Eat This While You Read That: G Scott Huggins

So the conversation went something like this… Scott: I don’t know. Something with sausage? Maybe wurst?

Me: I’ll do my wurst for you.

And on that note! You should really read Scott’s book Doctor to Dragons if you appreciate humor. Especially low humor, because the book is about a veterinarian, and if you thought James Herriot was funny with cats, dogs, and cows, this take on dragons, basilisks, and other mythological creatures ought to be right up your alley. I loved it and am hoping for more from Scott.

But this post is about what to do with the animals who die for tasty deaths. Or: a vet’s side-job in a crumbling fantasy city where money is hard to come by and you don’t ask what’s in the sausage. Because this is a recipe for sausage, only it’s more like guidelines. Suggestions, if you will. Techniques… I did say I’d do my wurst.

When you are cutting up tasty, tasty animals, you get steaks and chops and roasts and… a lot of odd little bits that aren’t really big enough to cook by themselves, but you don’t want to waste an ounce of this food. Soup, stew, and the like are great ways to cook the bones and clinging bits to make stock, or what-have-you. But someone back in the mists of time got the great idea to chop up those bits with some flavorings added – seeds, herbs, spices, salt, lots of salt – stuff the resulting mess into some nice clean intestines, and voila! sausage was born.

My Ginja Ninja, who has never made sausage before (although she’s watched me do it when much younger) got in on the fun when we were talking about how to tackle Scott’s tubular challenge to me. We were joking around about dragon sausage (she seemed to think it ought to be blue. Dragon meat is blue? Who knew?) when she told me she wanted to do a Chinese style sausage. So I bought a chunk of meat, the cheap kind with a bone in, and acquired a slightly-more-modern than stone age meat grinder (you’d be amazed what you can find at antique flea markets. Those old bugs sure knew a thing or two).

As a side note, when you are cutting up the store-bought roast, you’ll want to make sure you get all the silverskin and stringy connective tissue cut off, or you will gum up your grinder. Sharpen your knives before you start, unless you are one of those sorts who always has the sharpest knives in the drawer. I am not.  Also, I highly recommend an energetic and interested teenager to provide armstrength and sound effects, not to mention the inevitable innuendo and dirty jokes.

Now, usually you’d grind once on coarse, and then grind again with the herbs and spices and seasonings in. We didn’t. For two reasons: one, the Chinese Sausage recipes I’d looked at, and the ones I’ve eaten, were a coarser grind than most wurst, or brats. (and no, brats are not made of naughty children) Second, the butcher job I did was second-rate and the grinder was giving us fits and it was late and I threw my hands up and called it done. But if you prefer a sausage with less ‘bite’ you will want to grind on coarse, then medium. Fine, if you want breakfast sausage. If you want wurst, like liverwurst, just use the foodprocessor and make it into paste *shudders* and go from there.

What I did instead was grind, then mix in the flavorings by hand. This was roughly 2 lbs of ground meat bits. Dragon? maybe… or maybe dragon’s meat (ie pork). Pigs can fly! when dangling from a dragon’s talons. Added to that was:

• 8 oz alcoholic citrus drink
• ground pepper, about 2 tsp
• salt, about a tablespoon
• more salt
• sugar, about 3 tablespoons
• garlic chili paste about 4 tbsp
• garlic cloves (these we ground with the meat) (um. maybe a whole bulb? 10 cloves?)

Chinese Sausages are meant to be smoked, or air-dried, and they have a lot of sugar and salt in them to retard microbial growth. Since we were going to fry some up loose, as we lacked a sausage stuffer and casings, we sort of eyeballed the amounts there. I was surprised how well the meat soaked up the liquid, that was good. I was reflecting that it was like marinading the meat. Only there was so much surface area it just sucked it up like a sponge.

The flavor was good. I’d add more chilies, for heat, but the Ginja Ninja liked it this way. There was some spice, just not a significant amount. We still have some to experiment with stuffing and smoking, once I have casings in hand. I found a manual stuffer, so that part is taken care of.

We also made about a pound and a half of fresh herb sausage with the other half of the roast. Herbs picked from the garden and ground with the meat, along with a lot of garlic. We like garlic around here.

So now you know what goes into making sausage. If you make some, just don’t tell anyone where the meat came from. During the process, we were explaining to the GN who CMOT Dibbler is… but that’s a different book. Although, if you know who that is, you’ll like Scott’s book. I promise.

Psst… Want some meat onna stick? For more Eat This While You Read That recipes and books, check out the page. You can also join us on Facebook in a group, by searching for the title lead-in.

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