft to product development

Many butchers with a flair for sausage-making develop their own recipes and specialities over time — something that can become an important professional signature in a shop or on a farm shop. But regardless of how creative the recipe is it must always stay within food safety parameters and any change in salt nitrite or water content should be assessed in relation to shelf life and safety not just taste.

“A sausage that tastes fantastic but is not safe to eat is not a good sausage — safety is part of the recipe not an addition to it.”