DanMcG wrote:Hey Butterbean, in your original post you mentioned Penrose pickled sausage. A friend from down south always talked about the stuff but I could never find a recipe for it.
Any chance you have one to share? (or is the secret to the taste just the pickle? )
I haven't made any in a while but if I recall the best I made - for eating with beer - was when I made them using a spicy hotlinks recipe for the sausage with cure 1 and these were smoked till done. From there it went into a brine.
I think there is a recipe somewhere on the board but here is a brine you could try but any spice combination would work. I also tweaked this and used cider vinegar and found that pretty nice. Also for eye-appeal you could use beet juice rather than water to give the brine more appeal. Or food coloring.
4.5 cups vinegar
3.5 cups water
2.5 TBS red pepper flakes
1.5 TBS garlic powder
Warm, simmer, turn heat off and add 6 bay leaves. When cooled to a point the brine won't render the fat pour over the sausages you placed in sterilized jars and refrigerate for at least two days to flavor the sausages. (I believe this is actually shelf stable but I can't swear to it)
A few of my failures in doing this included trying to pressure can them. Not good. Don't waste your time with that. Also tried a a hot water bath to can them another fail. Both these render the fat and the results are not good.
In each of these failures I was trying to complete a food safety schedule but I've concluded that you cannot successfully make these unless you combine two methods with the acidity being the final step. Definitely want to use cure 1 in the sausages.
Be sure to have some cold beer and plenty of pickled eggs to go with them!
