How to make pork, apple and sage sausages

We bought another Tamworth pig last month from Bill Quay Community Farm in Gateshead and last week it went to slaughter. We picked up the meat from the farm on Saturday. When we bought our first pig, the slaughterhouse converted some of the sausagemeat into sausages. This time we asked them just to give us the sausagemeat so we could make the sausages ourselves. Earlier this year, we bought a sausage making machine which, up to now, had only been used as a mincer. Last night we put it through its paces to make pork, apple and sage sausages.

The recipe was:

• 1kg sausagemeat
• 150g rusk
• 3 apples, peeled and cored
• generous handful of finely chopped fresh sage
• 3 onions
• 75ml water
• 4 clovers of garlic
• 3g ground peppercorns

We put the apple and onion through our food blender to turn it into a pulp. All the contents were added to a mixing bowl (see above) and were thoroughly mixed before being put into the casing.


All the ingredients mixed together.


Before putting the sausagemeat mix into the casing, fry a small bit to test the taste.


The final product. Alas, we gave up using the sausage-making machine. Whilst it was fine for mincing, for stuffing the casing it was a waste of time. We spent an our stuffing about 40cm of casing before giving up on the machine. Instead, we took the nozzle off it and used it to hand fill the casing. It took a fraction of the time.