Lao Sausage
Loa Sausage
This my take on Lao Sausage. Its deeply aromatic and flavored primarily with lemongrass, shallots, kafir lime leaves and garlic.
Ingredients
- 1820 g lean pork (removed from a 6 lb pork butt/shoulder)
- *780 g pork fat back
Aromatics and Spices
- 50 g lemongrass
- 100 g shallots
- 56 g garlic (~16 cloves)
- 100 g scallion
- 5 g Thai chili (~5 chilies + more to taste)
- 7 g white pepper finely ground
- 16 g white granulated sugar
- *4-5 kafir lime leaves finely minced (sub. 8 g lime zest)
- 2 tbsp fish sauce (31 g)
- *2 tbsp padaek (32 g) (sub. 1 tbsp of anchovy paste)
- 6 fl oz water (1 oz per lb of meat/fat mixture)
- 350 g cooked sticky rice (added after sausage is ground)
Instructions
- Place the grinder, blades plates, and tray into the freezer. Buy a 6 pound pork butt/shoulder that is fairly lean and place it and the pork fat back in the freezer for one hour. After an hour, remove the pork butt/shoulder from the freezer. Leave the fat in the freezer. Remove the lean meat from the pork butt/shoulder and slice it into 2 inch cubes. The pork fat back can usually be purchased from a butcher but you can substitute with the skin-off fatty part of pork belly which is traditional. Cut the pork fat back into 2 inch cubes. Place the cubed meat and fat back into the freezer while you prepare the aromatics and spices.
Aromatics and Spices
- Add the aromatics and spices to a strong blender along with the water and blend them until a smooth paste forms. It is important for the binding of the sausage that the particularly tough lemongrass is broken down as much as possible. Cover the meat and fat cubes in this spice paste. Mix the meat and fat together to ensure even distribution. Place the meat and fat cubes back in the freezer for an hour.
- While the meat is chilling in the freezer make the sticky rice. One rice cooker cup yielded approximately 350 g of cooked sticky rice. When the rice is finished allow it to cool completely while covered.
- Take the meat mixture out of the freezer and grind it on the 10 mm (3/8) course grinding plate then immediately grind the meat a final time in the 4.5 mm (3/16) fine grinding plate.
Finishing Steps
- After grinding the sausage use your hands to incorporate the sticky rice evenly throughout the sausage. Ensure that there are no large clumps of sticky rice.
- Next, case the sausage, with a sausage stuffer, link it and use a sausage pricker to poke vent holes through the casing. Place the linked sausages in the refrigerator uncovered overnight to dry out the casing. The next day steam, slice and deep fry or cook over the grill. You can also eat it without a casing and pan fry it into patties. This is traditionally paired with sticky rice and herbs.
Notes
*If you cannot find pork fat back use the fattiest skin-off pork belly you can find. In traditional recipes, fatty pork belly is used in combination with pre ground sausage. I bought my pork fat back at H-mart. By making our own sausage blend we maintain complete control over the end product and ratio of fat in the final sausage. This modernization of the recipe does not in any way imply that one technique is superior to the other. As I love to say, your house, your rules.
*If you can’t find Kafir lime leaf use 8 g of lime zest. Do not microplane the zest because it releases essential oils into the air. Use a y-peeler to remove the zest without any pith.
*Padaek is unfiltered fish sauce. If you are unable to locate it substitute it with 1 tbsp of anchovy paste. This was pretty hard to find and I went to three Asian grocers before locating it.
Several recipes call for oyster sauce, galangal, and cilantro. My version leaves these out intentionally. I wanted the lemongrass, shallot, garlic and fish sauce to shine. Recipes will vary from home to home and this is not intended to be an “authentic” representation of Lao sausage.