I have an entire section of this website dedicated to wild game sausages, from wild hogs and other animals, but this wild boar sausage is my baseline.
This is a coarse, country-style wild boar sausage recipe that highlights the flavor of the boar. I use only a few herbs for flavoring, which allows the taste of the meat to come through.
Don’t do this recipe with a stanky old boar; use only smaller animals or those with clean-tasting fat. A way to test this is to cut off a piece of fat and fry it in a pan: Does it smell nice? Then make these sausages. If not, make boar chorizo or another heavily spiced sausage.
And yes, you can substitute domestic pork or duck or venison in this recipe just fine.
You do need substantial fat here. I’ve made wild boar sausage many times with just that animal, but sometimes the wild pigs are too lean. In those cases, use farmed pork shoulder to fatten things up.
When I say coarse I mean a final grind with a 6.5 mm die; this is “coarse” on many basic set-ups. If you have the option of multiple dies, as I do, I grind first with a 10 mm die and then again with the 6.5. This makes for a better texture, while remaining rustic.
You’ll see I use metric ingredients in this wild boar sausage, and that’s for precision, so you can get the same results every time. A kitchen scale is less than $20 and worth every penny.
Once made, these will keep a week in the fridge, and they freeze well. If you are making wild boar sausage with thawed meat, my advice is to smoke or poach them until they are fully cooked — internal temperature of 155°F or so — then plunge them into a basin of ice water to stop the cooking.
Doing this will prevent excessive moisture loss when you reheat the sausages later.
New to making sausage? You can find my detailed tutorial on how to make sausages at home here.
Wild Boar Sausage
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 pounds wild hog meat
- 1 1/2 pounds pork shoulder (make sure it's fatty)
- 25 grams sugar
- 34 grams kosher or sea salt
- 10 grams garlic powder
- 10 grams dried thyme
- 15 grams minced fresh rosemary
- 10 grams minced fresh sage
- 1/4 cup ice water
- 1/4 cup white wine
- hog casings
Instructions
- Chill the meat until it is almost frozen by putting it in the freezer for an hour or so. Take out some hog casings and set in a bowl of very warm water.
- Chop meat and fat into 1 inch chunks. Combine the sugar, salt, garlic and herbs with the meat, mix well with your hands and let it rest in the fridge for about an hour, or up to overnight.
- Grind through your meat grinder (you can use a food processor in a pinch, but you will not get a fine texture) using the coarse die, anywhere from 6.5 mm to 8 mm. If your room is warmer than 69°F, set the bowl for the ground meat into another bowl of ice to keep it cold.
- Add the wine and water, then mix thoroughly either using a Kitchenaid on low for 60 to 90 seconds or with your (very clean) hands. This is important to get the sausage to bind properly. Once it is mixed well, put it back in the fridge.
- Stuff the sausage into the casings all at once. Twist off links by pinching the sausage down and twisting and spinning it, first in one direction, and then with the next link, the other direction. Or you could tie them off with butcher's string. (This video shows how I make links.)
- Hang the sausages in a cool place for a few hours (the colder it is, the longer you can hang them). If it is warm out, hang for one hour. Once they have dried a bit, put in the fridge until needed. They will keep for at least a week in the fridge.
- If you are freezing the sausages, wait a day before doing so. This will tighten up the sausages and help them keep their shape in the deep-freeze.
I do NOT like cased sausage. I much prefer to work with sausage as I would minced meat.
Is it necessary to put sausage in casings when making it?
Cheers,
Evan Llewellyn
Evan: No it is not. Feel free to leave the sausage uncased in all of my recipes.