Recipe for Saucisson en Brioche

A large sausage baked in brioche dough is a typical product of traditional charcuteries throughout France but is perhaps particularly associated with the area around Lyon. The sausage can be of several kinds, and it’s easy to get bogged down in the fine distinctions between them, forgetting that it is just about impossible to buy a large fresh sausage of any kind in the UK, let alone the right kind. Sausage-making is straightforward, though, so you can choose your preferred style and make your own.

Such sausages are invariably made from 100% meat (apart from seasonings) and contain no rusk. They are usually lightly-cured and only rarely smoked and they are intended to be cooked (usually by simmering in liquid) and eaten within a few days. Saucissons can range from the simplest country sausage made from coarsely cut pork with at least 25% fat content to much more sophisticated mixtures of finely minced meats (sometimes combining pork with beef) with additions such as pistachios or even truffles.

Sausage-meat (chair à saucisse) can be put into hog (pig) casings of about 35-38 mm diameter for use in cassoulet, or into ox (beef) middles of about 50-55 mm diameter for baking en brioche. 500 g of sausage meat in an ox middle casing is ideal for six servings for a hot first course.

I make fairly smooth sausage meat with 100% pork, adding whole pistachios and seasonings. The mixture is lightly-cured over 48 hours and then cooked by gentle poaching for an hour. The cooked sausage is skinned and wrapped in brioche dough while it’s still warm, and then baked in the oven before being cut into serving slices (one or two per serving).

It is well worth becoming familiar with making and baking brioche dough: for wonderful loaves or rolls for breakfast or tea time and the best burger buns or hot dog rolls, see my original recipe, here.

On this page:

• Saucisson de Lyon aux pistaches
• Brioche dough
• Final assembly and baking

Saucisson de Lyon aux pistaches

A Saucisson sec is made like a salami, dried and matured for up to six months for eating raw, thinly sliced, as an hors d’œuvre. This saucisson is different as it is a fresh lightly-cured boiling sausage intended to be cooked and eaten within a few days. The pistachios (which you could omit) give the sliced sausage a very attractive appearance and the nuts add an interesting texture and flavour.

Equipment: for most sausage making, you will need a mincer and a sausage filler. The latter (suitable for occasional use) can be bought online very inexpensively. You also need sausage casings, hog casings being generally the most useful size, but for a large sausage you will need ox middles (or similar). If you are going to confine yourself to fresh sausages for quick consumption, your only other requirement is salt (and other seasonings, depending on the recipe), but for proper semi-cured or fully-cured sausages (and certainly ones that can be air-dried and eaten raw), you will need curing salt – see the notes at the end of this recipe.

Ingredients

• 450 g rindless pork shoulder (with 15-20% fat)
• 50 g shelled and skinned whole pistachio nuts
• 6 g ready-to-use curing salt #1 (see notes)
• 1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
• ¾ tsp whole black peppercorns
• Ox middle casing (about 30 cm)

Method

1. Take a length of sausage casing and wash it thoroughly under a running tap to remove excess salt. Let the casing soak for up to an hour in tepid water to soften it. Have your sausage filler on hand and your meats very well chilled.
2. If your meat was bought with rind, carefully remove it with a sharp knife. Cut the meat and fat into 1-2 cm cubes that you can put through your mincer. If necessary, shell and skin the pistachios. The easiest way to skin them is to drop them into a pan of boiling water for 1 minute and the drain them and straight away put them into very cold water. Then, rub them together in a clean tea towel and the skins will just rub off – and life is too short to worry about any that remain.
3. Select the finest plate supplied with your mincer and mince the meat. If you want a particularly smooth mixture, mince it twice. Coarsely crush the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle and add them to the meat. Crush the garlic clove to a paste with the salt and then thoroughly mix everything together to ensure that the salt is evenly distributed throughout the mixture. Add the whole pistachios and mix again, briefly, to distribute them evenly through the mixture, but be gentle as you want to avoid breaking them.
4. Thread the sausage casing onto the widest nozzle on your sausage filler, leaving a short length free at the end. Fill the filler (mine will need refilling, twice, for this quantity, but it is easy enough and I’ve not felt the need to buy a larger capacity gadget, even though I’ve been making sausages for over 25 years).
5. Fill the casing; the skin doesn’t want to be ready to burst, but do avoid air pockets. Once all the filling is in the casing, use your hands to even out the filling and to compact the ends, so that you have one large sausage of even thickness, with a short length of empty casing at either end. Tie off the ends with kitchen string and trim any excess casing. Put the sausage in a covered dish in the fridge and leave it to cure for 48 hours.
6. Put the cured sausage in a suitable pan, cover it with cold water and bring it to a simmer on the stove. Cook it for 1 hour over very low heat (with just the occasional bubble breaking the surface) and then drain it and let it cool sufficiently so that you can handle it. Carefully remove the casing and while the sausage is still warm, proceed to the final assembly (see below).

Notes on curing salts

1. Since antiquity, saltpetre (potassium nitrate, E 252) has been used with ordinary common salt (sodium chloride) for curing and preserving meat. Old recipes make numerous references to saltpetre, but over the years a better understanding of the chemistry of curing has been acquired, and modern curing methods are based, instead, on the use of sodium nitrite, E 250. The addition of nitrites to curing mixtures is mainly responsible for the pink colour we expect from bacon, ham and salt beef and also contributes to the ‘cured taste’ in the finished product. More importantly, nitrites have an important role in preventing botulism, a very rare but life-threatening condition caused by toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria.
2. Chemically pure nitrites and nitrates are highly toxic and are only used in very low concentrations in food production. In some circumstances (like cooking bacon at high temperatures), the nitrites or nitrates in processed meats have also been linked with carcinogenic nitrosamines, leading to an increased risk of colorectal cancer. Lots of activities come with health risks, and we all have to make our own choices about what we eat, but if you’d like more information on the subject, I’d recommend this article on the BBC website: The truth about the nitrates in your food.
3. For home curing, the easiest way to use sodium nitrite is to buy the curing salt blend known as Prague powder (or Instacure) #1. It’s coloured pink for safety reasons and is also known as pink salt, but it shouldn’t be confused with Himalayan pink salt which is just expensive salt. It consists of 6.25% sodium nitrite mixed with 93.75% common salt and is used at just 2.5 g per kilo of meat, in conjunction with at least ten times its own weight in additional common salt to effect an adequate cure. Prague powder (or Instacure) #1 is used for curing meats that are intended to be cooked before eating.
4. For meat that is intended to be eaten raw (often after a period of air-drying), an alternative mixture called Prague powder (or Instacure) #2 is more appropriate. It has the same 6.25% of sodium nitrite, together with 4.75% of potassium nitrate (saltpetre) – or sometimes sodium nitrate – with the balance of 89% being common salt. The nitrate largely breaks down into nitrite during the curing and subsequent maturation processes and it thus provides extended protection from the risk of botulism.
5. Even though they are already mostly salt, both Prague powders (#1 & #2) must be used in conjunction with additional common salt as the required levels of nitrites/nitrates are really very small. Such mixtures can be easily premixed to have on hand as ready-to-use blends. 100 g of either type of Prague powder contains just 6¼ g of sodium nitrite but is sufficient to cure 40 kg of meat. If you wanted to mix your own curing salt #2 for 1 kg of meat, you would need to be able to weigh out 0.156 g of pure sodium nitrite and 0.119 g of pure potassium nitrate accurately – which is just not practical in a domestic kitchen. However, it’s quite easy to measure 27½ g of a ready-to-use blend that will require no further mixing.
6. I make up my ready-to-use curing salts by thoroughly blending a 500 g pack of common salt with 50 g of Prague powder (either #1 or #2), and labelling the pack clearly. The usage rate is 27½ g per kilo of meat, but I regularly reduce that by up to 50% for semi-cured fresh sausages.
7. If you have a reliable recipe, and weigh your curing salts with reasonable care (never just guess), you can’t go far wrong.

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Brioche Dough

This method uses brioche dough as though it were pastry. If you are making this dish for lunch, either start the dough very early in the morning or make it during the evening of the preceding day, keeping it in the fridge overnight.

Ingredients

• 200g strong white bread flour
• 100g butter
• 2 large eggs + 2 tbsp (30 ml) milk
• 1 tsp (4 g) ‘easy bake’ or instant dried yeast
• ½ tsp salt (¼ tsp if the butter is already salted)

Method

1. Break the eggs and beat lightly, setting aside 1 tsp (which you should mix with a splash of milk) for glazing the dough just before it goes into the oven.
2. Rub the butter into the flour (I mix mine with the K-beater of my Kenwood Chef stand mixer) until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add the eggs, milk, yeast and salt. Mix at a moderate speed for five minutes. If the dough forms up around the beater, stop the mixer, scrape it off and switch to a dough hook. It starts out looking like a stiff cake mix, but as the gluten strands form during mixing, you’ll see the change in the dough. Once the dough is mixed, gather everything into a ball of smooth, stretchy, dough.
3. Cover the dough and leave the bowl in a warmish place (20°C to 25°C) for 2-3 hours, or until the dough has doubled in volume.
4. Mix or knead the dough again briefly and then put it back into its covered bowl and refrigerate it for 3-4 hours (and up to 18 hours). Take the chilled dough out of the fridge, but still covered in its bowl, 1 hour before you are going to use it.

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Final Assembly and Baking

1. Preheat your oven to 190°C. Put a heavy baking sheet into the oven to heat up too.
2. The sausage should be warm (not hot) when it is wrapped in the cool (not cold) dough. On a floured surface, pat the dough into a rectangular shape and then roll it, quite thickly, until it is the right size to wrap right around the sausage with a small overlap at the join.
3. Sprinkle the sausage all over with a little flour and place it in the middle of the dough, bringing the sides together over the top of the sausage. Wet the join with you fingers (or a pastry brush) dipped in water and gently press or pinch the overlap to seal in the sausage. Turn it over, so that the join is on the bottom, and place it on a sheet of greaseproof paper or baking parchment. Take care not to stretch the dough over the sausage, or it may split in the baking. Fold and seal the ends neatly, and then leave the dough to prove for about 15 minutes (helped by the warmth of the sausage).
4. Just before you put the sausage into the oven to bake, brush it all over with the reserved egg/milk wash (or better still, if you have any handy, a little pouring cream). Slide the sausage, still on its paper, onto the hot baking tray and set it in the oven to bake for about 30 minutes.
5. Once it is out of the oven, let it stand for 5 minutes, and then trim off the pastry ends to expose the sausage inside, and then divide what remains into thick slices for serving on warmed plates. The brioche should be moist and rich, and the sausage heated through and succulent. It doesn’t really require any sauce or other embellishment, but a sauce made with a brown roux and the reduced sausage poaching liquid could be served, if liked (a suggestion from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, v2 (1970) by Julia Child & Simone Beck).

Note

• Exactly the same assembly method, enclosing a seared but very rare fillet steak, together with a well-seasoned duxelles of mushrooms (rather than a cooked saucisson), makes the best Filet de bœuf en croûte. The brioche dough bakes properly, whereas puff pastry never rises as it should, and it’s a shame to spoil such expensive ingredients.

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This is the second article in a short series devoted to French pork cookery. The others include recipes for Rillettes & Rillons and for Cassoulet.