Okay, grill masters: this summer recipe isn’t messing around. We tapped the pros at Vancouver’s Juke Fried Chicken for their best showstopper sausage recipe, and they delivered. This spicy, cheesy sausage is guaranteed to turn some heads at your next barbecue. It’s an all-day event, and it does require a meat grinder and a stuffer—so make sure you’ve got all the tools you need before embarking on this sausage adventure.

If you’re in Vancouver this weekend, you can also get your hands on this sausage at Brewery and the Beast on August 7.

Yield: Makes 12 good size sausages (6 inches long)

Ingredients

1(3.5’/1 m long) natural hog casing (roughly an inch in thickness). Should be available at all decent butcher shops

900 g boneless skin on chicken thigh, diced into 1” cubes

250 g chicken skin (pork fat can also be substituted)

2 tsp poultry seasoning

1.5 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp coriander seed, ground

2 tsp garlic, minced (roughly 2 cloves)

1tsp black pepper, ground

1Tbsp + 1tsp kosher salt

1.5 cups crushed ice

2 tbsp jalapeno, seeds and stem removed, minced

1 ¼ cups cheddar cheese, cut into small 1cm dice

½ Bunch Cilantro Leaves, chiffonade

 

Make It

1. If possible, place all grinder attachment pieces, stand mixer bowl and paddle attachment (if mixing with KitchenAid) in the freezer to cool. We want our farce to say as cold as possible throughout, this will help the meat from warming up. If the freezer is not possible, place the pieces in the fridge instead.

2. Rinse sausage casing in cold water several times until the water runs clear. Be sure to open the end to allow the water to run through the inside of the casing as well. Natural casings are packed in a heavy amount of salt, we want to remove that salt before stuffing the sausage. Once all the salt is purged, place the casing in fresh room temperature water until ready to use.

3. Place the chicken skin in a thin layer on a plastic wrapped lined tray or bowl. Place in the freezer for 30-45 minutes, until the skin is half frozen. Remove from the tray and slice the skin into thin frozen strips and return to the freezer. If the skin is too frozen to slice, allow it to soften up slightly for a few minutes at room temperature until it is soft enough to slice. While the skin is freezing, also place the diced chicken thigh in the freezer, about 40 minutes or until half frozen. Roughly mix the frozen skin with the half-frozen thigh meat before grinding.

4. With the large hole die disk, grind the chicken into our frozen stand mixer bowl (if your freezer wasn’t big enough to freeze the bowl, simple place the fridge cooled bowl over ice). After all the chicken has been run through the grinder, run half of the farce mix through a second time using the medium die disk. This will give the finished sausage a nice textural contrast. Place the ground meat in the freezer for 20 minutes before proceeding to the mixing. Also wash, dry and return the grinder pieces with the stuffer to the fridge/freezer to chill before we stuff the sausage.

5. Add the spices, salt, garlic and crushed ice to the chilled mixing bowl with the ground chicken. Mix with the paddle attachment for 3-4 minutes to bind the mixture together. It should be pulling away from the sides of the bowl and become stickier. Be sure not to overmix though, you should still see the difference between pieces of skin (fat) and meat. Stop the mixer and add the cheese, jalapeno and cilantro. Mix for an additional minute, just enough to evenly incorporate the additional ingredients. Place the whole mixture in the fridge to keep cold. Remove a kitchen spoons worth of farce, make into a patty and fry in a pan to check the seasoning.

6. Assemble our chilled stuffer and place a moistened sheet tray level with the horn portion, ready to receive the newly stuffed sausage (if you are using a kitchenAid attachment you will need to rest the tray on a raised level to be in line with the stuffer). Wet the horn with water and slide on our rinsed casing onto it. We want the tray, casing and horn to remain wet at this point, this allows the casing to slide on easily without catching and tearing. Once the casing is all the way on, pull the casing an inch past the end of the horn and we are ready to stuff. Keeping the meat chilled in the fridge or over ice, in small pieces (100g roughly at a time) feed the meat into the hopper on medium speed.  Do not overfill the stuffer, otherwise your farce will heat up and smear, splitting the emulsion you have worked so hard to keep. As the meat feeds out the end of the horn, help guide out the casing. We aren’t looking for a super tight fill here, remember we still have to twist the sausage our links afterwards. As the mix feeds out, the long sausage you are making will naturally want to coil, allow it to be continuing to twist the stuffed sausage on the tray. If all works as it should, you should have a full one meter long coil once all the meat has been stuffed.

7. Examine the sausage, poke any air holes with a pin to allow the air to escape. To make the link, start at one of the ends, measure out your desired sausage length with both hand and pinch the ends between your thumb and index figure until they are touching. Do this slowly, at first the sausage should feel firm and resistant, but it will eventually give way and tighten the meat to the interior of the link. Rotate the sausage two full turns and you have your link. Repeat all the way down the coil, being sure to rotate the link the opposite way as you move down the coil. Place in the fridge until ready to use.