Ahh, sounds like a Lincolnshire sausage without a casing. I’ve not seen uncased sausages on sale over here.
So, as you see, I Love Me, Vol. I, you can make your own choices. If you make faces about the traditional sausage joke (lips, snouts, and buttholes,) it’s not hard to find sausage made without those things. If a natural intestine casing is something you’d rather not eat, ask for bulk sausage.
Pork intestines, like your own, have an inner layer that squished the food along, and took nourishment from it. That layer, the icky part, is stripped off, and you are left with the transparent casing you’ve seen on a thousand sausages.
You need not eat a sausage made from offal, unless you want to. Many kinds of sausage are made from only meat, fat, and seasoning. The choice is yours.
<Slight hijack> When I was a kid my mom used to buy someting called “liver pudding”, or “liver sausage”. It was a fat sausage, about an inch and a half across and came in links about 4-6 inches long, very fine texture w/ a greenish hue (sounds terrible, but it was delicious). I loved the stuff, but I haven’t seen any in many years. She served it w/ breakfast. I grew up in NE Ohio if that’s a clue.
Anybody heard of it? I’d love to find some.
What are considered “yucky entrails” varies. I recently watched an episode of Modern Marvels on cold cuts, and they said that the liver was often considered the most desirable part of the animal. They also showed how many common cold cuts are made. It was quite interesting.
I’ve used those cellulose casings once, in a pinch. God, they suck. They completely have the wrong feel, devoid of the characteristic “snap” a good sausage needs. Yuck.
Whereabouts, here… it is known as ring liver sausage. Slowly going the way of the Dodo’s. A true gourmand will make a breakfast, lunch, or dinner of it. Two fried eggs (over easy), 2 inches of the ring decased and fried in butter crisp, two slices of toast. The secret is to pile it all on the toast. There is no other texture and flavor greater than salty, well-fried, ring liver pudding on buttery toast with egg yolk.
Also, very important. Do not consume Ring Liver Sausage with the casing. In its modern American form they us an unnatural casing. It is meant to be disrobed from the synthetic casing and mushed into butter in a skillet and fried. It should resemble hash in its final form.
This is my American Caviar. It’s comfort food to me.
You can find it in any large supermarket in Ohio over by the lunchmeat. It will be called either Liver Sausage or Braunschweiger (the German name, pronounced roughly “Brown Shviger”, which rhymes with MacGuyver). When I was a kid, I loved it on rye or pumpernickel toast with sweet pickles as a sandwich. It’s so good, but so high in saturated fat!
Even Oscar Mayer sells a Braunschweiger, although of course I recommend you look for a smaller local brand.
NO! UNIFORMLY, BRAUNSCHWEIGER IS NOT THE SAME THING AS RING LIVER SAUSAGE> THESE ARE DIFFERENT RECIPES ALLTOGETHER!
That sounds like a good idea. I suppose making sausage is not that complicated, but I’ll leave it to someone else. I guess I could order it custom made with whatever I wanted. That sounds like it could be expensive though. (I know, I know-- make my own!)
Maybe I should try meatless sausage. The meat in sausage is so ground-up and spiced up, etc., maybe meatless sausage would taste about like regular meat sausage. It doesn’t seem as difficult to imitate the flavor/texture of a sausage as it would be, say, a steak.
That’s it! I was wrong about the links, it comes in a ring and your also right that my mom would remove the casing and fry it. It’s really delicious, now if I can just find some.
Thank you.
My idea of “yucky entrails” would be different than most folks. I am a very picky meat eater-- I practically don’t eat any at all. When I do, I go about it totally the opposite way from what I imagine most picky meat eaters do.
My “imaginings” (though I am probably way wrong) see the other picky meat eaters only wanting pure, fine cuts without any bastardization or additives. I, OTOH, only like to eat meat that has been almost completely disguised, covered up in or mixed with other things. For example-- I like a nice beef taco where the meat is finely ground, has been heavily seasoned and is very spicy. I also require a ton of other stuff on the taco-- greatly outweighing the meat portion (lettuce, cheese, sauce, onions). I like a hamburger the same way. Not much meat, a thin patty, with a TON of fixings and a big tasty bun.
So… that’s why I like sausage (but it too must be prepared with a lot of other foods–never by itself), except when I start to think about what is in it. Then I don’t like it any more at all.
A couple other of my “meat oddities”-- I only eat beef or pork (and rarely pork). Absolutely no chicken, turkey or seafood. Weird, I know. Almost the exact opposite of those other “near-vegetarians”.