Potato Sausage with Cracklings in Natural Casing

Mashed potatoes

1. Homemade potato sausage is a simple dish. The filling is made from basic ingredients: potatoes, pork belly, and fatback for cracklings and pork fat. Natural casing is sold in supermarkets, already cleaned and ready to use. Casings come in different diameters, from 10 mm and up. Choose one that fits the sausage stuffing attachment you have.

2. Rinse the casing and check that there are no tears.

   

3. Peel the potatoes and cut them into large wedges. This helps them cook evenly and mash up smoothly.

4. Put the wedges in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil over high heat.

5. Cover the pot and lower the heat so the water simmers visibly but doesn’t bubble hard. Potatoes usually cook in 20-25 minutes; check doneness by piercing them: a knife should go in easily.

   

6. Drain the water, transfer the boiled potatoes to a large bowl and mash them. A hand potato ricer is very handy for this: the mash comes out smooth and lump-free. For the best result, put the mash through the ricer 2-3 times.

7. Let the potatoes cool to room temperature.

   

Cracklings and filling

1. You will need a skillet with a thick bottom, which makes it easier to render the fat out of the fatback.

2. Remove the rind from the fatback and cut it into slices.

3. Heat the skillet, lower the heat to low and lay the slices in it.

4. Turn them often and fry until as much fat as possible has rendered out and the cracklings are crisp. Move the cracklings to a saucer. Don’t pour off the fat: the potato sausage will be fried in it later.

   

5. Cut the pork belly into cubes, about the size you’d cut vegetables for vinegret (Ukrainian beet salad).

6. Fry the belly cubes in the pork fat over medium heat until browned, then move them to a separate saucer too.

   

7. Once the cracklings have cooled, chop them with a knife and mix with the diced belly.

8. Add the belly and cracklings to the bowl of cooled mashed potatoes. Season the mash well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mix thoroughly with a fork.

9. Add pork fat from the skillet a little at a time until the filling is very even and soft and spreads well inside the casing. Keep some of the fat for frying.

   

Stuffing the casing

1. The most interesting and fun stage of making potato sausage is stuffing the casing. Long ago we did it by hand, using a simple wire-loop gadget and pushing the soft filling into the casing with our fingers or a spoon. Today there are plenty of attachments for home meat grinders, and I recommend buying a set.

2. Stuff the casing, but not too tightly, or it will definitely burst. Use your hands to spread the potato inside the casing and control how full it gets.

   

3. Tie the ends of the casing with cotton thread. Note that the thread must be pure cotton: any synthetic fibers will burn during cooking. If the casing has a tear, it makes sense to tie it off there with thread.

4. Coil the sausage into a “snail” and tie it with cotton thread in four directions, otherwise it will be very hard to turn while frying. Slowly lift the coils and pass the thread between them back and forth, so the thread holds the coils together.

   

5. Use a toothpick to carefully prick the casing along its whole length at 5-6 cm intervals.

   You absolutely must prick homemade sausage before boiling or frying. The potato filling is quite moist, and when heated it produces steam, whose pressure will almost certainly burst the casing.

Frying and serving

1. Since the casing is narrow, we don’t poach the sausage with potato and cracklings before frying.

2. Set the skillet with the pork fat left from rendering the fatback over the heat. When the fat is properly hot, add the sausage coiled into a spiral. You can lift it by the thread, by the way: it doesn’t fall apart and the spiral holds its shape well.

   

3. Fry the sausage over medium heat, turning it often, until it is golden on both sides. It helps to brush the sides of the casing with a silicone brush: if there isn’t much fat, it will fry a little worse. If the casing cracks in places, that’s fine.

   As an alternative, you can bake the sausage in the oven: place it on a baking sheet, first generously greasing both the casing and the sheet with fat. Bake at 180°C for about 40 minutes, turning often, until golden. You can also occasionally brush the top of the sausage with fat from the baking sheet.

   

4. Transfer the sausage to a platter or large plate and carefully cut off all the cotton thread.

5. Serve very hot, with fresh bread and drinks to suit the occasion.