Chinese style sausage (广式腊肠 & 川式腊肠)

My father's home town is Sichuan, where the spicy sausage is famous. When I was little and visited with my father for spring festival, the whole extended family normally got together and made sausage for a whole day before the festival. At the end of vacation, my father and I would carry a whole backpack of dried sausage home.

With my new Kitchen Aid equipment, I feel invincible. So I searched around internet and combined a few recipes. Stuffing sausage is not as easy as it looks on the YouTube videos. As a newbie, my spoilage rate during the process is high. But I do manage to get some good links out.

Ingredients:

Sweet sausage ingredients（广式腊肠）

Pork: 2500g ( I used the pork shoulder butt. Most recipes recommend 20-30% fat.)
Sugar - 200g (Prefer rock sugar, grounded)

Salt - 50g

Soy sauce - 30g

Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum 花椒) - 10g (grounded with a spice/coffee grinder)

Liquor- 50ml (Chinese hard liquor or Vodka 白酒)

Casing - LEM Products Fresh Clear Edible Collagen Casing
Cotton thread to tie the sausage

Spicy sausage ingredients（川式腊肠)

Pork: 2500g ( I used the pork shoulder butt. Most recipes recommend 20-30% fat.)
Salt - 50g

Crushed pepper - 20g
Cayenne pepper powder - 10g
Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum 花椒) - 10g (grounded with a spice grinder)
White pepper powder - 5g
Liquor- 50ml (Chinese hard liquor or Vodka 白酒)
Casing : Natural Hog Sausage Casing Casings
Cotton thread to tie the sausage

Steps:

1. Prepare the meat. For sweet sausage, I grounded the pork with the Food Grinder attachment first. For the spicy sausage, I just cut the meet into small pieces, about 1/2" size. Add all ingredients to each mixing bowl, marinate for 2 hours or overnight.

2. The natural hog casing need to be soaked in water for hours. Follow the instruction on the package. The Collagen casing can use as is.

3. Using the Kitchen Aid sausage stuffer, fill the meat into casing. This is the part that is harder than I thought. The pork does not come out of easily easily. It would be helpful to have two person to operate the machine also, one to push the meat down, one to hold the casing.

4. Use cotton thread to tie the sausage into smaller links, and then hang it at cool, dry place with good ventilation. Use the hard liquor to wipe the sausage skin. Use needle to pop any air bubbles. 

5. After 7-10 days, the sausage will be ready for consumption or storage.

6. Vacuum pack the sausages that will not be consumed soon, and put in freezer.

Notes:

1. Some people also smoke the sausage with wood chips in a grill. Maybe will try next time.

2. Compare to the sweet sausage from the store, my sausage is a little bit spicy. Maybe I should take out the Sichuan pepper and replace with regular pepper.

3. The sweet sausage is also drier. Maybe I should not have grounded it first.