I’ve got these pork burgers that taste like uncased pork sausage without the spices. They seem to be sweetened, like breakfast sausage sometimes is.
What I’m wanting to know is, what can I put on them to make them more sausage tasting? I tire of their generic flavor. I keep trying stuff, but nothing seems to really work.
Also, is there any secret to getting the spices to “stick”? I can get them to stick with my hamburgers, but it seems to roll off the pork sausage.
(My dad works at a grocery supply store. We get a lot of meat like this that is being test marketedor can’t be sold for some fairly innocuous reason. It costs a bit, but much less than going to the actual grocery store.)
I guess it depends on what KIND of sausage you want the ground pork to taste like. If you want Italian pork flavor, fennel seeds would be the key ingredient.
If you want pork burgers to taste like sausages, why don’t you just make them into uncased sausages? I mean, I assume these are just ground pork patties, right? Mix 'em all up together with some spices, and reform the patties. I mean, I guess at that point, might as well just get ground pork shoulder.
QFT. I’m way too lazy to grind my own pork, so I use pre-ground pork. Don’t have my exact formula for a basic chile-fennel sausage in my head, but for an Italian-style sausage like you’d get at the supermarket next to the ground turkey, don’t skimp on the amounts of whatever flavors you want, and I like to add a small amount of cold vinegar and water. Then beat it up real good with a spoon or your hands (the “primary bind”) and you’re ready as you’ll ever be.
Add salt, pepper, onion, garlic, and bread crumbs or bone meal. Add anything else that you think tastes good. If it’s very lean ground pork, skip the crumbs or meal.
Oop, now I see you are trying to season pre-made burgers. Spray with Pam or smear with oil to hold the spices on. If you have the time, season them and let them sit in the fridge to absorb the seasonings.
You could curry or gulash them… traditional spices, garlic, a bit of tomato and Pepper or Paprika, fresh and powdered. Maybe cook the premade pork pattie on the grill and finish them “salisbury style” in a goulash base-- lot’s of fresh red bell pepper and red chile, with a base of paprika, garlic, onion, tomato paste and stock of some type… serve them as “wet” burgers on toasted onion kaiser rolls, very simply. Maybe some bacon and smoked cheese to top. Hunky Burger.
Thanks, guys. This is some good stuff. I never even considered making my own sausage–should I refreeze them after I make them, so they’ll stay together?
And, yes, I know that there are different types of sausage. I was thinking something like breakfast sausage, since they are already sweet, but I’m open to all kinds. And that gulash idea sounds awesome.
I may need to tell you one thing: I don’t have a functioning oven. This is pretty much going to be stove top cooking. I can do a faux grill thing, but pan cooking is the easiest. I still want some of the convenience of premade food.
My problem with spices is that I’m new to them and don’t really know what spices are in my favorite foods. So tell me what spices you like. It’s generally impossible for me to make food I can’t eat, unless it’s too spicy. I’m willing to experiment. (Although I have a limited supply of burgers now, probably only 7 or so left.)
take the ground pork, mix it up with un-cased sausage, chopped ham and bacon. spice it up with minced garlic and onion, salt, pepper, a little chili powder, dash of strong vinegar.
For breakfast: sage, rosemary (rosemary oil is used in a lot of commercial preps), and maybe a touch of maple syrup or maple flavoring, and a bit of liquid smoke. Paprika and pepper can’t hurt.
Haven’t done this myself, but allspice is another thought. Stay away from garlic or onion.
Okay, so I apparently don’t have a lot of these spices, so no trying them today. But I did try pulverising it to get the seasoning to stick. Like I said, I’ve been seasoning them without any luck.
I also avoided garlic and onions, and tried this raspberry chipotle seasoning, along with sage, pepper and salt and salt. Still, the sweetness of the patties overwhelmed the spices (And I thought I put a lot). I doctored it up after the fact with onion powder and, of all things, cinnamon. That last thing finally seemed to work with the sweetness.
I’ll hopefully try other suggestions when I can get some spices from the store. But apparently I am going to have to step up how much I put in them, or just wind up adding everything after cooking is done.
You mean money-wise? I get mine for $0.99 per pound, it seems to be about 75-80% fat, in a fairly coarse grind. It’s not as good as pork shoulder, but it’s fine. Where I live, the cheapest ground loose sausage is about $3.49 or so per pound.
I guess you’d have to include the spices in the price. Fennel seed is the only thing I can see as being somewhat costly – dried whole chiles are cheap and easily ground to powder, salt is cheap, garlic powder if desired is cheap in quantity, things like sugar and red wine vinegar if wanted are probably already in the cupboard and wouldn’t be missed in sausage-making quantities. That’s just for a generic “Spicy Italian” type sausage.
Italian sausage is good, but I was thinking more along the lines of American breakfas sausage. I’ve used “Jimmy Dean” and other brands to make a savory burger-like snack that wasn’t just another hamburger. I’d like to try my hand at making beef sausage as well. I have a new apartment and would like to see just how creative I can get with my new food processor.
Sausage is not that difficult to make. It’s best if you have your own grinder so you can control every aspect of its making, but it’s not necessary. You can even just buy ready made seasoning kits, if you don’t feel like dealing with portioning out the spices yourself.
It’s also nice to have an accurate scale. I use two scales: one that has tenth of a gram resolution (for my spices), and one that has something like 5 or 10g resolution (for bulkier quantities, like the meat). The main number you have to remember is you want salt at about 2-2.5% of the weight of your meat.