What is the Sichuan sausage recipe?

If you want to eat authentic Chinese sausage, you must learn how to make Sichuan sausage. In Sichuan, when the Chinese New Year is approaching every year, if you look carefully when passing by residential houses, you can see long pieces of plump sausages hanging on many windowsills. This is a traditional food in Sichuan and can be said to be a must-have for the Chinese New Year. People who live in foreign countries often miss its taste. Now, let’s take a look at the recipe of Sichuan sausage.

Meat selection: Farm pig front leg meat

Spicy sausages can have slightly more fat than sweet sausages, which makes them taste more fragrant and less woody. For a large piece of thigh meat, cut off the skin and excess fat (you can take it home to make lard), and use a machine to mince the remaining lean and fat meat into large pieces. The ratio of lean to fat is about 8:2-3:7 (choose the front if you like lean meat, and choose the back if you like fat and delicious meat). Mix the minced lean and fat meat evenly.

Ingredients: Sichuan spicy sausage, no sugar, add five-spice powder

Ingredients: 10 jin of meat, first marinate the meat with 1 liang of Beijing Erguotou, 2.2 liang of salt, 1 liang of pepper powder, 2 liang of coarse chili powder, 0.5 liang of pepper powder, MSG, chicken essence, and five-spice powder. You can also add some sesame oil according to your preference.

Add the ingredients, stir and marinate for 30 minutes

Marinating: Mix the ingredients well and marinate for 30 minutes before stuffing into the small intestine.

About filling:

The meat must be packed tightly, and not uneven in thickness. Try to make it coarser so that it will not be too thin after air-drying. If the sausage is packed too thin, the moisture in the meat will dry out very quickly and the taste will be too dry and unpalatable. This is why it is recommended not to fill the sausage too thin. When filling, tie it with cotton thread about 15 centimeters apart. The knots should not be tied too far apart to prevent the rope and casing from being stretched and broken when drying. About smoking: In Sichuan, dried sausages will lack fragrance if they are not smoked. I don’t know if Xi’an has this custom, but in Sichuan, every household will smoke the sausages after they are dried. Light them with fresh cypress branches, extinguish the open flame and only a few sparks will remain. At this time, the fresh cypress branches still have some moisture, and a lot of smoke will be produced. The taste of the sausages and bacon smoked with that is simply... After smoking, let the sausages cool down, and they will be ready. Put them in the freezer of the refrigerator and steam them in a pot with cold water when you want to eat them. Steam them for fifteen minutes after the water boils. One thing I want to mention here is why the sausages fall apart when you cut them with a knife after steaming them? Sometimes it's because the meat is not stuffed tightly. If the meat is stuffed tightly enough, wait until the sausages are steamed and cool thoroughly before cutting, and the sausages will definitely not fall apart when you cut them.

Drying

Poke a hole with a needle

Air drying: Air dry the sausage in the sun or on a windy day until wrinkles appear on the surface and the color becomes darker, then you can smoke it.

Smoking: Before smoking, please note that the bottom fire in the stove should be bright and the temperature should be within 40-60 degrees. During the process, pay close attention to open flames, and use sawdust and cypress branches to extinguish any open flames. The smoking time is about 8-12 hours, but with good skills it only takes 4-6 hours, depending on the depth of color.