Andouille Sausage Links, Cajun Style
March 21, 2012 | Updated September 04, 2022
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Along with the hot dog, Louisiana andouille sausages are quintessentially American. Here’s a traditional recipe for making them at home.
And like the hot dog, andouille sausage too owes at least part of its origins to Germans, even though with a French name it sounds counterintuitive. So far as I can tell, Louisiana-style andouille sausages are a product of early German immigration — and when I mean early I mean the 1750s, when Louisiana was part of France.
France still has versions of andouille, but the American variety has been evolving independently for centuries, and no longer resembles its ancestors.
What Makes Andouille Unique?
Andouille sausage is a Cajun creation, most at home in southern Louisiana, but it also appears a lot in New Orleans Creole cooking, too. It is almost always smoked and heavily seasoned. Typically andouille is seasoned with garlic, cayenne or other hot chiles, black pepper and usually thyme. Sometimes cooked onions appear in the mix.
Remember, there are as many versions as there are cooks, and Louisianans guard their recipes closely. (Note: If you are looking for that other quintessential Cajun sausage, boudin, my recipe for that is here.)
Andouille is chunky, too. Some cooks hand mince everything and stuff that into casings, which is cool, but very labor intensive. I prefer to hand mince about a quarter of the meat and fat, then grind the rest through a coarse die of about 7 or 8 mm.
The other unique thing about andouille sausage is how it is smoked. In Cajun country, andouille is smoked over spent sugar cane stalks after they’ve been pressed for sugar, hackberry wood or pecan — or a combination of the three. For home cooks, pecan is the easiest to obtain.
What Meat is in Andouille?
Normally andouille is a 100 percent pork sausage, but my homemade version is a mix of venison and pork. Why? It’s what I had lying around in the freezer. Frankly, andouille is so heavily spiced and smoked you can make it with whatever meat you have on hand.
I’ve seen andouille made with rabbit and gator, venison, beef, you name it. Cajuns are resourceful and thrifty. But pork fat is key: I’ve never seen or heard of an andouille sausage that didn’t have pork fat in it, regardless of the other meats.
How to Use Andouille Sausage
There is no reason you can’t just eat an andouille sausage: A link served on a bun with green peppers, minced celery, onions and Creole mustard would be damn good — Cajun hot dog! But it is typically tossed into other dishes, like gumbo or jambalaya.
Andouille shows up as an accent in lots of dishes, from the aforementioned gumbo and jambalaya to courtbullion, etouffée, shrimp and grits and sometimes sauce piquante.
Once smoked, andouille sausage lasts in the fridge a week or so, and it freezes very well. Remember these will be cooked sausages, so once you decide to use your andouille you’ll just be reheating them, not cooking them.
For hunters: If you are starting with frozen wild game, you can thaw it, make these sausages, smoke the links and then refreeze them. So long as you cook them to an internal temperature of at least 150°F, the texture of the sausages will not suffer too much.
Cajun Andouille Sausage
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 pounds venison, pork, beef or other meat
- 1 1/2 pounds pork belly or fatty shoulder
- 33 grams kosher salt, about 3 tablespoons
- 4 grams Instacure No. 1, about a teaspoon
- 3 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
- 2 teaspoons cayenne
- 2 tablespoons sweet paprika
- 2 teaspoons dried thyme
- 1/2 cup ice water or beer (put in fridge to keep it cold)
- Hog casings
Instructions
- Take about 10 to 15 feet of casings (typically three lengths) and submerge them in warm water.
- Cut the meat and fat into chunks and toss with the salt, Instacure, garlic, cayenne, paprika and thyme. You need the Instacure No. 1 as a safety measure when you smoke the links; if you don't plan on smoking them, you need not use this. Put everything in a container and freeze for 30 minutes to 1 hour, or until the mixture is 35°F or colder. You can also put the mix in the fridge overnight; this will help the bind.
- Grind everything through the coarse die, 7 or 8 mm. Andouille is most typically a country-style, coarse sausage. If you want, you can even hand-mince the meat yourself. If you want to do this, hand mince 1/4 of the meat and fat mixture to get a more interesting texture for your sausage.
- Make sure the mixture is very cold, about 30°F; you will probably need to freeze it again for a while. When it's cold enough, take it out and add the chilled water or beer to the bowl and mix on the lowest setting for 90 seconds to 2 minutes, or with your very clean hands for 2 minutes. The look of the meat will change as it binds to itself, and will look more like thick batter than ground meat and fat.
- If you are making patties, you're done. Store each patty between pieces of wax paper and then wrap tightly in plastic wrap, then foil, before freezing. If you are making links, load up a sausage stuffer with the meat and fat. Rinse the casings by running warm water through them: You want to flush some salt and check for any holes in the casings. Thread an entire casing onto the stuffer and fill it slowly. Coil the filled casing as you go. Fill all the casings before making individual links.
- To make individual links, tie off one end of a casing. Compress the sausage inside it to fill that end link. Pinch off a link and flip it away from you several times to tighten it. Move down the coil and pinch down another link. This time, flip the link back toward you to tighten it. (Here's a quick video on making the links) Repeat this process down the coil until you get to the end. Tie off the end link. Repeat with all the other casings.
- Hang your sausages to dry for an hour or more. Hang for 1 to 2 hours at room temperature, or up to overnight where your temperatures are below 45°F. I use a standard clothes drying rack to hang my links. When the sausages are hanging, use a large needle to pierce any spots on the links where there is air trapped underneath. Sterilize the needle in the flames of a gas burner or with a lighter until it glows. You need to pierce any trapped air or your links could burst when you cook them.
- Once the sausages have hung, smoke them over pecan wood for 3 to 4 hours. If you hot-smoke your links, pull them when they reach an internal temperature of 155°F. If your links don't get to that temperature in time, you can either smoke them longer, or you can finish the cooking in an oven set at 200°F. Once they're fully cooked, let them cool before freezing.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
I’m a Cajun from Evangeline parish we audouille made our audouille with hog casting stuffed with hog casing we season it very well no celery ,and they was smoked with hickory or pecan wood ,I love them. Not many Cajun use celery around here,Creole used celery and more spices.we also used the pigs stomach we stuff it some
similar to audouille,I like to add green onions,yellow or white onions, parsley and jalapenos then smoked
I have tried a few recipes and this has got to be the best one. I smoked the links over low heat for 2 hours and then finished them for a hour in the oven at 200 degrees. For my taste I cut the salt to 2 TBS, increased the cayenne, and cut the cloves to 1/4 tsp. Used Beef, Venison and pork. Dark beer made a nice smooth flavor, and the smoke and seasonings were perfect.
This is the best andullie that I have ever eaten. My husband agrees and so does my neighbor who I shared it with.
I made emeril Lagasse,s recipe, buy yours is by far the best.
Thank you for sharing it. I have one question . I seem to have to throw away too much me by trying to remove the silverskin. Does pork butt Oporto shoulder have any less silverskin?
Made the Boudin first. Then I made this Andouille. Never made sausage before but got interested on a trip to South Louisiana this past Spring. Turns out what my father (born in Crowley) called Rice Dressing is basically Boudin stuffing. The Andouille was a lot easier to make and I was a little further up on the learning curve. I popped several links of Boudin while twisting them, only one of the Andouille. I couldn’t resist frying up a couple of patties for quality control. WOW!!! Chicken and Andouille gumbo coming up!
I used the KitchenAid grinder and a “Kitchener” vertical stuffer I got at Northern Tool (yes, Northern Tool). It is identical to the “Lem” sold elsewhere and was half the price. Worked Great!
I made this recipe last week and it is incredible, as is all your stuff ! Toughest part now is being able to keep some for myself after friends and family tasted it. Thank you
Does a certain type of wine or beer matter? For example does using use a Lager, Domestic, or Malt provide a better result? Same question for wine?
You mention Andouille as having a French version. This is a salami type sausage made with veal tripe and pigs intestines, Andouillette is the fresh version, definitely not for everyone you either love them or hate them, personally I love them!
Wow. so happy to have found your website. have had very little success with our home made sausage, but after choosing to try this recipe, and following your instructions to a T, we had great success! Used the appropriate ingredients in our our sausage mix, and had equally good results. Thank you for taking the time to explain the meed for the dry NF milk, cure#1, and added moisture. The sausage was a thing of beauty when I pulled it form the smoker, and when we sampled it, my wife yelled, “This is It’! Everything was spot on moisture, fat content, bind, perfect. really looking forward to making this, and a couple more very soon.
Thanks Again!
The two things that make Andouille distinctive to me are the larger pieces of meat and the sugar cane with pecan and hackberry smoking. This can almost blacken the casing but gives it a delicious flavor. If you don’t have access to the sugar cane you can put some molasses on the smoking wood.
Now to figure out how to make Audad sheep palatable.
Just found your site and started reading. Very interesting. Really enjoyed the comments. Hank, I am from Mississippi but lived in Louisiana for 24 years, and for the last 10 years i live in the Philippines. There is no sausage here eatable so i make my own. I started selling my homemade sausage about 4 years ago and now people are coming from all over the world to get some good Cajun Sausage, it is the best. I have really met some nice people here and they always come back for more sausage .
Made this with javelina. Lots of people don’t eat javelina, claiming it’s not good. Many others say as long as you don’t contaminate the meat with musk, it’s good (although very lean). Most people recommended sausage, as the individual cuts of meat aren’t really big, and they are very lean. This recipe was great, although very spicey, and it was hard to judge what the flavor of the javelina really was. I think I will use the rest of the meat to make a different, less spicey sausage, maybe the juniper and sage. We don’t have a stuffer, made patties. However, I think this recipe with javelina in hog casings would be fantastic!
I just saw a food show that was talking about making andouille saussage with pork belly. It looked amazing! Would this be possible with this recipe? Any changes to the recipe?
from southeast Louisiana. we use left over ham to make andouille and smoke with pear wood. also, we smoke turkey with pecan wood and make andouille and resmoke with aged pecan wood
Thanks for the recipe, Hank. I really like the idea of using beer instead of wine; it seems more authentic. I can’t imagine that my Grandfather’s parents had red wine and that’s probably the last generation of my family that would have made their own sausage- until I started a few years ago. I’m pretty happy with mine and I grind ? of my meat through the coarse die and hand-chop the rest into ¼ inch pieces. Having the actual pieces of meat in there is part of what makes it andouille.
Starriddin, I’m a native also and my Mother used to live in Laplace! I’m in middle Tennessee now so if I want good andouille, I better be looking to make it myself. Thanks for sharing the recipe that is so similar to Jacobs; they are the gold standard I am striving for, too. I used 1 ½ tsp cayenne/ 3 lbs of meat and it had a little zing to it. You are using 3 T cayenne and 1 T pepper flakes/ 5 lbs of meat. That sounds REALLY spicy! I like mine spicy but usually dumb it down a bit to accommodate more delicate palates. How spicy is yours compared to Jacob’s?
Hi Hank,
I live in Laplace, La – the Andouille capital of the world. As a 7th generation Louisianian, I thought I would give you the original recipe.
For 5 Lbs pork butt ground ( traditionally, the pork is cut into 1/2″ cubes, fat included) use 1/2 tbsp Morton’s Tender Quick cure per pound of meat. This is important as Morton’s is about 80% salt and 20% sugar. Do not add additional salt. Add 2 Tbsp red pepper, 1 Tbsp crushed red pepper, 1 and 1/2 tbsp black pepper, 1/2 cup minced garlic, 1 cup dry red wine. That’s it! Mix well and let marinate overnight in the fridge. Stuff into middle Beef casings, not hog casings. Smoke with only Pecan wood and sugarcane if you can get it. It’s okay without the sugarcane. Start with sausage at room temperature and smoker at 130 degrees. Gradually increase the temperature about 10 degrees per hour until the smoker is at 170 degrees. Smoke until meat temperature is 155 degrees. Usually this takes about 9 or 10 hours. Place in ice water bath for 30 minutes.
The old Cajuns were simple folk who rarely had access to more spices than these. This must be cold smoked so the fat does not render. The fat is what flavors the dishes like gumbo and Jambalaya. I make it this way and it is nearly identical to Bailey’s and Jacob’s Andouille, two famous local Andouille shops here in Laplace. I hope you like it!
Just made a batch of andouille with venison yesterday. Came out great. Love the taste. Just one thing…our sausages shriveled up (hog casings) despite dipping them immediately in water after taking them out of the smoker. Is there something we could have done better to prevent this?
Yep. Two things: I find that if your heat is just about 180 degrees or so and you let the links cool after you’re done, they won’t shrink so bad. Your no-fail alternative is to add about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of milk powder to the mix; it’s a professional’s trick. The milk absorbs moisture and helps the links keep it.
I made these yesterday (with goose) and they came out great. I just added them with the spices.
You ought to give Tasso a try. It’s a spicy cajun style smoked ham. That is one of the primary ingredients here for Cajun Cassoulet.
Hey Hank, long time follower and I’m a coonass from Louisiana. I love to cook! You asked for tips on andouille sausages, well traditionally andouille is spiced with cayenne,black pepper, salt garlic and thyme; then it is heavy smoked over Pecan wood and sugar cane stalks. the sugar from the cane coats the sausages and they become almost black. The sugar coating the sausages really sucks up the smoke!
Bob: Yes, you can skip it. Lots of people do, but I like the color and flavor you get by using No. 1, and you get that added safety factor, too.