Texture: The Secret to Understanding Sausage

Photo credit: Getty

Hold up! You’re (probably) thinking about sausage all wrong.

That’s the takeaway from a gorgeous forthcoming cookbook by San Francisco butcher shop 4505 Meats aptly titled, “Sausage Making: The Definitive Guide with Recipes.” The book covers recipes for every type of sausage you might desire, plus a few decadent extras like pig’s head terrine and sausage-stuffed suckling pig.

"For us, texture is how we determine the differences between sausages," said Ryan Farr, the chef, butcher, and owner behind 4505 explained. "We think: Do we want something smooth like a hot dog or coarse like a breakfast sausage? Each texture in the book has a master ratio to it: meat to salt to water. Once you master that texture, you can add any flavor you want.”

But you can’t, for instance, just say you want a Spanish sausage and expect your butcher to know what you’re talking about.

"Even in Spain, there are so many different regions [of sausage-making]; it’s almost like barbecue," Farr explained. "A lot of the things are determining the nuts and bolts of a sausage, including flavor and style of cooking."

Rather than trying to understand the nuances that set apart dozens of types of sausage around the world, Farr believes it’s easier to first understand the four basic types of sausage textures. “You can make any kind of sausage that you want as long as you know these different style textures,” he said.

Without further ado, the sausage:

Photo credit: Chronicle Books/Ed Anderson

Coarse sausage is the most basic kind of sausage. Its texture is crumbly and a little dry, and the sausages often doesn’t have a casing; they’re simply browned in a pan. Coarse sausages include the breakfast sausage you might eat alongside pancakes and maple syrup, spicy Spanish chorizo, and spiced Middle Eastern merguez sausage.

Photo credit: Chronicle Books/Ed Anderson

Juicy, soft-textured sausages contain a higher percentage of liquid and fat than coarse or firm-textured sausages. Unlike smooth sausages, the meat is only lightly mixed, not pure?ed. Also, they tend to be poached rather than smoked or grilled. This category includes sausages like boudin blanc, (the French sausage of veal and pork), Cajun boudin (made with pork liver and rice), and Scottish white pudding (a beef and pork-based sausage with rolled oats).

Photo credit: Chronicle Books/Ed Anderson

Kielbasa, bratwurst, and the Portuguese linguiça are all firm sausages; they are tight links that contain little water compared to soft sausages. They’re usually all-meat, without vegetables or other fillers, and are often smoked.

Photo credit: Chronicle Books/Ed Anderson

Smooth sausages include liverwurst, blood bologna, and even your all-American, all-beef hot dogs. They’re also the most difficult to make. This is because the meat, which contains a higher percentage of liquid than other types of sausage, must first be pure?ed in a food processor until it reaches a smooth and creamy consistency. It also has to be kept cool the entire time, otherwise your sausages will wind up with a grainy texture.

Hungry for sausage yet? Yeah. Us, too.

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