Are you using enough salt? Salt has a massive effect on meat proteins, and when you grind meat and get salt involved it makes the meat cohere much more than it would without. This then leads to a sausage which stays together rather than crumbling apart when it’s cooked.
Crumbly cooked sausage is usually the result of not enough fat or not enough water in the mix. Meat, fat and water are all important ingredients in making a quality finished product. At a molecular level, if properly combined, these components will bind together and retain their cohesiveness and hold the shape when your sausage is cooked and sliced into.
Having the proper balance is very important. If you have been making sausage out of just wild game, try adding ¼ or 1/3 50%-70% pork or beef trim to your game meat. This will bring the necessary fat content into your sausage mix. For fully cooked sausages like salami, using a Phosphate (we like Brifisol 414, item number M13BRIF414) will help bind the meat together to allow nice clean slices without crumbling.
Perhaps it’s the beers that normally accompany a BBQ, but Kiwi’s have a terrible tradition of burning the bejesus out of their sangers. The fatal mistake is that most have the pan or BBQ way too hot so the outside of the sausage burns before the inside is cooked and the sausage casing splits so all your precious sausage juices escape, meaning your sausage will be dry and far less tasty. Our advice is to cook your sossies low and slow.
One of the most important things to remember when making sausages is to keep everything cold. A great tip from Matty Matheson is to use meat and fat that is ‘almost frozen’ – in his own words ‘if you grind meat that is warm or room temp it will turn into sludge, cold meat just grinds really nice’. This is because warmth ruins the emulsification (structure) of the meat and prevents both liquid and fat from absorbing into the meat. This leads to a dry, crumbly and less flavorful sausage. We recommend putting your meat or sausage mix and also your grinder blade and plate into the freezer for a minimum of 20 minutes before you start your grinding and sausage making. If you have a large batch of meat, keep anything you can’t fit into your grinder/sausage maker in the fridge until you need it.
A great way to test your sausage mix before filling your casings is to fry a small amount of the mix in a pan and taste it. This will give you a good idea what the final sausage will taste like and you can tweak your recipe before you fill your sausage casings. You can add more herbs, spices, salt, pepper etc.
Collagen casings have a wall like soft plastic, meaning they dont absorb any beautiful BBQ flavours or match the all important snap of a natural casing. They are also prone to splitting while cooking so your sausages juices will escape. So don’t settle for a sad, dry, tasteless sausage. Choose a natural casing.
Fat lubricates the meat, acts as a binder and will make the sausage tender and juicy. Sausages that do not contain enough fat are typically dry and tasteless. Sausages should contain 25-30% fat. This may seem like a lot but many commercially made sausages contain 50% fat. So, you need 250-300g of fat per 1kg of sausage mix.
Drying Sausage – old fashioned way and many important tips
FAQ
Why is my sausage dry and crumbly?
What causes sausage to crumble?
Why did my sausages fall apart?
How to make sausage crumbly?
How do you keep sausage from crumbling when grinding?
Keep Mincer Blades Sharp To Prevent ‘Mushing’ the Meat When Grinding So as you can see, using good quality cold meat with the right ratio of fat, ample liquid and correctly maintained equipment, should go a long way to preventing you from producing dry and crumbly sausages.
Is sausage casing healthier option to eat?
Cellulose casings and some natural casings are perfectly fine to eat. Sausage casings are used to hold and shape filling inside so that it can be cooked. There are natural sausage casings and synthetic varieties, and most of them are edible. The healthiest way to cook them is by boiling or baking. Sausages provide high levels of vitamin B12 and iron, both of which are essential for healthy red blood cells and hemoglobin production.
Why are my sausages dry and crumbly?
One of the reasons people who are new to sausage making end up withy dry and crumbly sausages is because they remove too much of the fat content from their recipe. Good quality sausages are made using cuts of meat that have been specifically chosen for their flavor and higher fat content.
Do you like breadcrumbs in sausage?
I personally don’t like breadcrumbs because they impart a dough-like flavor and can dry out the sausage. Consider using textured soy protein (TSP). If you want to use only beef in your sausage, then TSP helps retain moisture, stops shrinkage, improve texture, improves binding and tenderness.