Mastering the Craft of Making Sausage (50 page)

ALLIED KENCO SALES

This company has a very good free catalogue for anyone who butchers meat, smokes food, makes sausage, or cooks outdoors.

PS SEASONING & SPICES

As the name implies, this company offers a great variety of seasoning and spices, but they also offer barbecuing, sausage-making, and cooking supplies. They would be delighted to send a free catalogue.

BRADLEY SMOKERS

Bradley smokers, including the recommended Original Bradley Smoker, can be purchased in large stores selling sporting and outdoor goods. Barbecue supply shops usually stock them, too.

GRIZZLY INDUSTRIAL, INC.

Grizzly Industrial offers a 5-pound capacity vertical stuffer (also called
upright stuffer
), model H6252, for about $70. Cast-iron or stainless steel manual meat grinders may also be ordered from this company.

Grizzly Industrial, Inc.

www.grizzly.com

Order phone number: 1-800-523-4777

NORTHERN TOOL AND EQUIPMENT CO.

This company offers only a modest amount of food processing equipment, but the prices are very reasonable. Compare the prices for sausage stuffers and meat grinders, for example. They offer a lever-powered sausage stuffer for about $27 and a manual meat grinder for $15. Call the toll-free phone number to get a free catalogue. When you request a catalogue, be sure to mention that you need a catalogue that contains listings for
Food Preparation Equipment
. For international shipments, telephone or fax the International Sales Department: telephone 1-800-221-1589, fax 1-952-895-6889.

THE WOK SHOP—ALUMINUM CHINESE STEAMER

A good place to buy an aluminum Chinese steamer is at a large Asian food store. However, if you do not live near such a store, or if you can’t find what you need for some reason, try The Wok Shop. It is located in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown, but it sells a variety of Asian cookware on the Internet. They offer several sizes of aluminum steamers on their website. The 12-inch (30 cm) diameter size that I use sells for about $40.

If you want to search for other sites on the Internet, search for “wok steamer” (do not use quotation marks)—for some reason, these two words are effective in pulling up various sites, and some of these sites will have what you are looking for.

Appendix 6

Safe Cooking Temperatures

Appendix 7

Volume/Gram Conversion Chart

The following chart is for converting volume measurement of spices and other ingredients used in sausage formulations from United States standard volume measurements to metric weight measurement (grams)—and vice versa. Source: Len Poli’s excellent website on sausage making. The easiest way to get to this helpful website is to use Google or any other search engine and search for “Len Poli’s Sausage Making.”

It is more accurate to weigh spices and ingredients than to measure their volumes. Consequently, many advanced amateur sausage makers and professional sausage makers weigh the spices with an electronic scale that has an accuracy of at least
¹
⁄10 gram. This is particularly true for European sausage makers; in Europe, weighing of spices and ingredients for any kind of culinary endeavor is common. Consequently, many sausage formulations measured with this system will be found on the Internet and in published literature on sausage making.

Of course, the easiest way to deal with these metric formulations is to purchase an accurate electronic spice scale and work in the metric system. The more difficult approach is to use the following chart and convert the grams to United States volume measurements. Careful calculation with basic algebra will be required to convert the metric weight measurements to American volume measurements, but the result will be sufficiently accurate to produce a reasonably close approximation of the original formulation. Occasionally, United States formulations expressed in ounces will be found; one ounce is equal to about 28 grams.

Some comments on using this chart: The most common United States unit of measure for spices and ingredients is the teaspoon (tsp.). If the unit of measure is
not
the teaspoon, that unit of measure will be in bold in order to help prevent mistakes. For example,
tablespoon
(
Tbsp.
) will appear in bold.

About the Author

WARREN ANDERSON
has worked as a chemical technician, an electronic technician, a carpenter’s helper, a bilingual social worker, an Asian business specialist, and as an instructor of English as a foreign language. As an English instructor, Mr. Anderson taught at several Japanese universities for over twenty years. He also owned and operated a private English school in Kyushu, Japan. He speaks Japanese fluently.