Merguez: The Sausage of Magical Realism

My friend Phil is a sausage-virgin who's never handled intestine, and the whole process seemed a bit mysterious to him. So last night he came over to see how it's done, bringing along many beers as well as his nice camera to document the process.

We decided to make merguez, which is the spicy lamb and/or beef sausage of North African cuisine, where it's usually served with couscous. According to Wikipedia, the word "merguez" might have developed from the Berber word "amergaz," meaning "sausage," which is interesting because it suggests that once they invented this baby, they thought they had reached perfection and named it after the contraption itself.

As we all know, however, there is no such thing as a perfect sausage, even if the quest for it is what animates us to keep loading up the KitchenAid. But a well-made and properly spiced Merguez is still a singular pleasure, and should be in every sausage-maker's repertoire.

In order to make it truly our own, we avoided buying pre-mixed spices such as harissa, and instead went to town on the spice cabinet. Here's what we put in there:

• – 1 kg mixed lamb and beef
• – ground coriander
• – cayenne pepper
• – ground ginger
• – nutmeg
• – cinnamon
• – cloves
• – cumin
• – ground and smoked red pepper
• – fresh cilantro, chopped
• – salt and pepper
• – AND, just because it was right there, next to the mix, some apricot beer

The result were delicious, with Phil proclaiming that it was his ideal merguez. We couldn't really taste the beer, but the different spices were all prominent and nicely balanced. We ate them with couscous flavored with onions, carrots, tomatoes, parsly, cilantro, and lemon balm.

Below are some pictures, complete with close-ups of important steps.

Intestine. It's cheap.

Meat and spices.

Adding the beer.

Action shot.

It looks more ominous than it is.

Finding the opening of the intestine. This is not the same as the asshole.

Loading the intestine.

3 meters of it, all in one hand.

Fun!

Ready to stuff.

The first little sausage. The knot should be tied after filling some intestine, in order to avoid too much air in there.

Stuffing.

In deep.

Always make a lot.

After stuffing it's time to twist, and then cut. 

Fry at medium heat.

Duck Sausages with Blue Cheese, Walnuts and Pears

I made these sausages with my friend Matt a few months ago, when he came to visit from Toronto with his family, and I thought they would make a good first post. I've made sausages with Matt several times, and he shares my enthusiasm for intestine and other interesting animal parts, such a fried cartilage and mystery goo.

For this particular round, we decided to finally experiment with making duck sausages, after having talked about it often. Being new to the duck sausage game, we asked the butcher, who told us to use half duck and half beef, since duck meat is so fatty. So we had him bone some duck thighs for us, and we then ground it with approximately as much extra lean beef. 

Notice the slightly undercooked center.

Here's a list of the ingredients:

– Half boned duck thighs
– Half extra lean beef
– Crumbled blue cheese
– Chopped walnuts
– Chopped pears
– A splash of Sortilège (a Canadian liqueur made from whiskey and maple syrup), just for fun
– Salt and pepper

The walnut and pear pieces kept getting stuck in the grinder during the stuffing process, and every so often we had to disassemble it and clean out the mess of duck fat and mashed up pears and nuts. In order to avoid this, chopping them as finely as possible is clearly a good idea.

The combination of blue cheese, walnuts and pears with the dark and flavorful duck meat turned out delicious, and the sausages had exactly the right meat to fat ratio. The blue cheese, especially, complemented the meat well, and added a nice melted-cheese texture. We were not sure if we could taste the Sortilège, aside from it maybe adding a certain sweetness.

There was enough left over to put a few in the freezer, and subsequent experiments have revealed that they're at their best if not fried for too long so as to remain slightly rare in the center, as can be seen in the picture above.

The serious sausage-lover will notice something a little off about this picture: Clearly the two other sausages are made from pork and not duck. The explanation is that we forgot to take pictures the first time around, and that this is from a later sampling of the freezer's many different kinds of sausage, including the one from this post. Serving up four different kinds of home-made sausage impresses the hell out of the girls, by the way.