10+ Tips that will help you choose a tasty and good quality sausage

Sausage is one of the most consumed products worldwide. Despite the great diversity of products that we find on the market, it is not a simple task to identify good quality and tasty sausages.

We, from awesome.clubwe like treat ourselves from time to time and so we decided to find out how to choose the best sausage. We will share these precious tips with you below. Check out!

Poached, or boiled, sausage is made from the salted ground beef part. It may contain soy instead of meat, as well as milk, eggs and water. The expiry date is 72 hours. The blanched and smoked sausage is first cooked and then goes through the smoking process. Usually, a lot of spices are added to the mixture, as well as milk, sour cream, starch, flour and pork fat. The final product can be stored for about two weeks in the refrigerator.

What is important to check when choosing a poached sausage:

The wrapper must be dry and soft. When the sausage is fresh, the packaging must be well glued and must not contain any imperfections: swelling, stains, deformations.

The color of a fresh, natural sausage should be more greyish, as is normally the color of cooked meat. If the product is too pink, or even red, then dyes have been added to the mix, as well as nitrites and other chemical additives. If possible, try to bend a slice: if it breaks or cracks, there is too much starch or soy in the composition. In case we put a drop of iodine on the slice and the stain turns blue, this also means that there is a lot of starch in the product.

Manufacturers often replace natural ground beef with CMS (Mechanically Separated Meat), which is a low-cost raw material, which is obtained by mechanical fragmentation under high pressure that separates the remains of meat from the bones. Due to the high pressure, all of this is transformed into a substance with a pasty, fine and uniform texture, which is then mixed with the soy. However, this is not always indicated on the package: meat is put instead of CMS; and instead of soy, vegetable protein is recommended.

Smoked sausage is made from high quality minced meat using different smoking methods. Semi-smoked meat is fried, boiled and then smoked. Moreover, such sausages are sold with a natural (skin) coating that can be consumed. A good quality sausage shouldn’t cost less than meat.

The smoked raw sausage is made with high quality meat through refrigerated smoking at 20-25ºC. It contains a lot of spices and sometimes even brandy. And it can be stored in the fridge for up to 4 months. It is worth remembering that the process of natural smoking, or smoking, is quite expensive. For this reason, many manufacturers use liquid smoke to lower costs.

When choosing a smoked sausage, pay attention to the notes below:

The sausage cut must be dry, smooth, even and without pores. The color should be brownish, without reddish, pink or orange tones. If you can bend a piece of sausage like a cylinder, it means that the product is elastic enough and therefore of good quality. If the meat easily crumbles or breaks, then there is practically no natural meat in the product. The outer layer (skin) should be slightly wrinkled from moisture loss. If the skin is too malleable, it means that there is too much water in the sausage, which indicates an excessive amount of additives, such as starch and soy, which should not be present. Dry, white mold that has not penetrated through the skin is common in raw and smoked sausages. Sausages that have been smoked using natural smoke should have a dry, shiny outer surface. If the product was made with liquid smoke, the skin color will be matte and slightly orange, in addition to having a thicker crust and specific spots.

The smoked aroma should be soft and light. If the smell is very strong, then the sausage was probably soaked in a special smoking liquid, which is not natural.

As in the case of scalded sausage, as a way to reduce costs, soy, wheat flour and starch are added. This is normally not indicated on the packaging. You will need to taste the product to see if starch has been added, which will give the sausage a “papery” taste.

The composition on the label should be as short as possible: preferably only meat, pork fat and spices. The addition of “glucono delta-lactone”, which appears on packages as E575, artificially accelerates the maturation of the product.

The sausage itself should be hard, dry and dense. Sliced ​​​​sausage, in turn, should be elastic and easy to chew. If the cut slice leaves finger “prints” on the surface, it means that there has been a violation of the production technology and the product is not “ripe” enough.

The taste should not have any acidity: slightly spicy, pleasant, salty, with a smoky and spicy aroma.

Cured sausages are made from continuous drying and without smoking. Exclusively high-quality meat is used, with spices, honey and cognac. In addition to pork and beef, sausage can contain lamb, horse and wine. This type of sausage can be stored in the refrigerator for 4 to 6 months. The best known type is salami.

Here are some tips on choosing a good cured sausage:

The darker the product, the more beef or horse meat it contains. Due to the fact that such sausages are made exclusively from high-quality meat, the price is usually higher.

The presence of white plaques (not mold) on the skin is a sign of excellent quality. This is due to the salt. Look carefully at the cut: if the color of the sausage is not uniform, especially around the edges, this means that the sausage was washed with water or oil to get rid of salt deposits.

The skin must be natural or very close to natural, that is, it must contain only natural products. There is a difference between collagen skins (made from ox dermis) and fiber skins (with cellulose). It is possible that during “ripening” the sausage will become covered with mold. This type of product is normally not discarded.

The sausage smell should never be too strong. The presence of intense aroma indicates that flavorings have been added to the product. If the smell is extremely pronounced, it means that it was probably made with rotten meat.

If there are grease spots, they should be white—not yellowish or pink. Otherwise, the sausage may be spoiled or contain too many dyes in its composition.

If there is soy indicated in the ingredients, then there is no meat present. Instead, there is likely ground cartilage, skin, or some similar composition. The presence of starch is absolutely harmless, as an additive, and it only serves as a thickener for the mixture. Carrageenans are additives to food products that can cause allergies.

If after eating a few slices of a certain sausage, with an intense flavor and aroma, you feel like eating more and more portions, beware: possibly the product contains a powerful flavor enhancer known as monosodium glutamate. It gives a different flavor and aroma, but, more importantly, it can be “masking” an unpleasant taste and smell coming from poor quality meat.

You will need:

750 g pork shoulder (boneless); 250 g of beef; 10 g of sodium nitrite and 10 g of common salt (curing salts); 100 ml of water; 1.5 g of ground white pepper; 0.3 g of nutmeg; 2 g of sugar.

Cut the meat into slices, add salt and let it rest in the fridge for 2 days. Then cool the meat quickly and pass it through the meat grinder. The temperature of the meat at this stage should not exceed 12°C. After that add the spices.

Then mix the ground beef well with your hands for about 5-10 minutes. You then have to stuff the tripe with this resulting mass. Sausages need to be kept in the refrigerator for 24 hours, after which time they must be placed in a warmer place for 4 hours.

Finally, place the sausages in a preheated oven at 85ºC for 1h30. Sausages must be baked in a bain-marie. Once ready, you need to leave them cooling for another 8 hours.

Be sure to look at the product’s ingredients carefully before deciding to buy it. If you see an ingredient you don’t know, it’s best to look for another option. We hope these tips will help you choose a healthier, good quality sausage.