This is a really nicely textured sausage: The two different grinds allow the ground meat to bind better, the meat mixer creates an even tighter bind, and the feta helps create a soft, moist sausage. Add to that a variety of complex, but complimentary flavors, and you have a sausage likely very different from any other you have made... in a good way!
Makes two pounds
- Ingredients -
2 lbs lamb, cubed
5 garlic cloves, smashed
¼ cup mint leaves, roughly chopped
½ teaspoon + ½ teaspoon toasted fennel seeds
10 kalamata olives, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons pomegranate arils
1 tablespoon brown sugar
¼ teaspoon sea salt
½ cup feta cheese, crumbled
- Tools -
Weston Meat Grinder & Sausage Stuffer
Weston Meat Mixer
Weston Smoker
natural hog casings
wood smoking chips (hickory is best for this)
Place the metal parts of the grinder and mixer into your freezer for at least a half hour before you begin. Everything should be as cold as possible for sausage making, especially when soft cheeses like feta are involved.
Prepare the Smoker by soaking the wood chips (for at least a half hour), filling the water bowl and placing it in the smoker, and preheating to 250.
Use your
Meat Grinder to grind the lamb, garlic, mint, and ½ teaspoon fennel seeds through the coarse plate of your Meat Grinder. Grind half of the lamb blend through the finer plate.
 |
| Grinding your own blends is nice because you can use all fresh ingredients, like garlic and mint, which can be tossed in with the meat. The meat grinder takes care of chopping and distributing them. |
 |
| The #5 500 Watt Grinder took a mere two minutes for our entire grind. |
Combine the ground lamb mix, olives, pomegranate, sugar, salt, and remaining ½ teaspoon of fennel with the
Meat Mixer. Turn for 5-10 minutes, until the meat binds together tightly on its own. Add the feta cheese and turn just a few times, until the cheese is evenly distributed and mixed into the meat blend - you don't want to turn the feta into a paste.
 |
| Meat mixers are particularly useful in recipes like these, where you need larger ingredients to bind into sausage, like olives and pomegranate arils. They mix ingredients more fully and also create a bind within the meat. |
Assemble the Sausage Stuffer attachment onto the Meat Grinder, then transfer the mixed ground lamb back to the hopper of the Meat Grinder. Thread the casing onto the Stuffer nozzle and turn on the grinder to stuff the casing.
 |
| There are few things more convenient in sausage making than useing your meat grinder to also stuff the casing. |
Tie the links. Place the sausage onto sausage hooks in your preheated
Smoker. Smoke at 250°F for an hour and a half to two hours (until the internal temp is 160), with the side dampers cracked and the top damper closed.
 |
| When you want a full, smoky flavor in a low-temp smoking project, try cracking the side dampers and closing the top. Proper smoking is subject to many factors, but this method will typically bring the most smoke up into your product. |
Serve once fully smoked.
