Following the successof our first batch of sausages, we decided to get ahead of ourselves and takeon a chicken sausage and the legendary Boerewors. Once again we hadthe help of our friends Alex and Danny (although unfortunately no Orson thedog). This post will be about the Boerewors we made, but we’ll post aboutthe chicken sausages in the coming weeks.
The word “Boerewors”is an Afrikaans word which translates to“farmerssausage”. It’s a favourite of David who has South Africanheritage, and has been eating it since he was a kid. Boerewors mustcontain 90% meat (i.e. limited random bits and pieces that are not uncommon incommercial sausage production), must contain beef,and usually also includes pork orlamb.
The most distinctflavor in the Boerewors comes from the ground cloves.So if you’re not a fan of the flavorof cloves, then this sausage is, unfortunately, not for you!
South Africanstake Boerewors so seriously that they put in place some legislation with theelaborate title: TheRegulationsGoverning the Composition and Labelling of Raw Boerewors, Raw Species Sausageand Raw Mixed-Species Sausage. The regulations were put in placefollowing aperiod during the 1960s where cheap Boerewors, which oftenincluded inferior ingredients such as offal, bone meal and soy, flooded themarket.
The legislation requires, amongst other things that "raw Boerewors shallbe manufactured from the meat of an animal of the bovine, ovine, porcine orcaprine species or from a mixtrue of two or more thereof..."
This pretty much means that there are many variations to Boerewors, with somepeople using different cuts of meats from every animal known to man (e.g. camelor kudu), although these are not true Boerewors and must instead be sold withthe dominant meat as the name.
In South Africa, butchers are extremely competitive with theirBoerewors recipes, vying with one another for the title of the best Boeries intown. As a result Boerewors recipes are often jealously guardedwhich made life difficult for us. Despite this hurdle, and with thehelp of the internet and some ancient South African cook books that David's mumowned, we were able to put together the following Boerewors recipe.
Ingredients
- 2kg beef steak (you can choose whatever cut you want, although rump is the traditional cut. We generally opt for chuck or oyster blade in our sausage making as it is often cheap and makes for good sausage meat due to the high proportion of fat);
- 1 kg pork shoulder;
- 1kg lamb shoulder;
- Speck or fat;
- 4 tbsp of coriander seeds;
- 1.5 tsp of whole cloves (ground);
- 2 – 3 tbsp of salt;
- 1.5 tsp ground pepper;
- Just under 1 tsp of ground nutmeg;
- 2 - 2.5 tsp ground allspice;
- 2.5 tsp brown sugar;
- 125 ml dark vinegar (you can use dry red wine vinegar instead but we prefer the dark malt vinegar);
- 5 – 6 cloves of garlic; and
- Thick sausage casings.
ChoosingMeat
We initially werelooking for mutton instead of lamb to impart a richer flavour, however, themutton was very expensive that day and in the end, from a flavour perspective,lamb is a good substitute. Similarly, you could swap the pork forsome wild boar or add some venison to make the sausage more gamey.
The amount ofspeck or fat is dependent on the fat levels of the cuts of meat you are usingand how juicy you like your sausages, however, the fat levels shouldn’t exceed30%. We opted for around 400 or 500 grams, although we didn't weighthe fat and mainly relied visually on the distribution of fat through themince. Many recipes call for speck, however, this can be expensive(our butcher gave us the fat for free) and doens't have a huge impact on thefinal flavour.
Howto Make Boerewors
1. Thefirst step is to soak the casings in some tap water.
2.To mince the meat you shouldpre-freeze the meat in 2 inch cubes for 30 minutes to stiffen it for easiergrinding. Using a coarse grinding plate, mince the meat andfat. You can use a finer grinding disk if you wish, however, ourpreferred Boerewors has quite a grainy meat texture so it feels like you areeating real chunks of meat. In this recipe you only grind the meatonce (some other sausages require a coarse grinding followed by a secondgrinding of the mince through a fine grinding plate).
3.Next, roast the coriander seeds andcloves in a dry frying pan, tossing the spices occasionally until uniformlybrown and aromatic. Be careful not to burn the spices – best tostart on a very low heat and slowly increase if it doesn’t feel like the temperatureis sufficient. Grind the coriander and cloves in a pestle andmortar or a spice grinder and sift the ground spices to remove the clove husks(this is an important step as removing the husks from your teeth when you areeating the Boerewors is not an enjoyable task). Mix these spiceswith the remaining aromatics. When we mixed all of the spices, thearoma of the mixed spices smelt exactly like it should which was very excitingand stomach grumble inducing.
4.After thoroughly combining the spicesand vinegar with the mince, the mince will be ready to be stuffed into thecasing. Different sized casing can be used, however, we prefer athick casing around 1 inch in diameter as this leads to a juicy thicksausage. Thinner sausages have a tendency to dry out and juiciness is keytogood Boerewors.
5.To fill the casing you push the casingonto a nozzle and tie off the end. Be sure to lubricate the casingnozzle with oil or butter as a dry nozzle will cause the casing to constantlytear and will really hamper your progress.
6.Pump the mince through the casing andallow the filled sausage to form a big coil. Try to avoid over stuffingthe casings as this may cause themto burst during cooking, however,ensure that the casing is packed tight enough so that no air bubbles can formas this can lead to bacteria growth which can spoil the meat.
7.Once the casing has been stuffed fullof all of the mixture you can tie off the other end. When dividingthe sausage, merely cut off the desired amount but leave it in a coil (i.e. donot twist into individual links), as Boerewors is traditionally sold as a longcoil and not as smaller individual sausages.
Cookingyour Boerewors
Thefinal step is to cook the Boerewors (although it is best to leave it in thefridge overnight to allow the flavours to develop). Some peopleskewer the coil of Boerewors through the side so that it is easier to flip onthe BBQ but in our view this is sacrilege and attempts should be made to flipin its natural form. Be careful not to overcook as the bestBoerewors is a juicy succulent one.
When we ate our Boerewors we were pleasantly surprised by the success on ourfirst go. It was beautifully juicy, had a really strong meatinessto it that no typical butcher shop sausage comes close to. The meat was quitegrainy and had a lovely texture and the spice flavouring was absolutely spoton, although for the next batch we make we may increase the levels of the spicemixture to give it a bit of extra punch.
