Dateline: September 7, 2020 Boar Sweet Italian Sausage and Gazpacho

Today was the day that I am making boar sausage.  I used a conglomeration of recipes so I will provide links and details below.

I ordered the boar from D'artagnan and got 2 shoulder roasts each about 3 lbs.  I cut them up into 1 inch cubes and I also added 1.5 lbs of salt pork for the fat.  This was an experiment in terms of using the salt pork rather than the fat back.  Why I wanted to save the fat back is a mystery to me at this moment!

I had 2 very fatty packages of salt pork and decided that they would be the best.  I soaked them for about an hour to cancel some of the salinity.  I cut a thin piece and fried it up to gauge the salt level, and it was about the same as bacon, maybe even less.  I cut the salt back by half until I tasted a patty.  It needed the rest of the salt.  In it went in the emulsifying stage, along with chopped parsley and sage.

Sweet Italian Sausage, from Hank Shaw, was the major recipe of choice, and I used a bit of cure #1 because I am going to smoke them.

My additions to his excellent recipe was the chopped sage leaves, 1 tsp instacure #1, only used a coarse grind, and about 1 cup of chilled white wine.

Here they are resting to dry the casings a bit.  The 5.5 lbs of meat and 1.5 lbs of fat yielded 24 nice sausages.

They smoked up beautifully.  They actually smell more like kielbasa than italian sweets!  They are on the menu tonight!

Grilled it up last night.  Delicious.  A wonderful cross pollination between kielbasa and sweet italian.  The texture was very coarse and crumbly.  I think that was because I didn't have enough fat, or didn't emulsify it long enough by hand.  The flavor was good, it was the texture that was ok, but was looking for something less crumbly.  It is a learning process.

Served it with crispy grilled okra and a fantastic gazpacho.  This is truly a fabulous recipe.  I did make some alterations, of course!  I used some bread soaked in the vinegar, as per a suggestion from another user, added a handful of mixed herbs, parsley, chives, basil, and did not strain.  Used the vitamix and the texture was like a mousse, velvety and smooth without a trace of any fibrous bits.  Garnished with some chopped veggies, a lovely end of summer slice of heaven this meal was.