Make your own Cumberland sausage

Ah!  The traditional English banger!  Nothing is more evocative of the English cuisine.  They were called bangers because many inferior sausages were so full of water that they exploded when placed in the pan.  Sausages have all-too-often become the final repository for the bits of the animal that couldn't be disposed of any other way. The toenails and snout and final scrapings of the bone and the sweepings of the abbatoir floor that are euphemistically called "mechanically-recovered meat", bulked out with rusk and stuffed into plastic 'skins' are still the staple of supermarkets' 'value' ranges and the breakfast tables of the less grand hotels.  No wonder the English got the reputation as the cooks of Hell.

But of course, it doesn't have to be so.  At its best the English sausage can hold its own in the finest international company, and none more so than the Cumberland sausage.  Cumberland folk, when they've not been engaged in intimate combat, or telling outrageous fibs, have long competed with each other to produce the best, meatiest, and most flavoursome sausage.   And you can join in.  It's probably the most fun you can have in the kitchen without taking your apron off.

At this point, you'll be looking for a recipe.  And you'll be disappointed.  All those competing sausage makers have their own recipes, often closely-guarded family secrets, and you'll get more fun from experimenting and devising your own.  The distinguishing mark of the Cumberland sausage is pepper, both black and white and plenty of it, and going easy on the herbs that distinguish the sausages of Lincolnshire and elsewhere.  But there's no law that says you can't play about with ingredients until you find a formula that you really like.  Apart from that, it's just a technique.

You will need a hand mincer (a grinder to American readers) with a sausage attachment. I don't doubt that you can use an electric food-processor, but a hand mincer is more personal and more fun and more in keeping with my philosophy of life.  I got mine from the delightfully-named Wiggly Wigglers.  You will also need access to a good butcher who is happy to supply you with sausage skins as well as decent meat.  Pig breeders dance to the tune of mighty conglomerates who see more profit in lean meat, so the fat - where the flavour resides - is bred out of the industrial pig.  The conglomerates say this is what the consumer wants, but conglomerates spend billions on  persuading consumers to what what is expedient for them.  Taste meat from the old breeds and you won't want to go back. The Cumberland pig that the sausage was originally based on is all but extinct now, but if you can find a source of Gloucester Old Spot, cherish it!

You need plenty of fat to make a good sausage, and there's nothing better than  bit of belly pork to supply it - even if you are experimenting with other meats, it's as well to include some belly pork.  I use about half pork shoulder to half pork belly.  You also need a binder - I like to use oatmeal but breadcrumbs will do the job.  100% meat sausage may sound like the Real Thing but it doesn't work - it will fall apart in the pan.  I use 200 g of oatmeal to a kilo of meat. There's no need to be too scrupulous about getting the meat off the bone - any extra bones can be roasted quickly to make a delicious snack.  Cut the meat into rough cubes and mince it with the coarsest matrix.  Put it in a big bowl and mix it with a good pinch of salt, plenty of ground black and white peppercorns (you do have a pestle and mortar, don't you?) and any other flavourings you want to try (but keep it simple at first, hey?).  Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave it to stand for a couple of hours.

Now the real fun begins.  Take the blade and matrix from the mincer and replace with the sausage-making attachment.  Feed filler into the mincer until it's just about to emerge from the spout.  Take your skin, which looks like a long slippery string, and find an end.  The end is open, but takes a bit of a knack to open.  Slide the end over the spout and carefully push the whole length of skin onto the spout like a very long condom.  Tie a knot in the far end.  Now, crank the mincer with one hand while guiding the emerging sausage into a coil on a large plate with the other.  When you reach the end of the skin, tie it off.  And all being well, you have a mouth-watering coil of Cumberland sausage.  Any leftover meat can be fried as patties, or turned into meatballs, cooked in broth and served with pasta.  Or whatever - it's entirely up to you now.

Enjoy!