Basically a sausage recipe is meat, salt and pepper. I will never forget when I made my first Polish smoked sausage that turned out very well and I proudly gave it to my friend - professional sausage maker Waldemar to try. I have included salt, pepper, garlic, and added optional marjoram. I also added nutmeg and other spices that I liked. Well my friend’s judgement was as follows:

"Great sausage but why all those perfumes?"

For him it was supposed to be the classical Polish Smoked Sausage and all it needed was salt, pepper and garlic.

Combining meat with salt and pepper already makes a great product providing that you will follow the basic rules of sausage making. It’s that simple. If you don’t cure your meats properly or screw up your smoking and cooking temperatures, all the spices in the world (saffron included) will not save your sausage.

If you follow safety rules and the proper manufacturing methods it does not really matter how close to the original your recipe is and the final product will taste great. It is like roasting chicken in a rotisserie, as long as you add salt and pepper to it, the chicken will come out beautifully. You may add paprika to it, lemon juice, garlic or any other spices you like but it will still remain a fine meal. But if you roast it too long, now it is a different story. The same applies to a sausage, as long as you stay within certain temperatures and times, the sausage will turn out great. Let us quote Madame Benoit, the famous Canadian cookery expert and author who once said:

Keep in mind that most of those wonderful recipe sites on the Internet are run by college educated kids who are good at writing. This is what they do for a living - they nicely compile information that they think is relevant and present it for you to read. How many do you think have made their own head cheese, blood sausage or cold smoked salmon or pork loin? Most sausage books on the market are written by restaurant chefs who want to be creative and let go of their imagination and for them it is like cooking a meal. They can be easily spotted as they often don’t mention curing meat or using nitrites when smoking. The smoking and cooking temperatures they recommend are also much too high as they are mainly familiar with barbecuing or grilling. In some European countries for example in Poland there is a profession one elects when studying Meat Science in College and it is called the butcher – sausagemaker and it is a quite demanding program. Everything they do has been tailored for producing top quality meat products.

The rules (the secrets):

1. Fat. The meat needs about 25 - 30% fat in it. This will make the sausage tender and juicy, without fat it will feel dry.

2. Salt. You need salt. The proper amount of salt in meat (tastes pleasant) is 2 – 3 %, though 1.5 –2% is usually an average. About 3.5-5% will be the upper limit of acceptability, anything more and the product will be too salty. Almost all original sausage recipes contain 2 % of salt and if you use that figure your sausages will be great. If you want a consistent product weigh out your salt. Estimating salt per cups or spoons can be deceiving as not all salts weigh the same per unit volume. more about Salt

Salt perception can be an acquired taste. If you decide to go on a low sodium diet and start decreasing the amount of salt you consume, in about three weeks time you may reach a point when your food tastes enjoyable, though you use less salt than before. This is fine as long as you prepare those meals for yourself. When smoking meats, sausage or fish for your friends try to adhere to the amount of salt the original recipe calls for as other people will probably like more salt than you.

When smoking large amounts of meat that will be kept for a week or longer in the kitchen or refrigerator, remember that it will keep on drying out (losing moisture). Salt will, however, remain inside and your sausage will now taste saltier and will be of a smaller diameter. The meat flavor will also be stronger now. In such a case you may use less salt than originally planned for, let’s say 1.5 mg/kg (1.5%). That will not apply when making a fresh sausage which will be consumed in a matter of days and 1.8 - 2.0 mg salt per one kilogram of meat will be fine.

3. Pepper. The most popular spice "pepper" comes in two forms:

It is available as the whole seeds but you have to grind it. Like in a case of coffee beans, the advantage is that you get a fresher aroma when grinding seeds just before use. It is available as coarse grind, sometimes called butcher’s grind or fine grind. A recipe will call for a particular grind but the final choice will be up to you. Black pepper is normally used in fresh sausages and blood sausages, and white pepper is used in others. Polish sausage might need black pepper of a coarse grind but a hot dog, Bologna or Krakowska sausage will call for white pepper. The dividing line is whether you want to see the pepper in your product or not. Otherwise it makes no difference and you can replace black pepper with the same amount of white pepper, although the black pepper is a bit hotter.

4. Sugar. Less crucial, normally used to offset the harshness of salt. Amount used is about 10 % of the salt used in the recipe. Sugar is normally used with salt when curing meat. As a flavoring ingredient, sugar plays a little role in making sausages. No more than 3g of sugar is added to 1kg of meat otherwise it can be noticeable. Chinese are very fond of sweet sausages so they might be an exception to the rule. If after mixing meat with ingredients we find that the mixture tastes too salty, we can try to save the product by adding a little sugar. Not too much though as it should not be felt in a ready to eat sausage.

5. Taste your sausage before you stuff it. There is not much we can do to alter the taste of the sausage after it is stuffed into the casing and we strongly recommend to taste the meat when mixing it with spices. People make mistakes when reading recipes, they get confused with ounces and grams, they use different size spoons to measure ingredients, etc. We don’t expect you to eat raw  meat, though some people have been doing it all their lifes. Ever heard of a steak Tartar? Well, you can order it in a good restaurant or make it at home. A steak tartar is a raw ground beef, mixed with salt, pepper, some mustard, put some finely chopped onions on top, throw a raw egg, little pickle and all you need is a bottle of cold beer. That was the food the greatest warrior that ever lived, Genghis Khan, and his troops ate every day, though they used the horse meat.

Well, smile we don’t expect you to do the same as  there is a much easier way to taste your meat. Just make a very tiny hamburger, like a quarter, throw it on a frying pan and in two minutes you can taste your sausage. In case it’s too salty and there is no more meat at home, all you can do is to run to the nearest market and buy some ground pork and add it to your creation. In case the supermarket has only ground beef, buy it all the same. You will slightly change the recipe and you might even like it more. You are the artist, do what pleases you

 Most sausages will include a dominant spice plus other spices and ingredients. There are some Polish blood sausages (kaszanka) that add buckwheat grouts or rice, there are English blood sausages (black pudding) that include barley, flour or oatmeal. Some great Cajun sausages like Boudain also include rice, pork, liver and a lot of onion. Most sausages are made of solid meat which is easier and faster to process, but a lot of sausages like headcheese contain different organs like tongue, heads with brains, liver, skins, and hearts. Liver of course always goes into liver sausages. There are some delicious hams where the only ingredient is salt and people say that even adding pepper distorts the natural flavor.

 Let's see what goes besides salt and pepper into some well known sausages that have a recognized flavor.

All those sausages contain salt (about 2%), pepper and sodium nitrite (except Italian Sausages, American Breakfast Sausage as those are fresh type sausages that will not be smoked). They also include more spices in smaller doses, but the dominant spice is what gives them their characteristic flavor. Take for example two great Polish classics: Polish Smoked Sausage and Mysliwska Sausage (Hunter’s Sausage). The amount of salt and pepper is exactly the same and they both contain garlic and sugar. The difference is that Mysliwska has 10 % of beef in it and juniper. And that gives it different taste and flavor. That’s the secret.

Spices

Mace and Nutmeg can leave a bitter taste when used more than 1.0 gram per 1 kg of meat. As a rule they are not used in fresh sausages as their aroma is easily noticeable.

Onion if not cooked will leave a bitter taste and should never be used in sausages that are going to be cold smoked or air dried for a long time. Up to 50 g/kg can be used in blood sausages, liver sausages, and headcheeses. Fresh or dehydrated onions may be used. Dehydrated onions are more practical as they are always in uniform size, clean and ready to use.

Garlic can be used fresh or granulated. The advantage of granulated garlic is that it does not have to be peeled off which may be a time consuming task when making large amounts of sausage. Although the flavor of fresh or granulated garlic is basically the same, fresh garlic has a much stronger aroma.

Dark spices like nutmeg, caraway, cloves, and allspice can darken the color of the sausage.

Paprika is another well known colorant and will give the sausage an orange tint (dosage:1 Tbs/1 kg)

Thyme is similar to Marjoram but stronger

Ginger is used in poached sausages (white headchees, liver sausages)

Vinegar though not a spice is used in some sausages like white headcheese or Mexican Chorizo.

Meat plants use commercially prepared extracts that have a much stronger flavor.

Basic guidelines for spice usage (grams for 1 kg of meat) as practiced by commercial sausage manufacturers are listed in the left table below. Measuring such small amounts of spices requires a very accurate scale and in the right table below there is a column that lists spices used in recipes and how many grams of a particular spice contains one flat teaspoon. The numbers are based on spice data published by the American Spice Trade Association.

Our note: 1 tsp of sugar = 5 g, 1 tsp of table salt = 6 g, 1 tsp of cure #1 = 6 g, 1 tsp of juniper berries = 1.53 g,

1 Tablespoon = 3 teaspoons

If a recipe involves 10 kg meat just multiply the above numbers by a factor of 10. Remember those data are a point of reference for your calculations and you can adjust the amount of spices the way you like. If you make a product for yourself your palate should be the final judge.

There are no secret recipes, that is all boloney. All well known sausages are well documented and we know what goes inside. Sausages are meat, salt, pepper and spices and correct rules that govern their manufacture. You know that for instance a smoked turkey breast from one manufacturer taste better than from the other. And probably costs more, too. Why? The turkeys did not go to different schools, did they? The answer lies in different manufacturing practices or may be the turkeys were fed with a different feed which affected meat quality. Good meats make good products.

Of course they are fresh sausages and dry sausages and some of the sausage making steps will be omitted. Some of the steps like grinding, mixing, drying or stuffing will influence texture and the looks of the sausage more than it’s taste. Others like smoking and cooking are very crucial as this is where the most damage is done by using too high temperatures.

There are some family operated sausage manufacturers (notably in Italy) that have been producing consistent high quality product for generations and they do keep their formulas secret. But this is an exception to the rule. They manufacture dry sausages and it is more difficult to produce dry fermented sausages. Here the ingredients like starter cultures, humidity control and other factors will play a major role.

Extra ingredients and chemicals. You can change the look and even texture of the sausage by adding soy protein concentrate but you have to stay below 3 % otherwise you may change the taste. Your sausage will even look prettier. You can put some liquid smoke into it, use colorants or pre – colored casings or chemicals that will speed curing or retain more water. The whole meat industry in the USA and recently also in Europe is based on one principle: to add into meat as much water as possible. Half of the machines in a meat processing plant are designed for that purpose: pumps, computerized neddle injectors, meat tumblers, liquid smoke atomizers (those supply smoke flavor) etc. We feel that those chemicals and methods should be reserved for commercial manufacturers who without them will go out of business. And we understand that but our site is dedicated to making top quality products and unfortunatelly they don't do that. You know the saying: "if you want something to be done right, you've got to do it yourself". Anything that you put into the meat will change its flavor even if we carefully measure the dosage that may be undetectable  by our senses. If I tell you that if you put little mustard into your ice cream you won’t be able to taste it, you are not going to do that and you will think I am crazy. So why  put all those unnecessary things into the sausage even if they can not be detected. In the end they will have some accumulative strength and will affect the final flavor of the product. It is surprising how little of the spices were needed in the old original recipes to achieve the desired flavor. Once you start adding binders, fillers and chemicals you have to double up your spices to cover up your tracks. That simple.

To sum it up:

"There are no secrets for most fresh and smoked sausages, just the proper ways of making them”.