More sausage questions.

[hutcho]

So like normal I wait until its too late to order stuff online to start preping for the weekend sausage making.  I have several recipes I'm planning on trying this weekend.  So my questions for the masters are.

1.  Where can you get msg locally? Never looked for it before. Would it hurt to leave it out?

2.  Same thing but with citric acid.  Recipe says its optional but just curious.

3. Last one calls for cure #1 but I am making fresh, so I dont need it right? And I if I did want to go ahead and use cure I could use tender quick (follow the instruction, cant remember amounts offhand) and ditch the salt from the recipe.

4.  Lastly what cheese would you recommend other than high temp? Can I get away with a hard cheddar or maybe pepper jack? Or should I scrap that idea this go round

Thanks for all the help guys!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2

[RedJada]

 I have only made Italian sausage, once, fresh. But I can answer most of your questions.

Questions 1, 2 and 3. check out your local Asian market. As for question 4, Only made sausage once so far and didn't add cheese so I have nothing there. Hope this helps.

[Salmonsmoker]

MSG is available in any grocery store in the spices section. It's called Accent.

[Habanero Smoker]

MSG is a flavor enhancer, you can leave it out. As Salmonsmoker stated you can purchase it at any supermarket under the name of Accent.

Sometimes cure #1 can be used as a "flavoring", such as in hotdogs where it is not only used to extend shelf life, but to give that familiar hotdog flavor. If you want to just make fresh sausage just leave it out. Depending on how much salt is called for in the recipe, you might want to replace the amount of cure #1 with an equal amount of salt by weight. If you want to use TQ, use it at a rate of 1.5 teaspoons per pound, and ditch the salt the recipe calls for.

The citric acid is to provide a tang you get from traditional dry cured sausages, semi-dry sausage, pepperoncini etc. Be careful adding citric acid to your ground meat mixture, too much and it can cause the meat to become mushy. You can leave it out. Local supplies of citric acid would be vitamin C tablets (that will need to be crushed), or Sour Salt which can be found in the Kosher section of your supermarket.

If you don't have high temperature cheese, a hard cheese like cheddar works pretty good. When you get to the semi-hard cheese, they don't hold up as well, but do give the sausage a nice cheese flavor. If you don't have a slicer, get your cheese from the deli, and have him slice it thick. I generally ask for a 1/8" - 1/4" slice. That cuts your dicing time by at least one third.

[hutcho]

I have accent didnt realize thats what it was.  I think I will skip the others since I dont need them.  Thank you guys so much for all the help! This forum is one of the best!!

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