BBQ Sichuan spiced sausages 四川烤肉香肠

Making sausage at home is one of those lost arts that really is not so difficult as it sounds！

This is a recipe for 8 Sichuan inspired barbecue sausages. Traditional Sichuan sausages are one of my favorites of the Chinese cuisine, but they need to be dried for 15-30 days.

In summer it’s too humid and hot to dry them outside for so many days, so I developed this recipe for the barbecue season. The sausages are dried for 3 days in the fridge and come out perfectly!

I love to pair them with a salad or grilled veggies, pickles, sourdough bread and mustard or BBQ sauce. As drink I recommend a refreshing beer or a nice Beaujolais. Hope you enjoy :-)

用料  

BBQ Sichuan spiced sausages 四川烤肉香肠的做法  

1. Cut 2/3 of the meat in small 0.5cm cubes. Put the remaining 1/3 of the meat together with the baijiu in a blender and puree until smooth. If you don’t have a blender at home you can as well use 1/3 minced meat.
   
   For cutting and blending its important that the meat comes directly out of the fridge to avoid „smear“.

2. Mix the cubed meat, the pureed meat, salt, sugar and all the spices. Place the mixture overnight in the fridge to integrate all flavors.

3. On the next day, first wash the pork casings very, very well and soak in water for 1 hour. Run warm water through the casings to clean them. This also makes it easier to put on the stuffer tube.
   
   Better use pork casings instead of lamb casings as they are a bit bigger.

4. Then take one pork casing and put it completely over the sausage stuffer. Fill the machine with the meat mixture and stuff until you have filled the whole casing. This is a bit funny and tricky doing it the first time ;-)

5. With two hands, pinch off what will become the link between two sausages. Then spin this link several times. Repeat this process until you made all sausages.
   
   You can use cotton thread to make small knots between your sausages.

6. Prick any air bubbles, using a sterilized needle.

7. Hang the sausages at room temperature for two hours to dry.

8. Now it’s time to continue the drying process in the fridge. You can make a construction in a pot and place it in the fridge for 3 more days to dry. Put some paper towels underneath to soak water. Pat-dry the sausages daily. Including drying, they will keep in the fridge around 7 days in total, but not longer.

9. After drying the sausages are finally ready for the grill!

10. Enjoy!!

小贴士

Tipps:

If you made a bigger batch you can easily freeze the sausages directly after dying.

As we work with raw meat that needs to be dried for several days, take good care that all equipment is very clean!