How much Salt should you add to Sausages | Beyond the Recipe

salt is one of the most important ingredients when it comes to making sausage matter of fact you can't make sausage without salt it affects the flavor the texture and in some circumstances it acts as a preservative so here's the million dollar question how much salt should you be adding to your sausage recipe that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today everyone welcome my name is Eric thanks for joining us on another episode of beyond the recipe where we take you past the sausage making recipe to help you become a better sausage maker let's talk about salt salt is added to sausages for lots of reasons number one being flavor salt enhances the flavor of the meat but not enough salt will leave the sausage Bland too much salt makes it not edible salt is also added to sausage for texture there are salt soluble proteins in meat one is called myosin and the other one is called actin and salt helps draw those proteins out of the meat this particular process is known as protein extraction and as you mix your salt with your meat you're extracting these proteins and those proteins are forming a glue like Matrix which gives you that classic sausage texture if you don't add enough salt you don't get enough protein extraction and your sausage becomes like a crumbly hamburger or a meatloaf so what we need to do today is find the perfect balance of flavor and texture where those two elements align harmoniously unfortunately those two components are incredibly subjective so what we're going to do is another food experiment we are going to take six piles of meat each pile is going to weigh one pound and we are going to season them with salt only at different percentages we're going to do zero percent no salt at all half a percent one percent then we're going to do one point five percent two percent and then 2.5 percent we're going to mix them all for two minutes exactly and then we're gonna tear a little piece off and give it a cook once we taste all six of those samples we're going to talk about the flavor and the texture compare each one against each other and we're going to create a bit of a salt Spectrum you know the minimum and maximum amount of salt that you should be adding into your sausage and at the end of this video I'm going to share with you my personal recommendation of what I think the perfect amount of salt is let's get started all right the first test has zero percent salt it's literally just going to be meat and we're going to add five percent water to it we're going to set our timer for two minutes and get to mix it now there are proteins in meat that are salt soluble that are extracted when you add salt and so in this particular case we're not extracting a whole lot of those proteins so you can see right here once we're done mixing after two minutes if I grab just a little handful it just slips right off my hand so we're going to go ahead and take that stick it in the pile and get sample number two we're going to be adding point five percent salt and we're also going to be adding the same amount of water which is five percent water helps loosen the meat up it helps it mix it up a little bit better technically you don't have to add any liquid when you're making sausage but adding five percent does give you a better texture all right so after two minutes of mixing let's take a peek at what this looks like just a very simple grab a pile and turn your hand over test and see how that looks it looks like it's holding just a tiny bit better but it doesn't have that sticky that I'm looking for so let's put that to the side and do sample number three which has one percent salt salt in water in set the timer for two minutes and we are now done so what does it look like let's take it out of the bowl and grab a little handful and see for ourselves now what we should be noticing is the more salt we add the stickier it's going to get at one percent if I hold my hand upside down it holds a little bit better but not really what I'm looking for so let's do sample number four this has one point five percent salt five percent water and once again we're gonna mix it for two minutes I'm loving the way this is getting mixed I mean this is starting to look a little more like sausage meat let's go ahead and turn our hand upside down and give it a bounce we're gonna bounce that for a little while and check that out that is not going anywhere that'll hang there all day long this is a direct result of proper protein extraction let's do sample number five two percent salt same amount of water same amount of mixing time and let's go ahead and give this uh a mix and see if there's any noticeable difference at least in the hand test we're going to be giving all of these a taste here in a second because the more salt you add you know the more you start to affect the flavor not only the texture so there we go that's going to bounce all day and sticky sticky I love it let's do the last sample at 2.5 salt five percent water a two minute mix and this is what she looks like I'm loving that this is well mixed sausage meat let's go ahead and give it a grab and see how it feels feels nice and sticky this actually feels like it's the stickiest batch so far which it should at two and a half percent salt all right let's take all six of these samples break off a little weenie and give it a cook because when it comes to sausages saltiness texture and flavor are all directly related so let's give these a cook and see how it turns out [Applause] good foreign [Music] folks this is what we've all been waiting for five and a half minutes of Hardcore research to get to this one point how much salt should you be adding to your sausage we've got this lined up in the percentage that we added 0.51 1.5 2 and 2.5 and this is what it looks like so the first sample at zero percent salt very crumbly texture it is bound together but pretty loose so that's zero percent salt let's go ahead and grab the next one it is Juicy by the way uh they're all about the same level of juiciness at point five percent salt you also have a very similar texture looks relatively crumbly this one is starting to come together a little bit better it is loose it's also a bit crumbly as far as the way it looks this is at 1.5 percent and it looks like this particular sample is the first sample that actually resembles a well-made sausage so we've got that smooth texture it doesn't look crumbly it looks well bound together very juicy not a problem there so that's at 1.5 percent looking good let's go ahead and grab the two percent sausage and same thing we've got that nice smooth slice very juicy very well bound together which is what we can expect as we go higher in the salt content 2.5 salt delivering the exact same thing okay let's go ahead and just give each one A Taste and see what happens all right let's go ahead and start off with the one that has zero salt in it what we're looking for here is texture and flavor so let's just see what this tastes like mm-hmm okay this sets the Baseline of what we're looking at this has about the same type of texture as you would expect from a hamburger it's juicy but clearly there's no salt in it it is bound together but it's not bound together well and so very easily it will come apart if I pull on it all right our next sample has point five percent salt let's take a bite clear difference between the first and the second sample slightly better flavor and slightly better texture it's a little better bound together in my opinion this still resembles a hamburger just a better made hamburger all right let's look at the third sample this sample has one percent salt let's see what it tastes like okay definitely moving in the right direction I mean the flavor is even more enhanced it's slightly better bound together than versions one and two in my opinion this has graduated from hamburger status and we're now at meatloaf status you know Salisbury steak status uh it has that same type of mouth feel that same type of consistency not quite that smooth texture That Bouncy texture that you typically get in your traditional sausage not bad at one percent much better flavor let's look at the next sample 1.5 percent and this particular sample was the first sample to have a smooth like texture giving all the parameters were the same as you can see here it looks more like a traditional sliced sausage so this sample the next one and the final one at two and a half percent all have that same type of look whereas the first three had more of a crumbly look to it so let's just see how it tastes um okay definitely wow that's really good for this just being salt and pork 1.5 percent I think we're starting to hit a sweet spot I mean this really enhances the flavor of the pork the texture is exactly what you would expect out of a well-made sausage it's got a great mouthfeel it's got a bounciness to it and very well bound together that's one and a half percent let's look at two percent the two percent sausage has the same smooth slice no big deal they are very juicy looking let's go ahead and take a bite huh very interesting so in my opinion the closer we're getting to that two percent so right here at two percent we're getting away from the salt accenting and flavoring the pork and we're getting into that zone where the salt is becoming very present now I wouldn't say two percent is too salty but I certainly wouldn't want to add any other salty ingredients to it let's go ahead and try our third sample at two and a half percent here we go two and a half percent down the hatch oh wow that is incredibly salty I mean the salt presence is overwhelming it is definitely in your face I don't think anyone would enjoy a fresh sausage at two and a half percent so let's talk about what we just learned and how this might apply to the sausages you make at home all right in this video we've talked about a lot of things we've talked about the salt Spectrum which we'll finish talking about here in a minute we've talked about protein extraction and the different salt soluble proteins that are found in meat we've talked about flavor and we've talked about texture and at the heart of all of these issues we have salt now there's one final factor that we haven't really talked about a whole lot that I think is incredibly important when it comes to making sausages at home especially if you're making them for yourself and that is the personal preference Factor well you'd like in a sausage or your dietary needs may be completely different than mine and if you enjoy the sausage that you make at home who am I to argue with that so take what I'm about to tell you with a grain of salt as we talk about the results and then go over the salt Spectrum the first sample had zero percent salt the texture reminded me that of a poorly made hamburger and when it came to flavor and texture they were miles apart we want to bring those two closer to about right here the next sample had 0.5 salt the flavor was slightly enhanced although it still felt very under salted and the texture felt more like a better made hamburger the third sample had one percent salt as far as flavor goes it was definitely improving it wasn't bad for me it felt under salted but if you're on a low sodium diet you might quite enjoy that and the texture was more like a meatloaf texture so not really what I'm looking for in a sausage but that spectrum is definitely getting tighter the fourth sample had 1.5 percent salt and with this particular sample I felt we were a little more dialed in when it came to the saltiness of the pork I didn't feel like it was under salted but at the same time I didn't feel like it needed any more salt as far as the texture goes this particular sample was the first sample that actually gave me that sausage-like texture which means we're able to start pulling enough proteins from the meat to get that Matrix to get that bind to form so we get that nice bouncy mouth feel whenever we eat the sausage the next sample was at two percent and when it came to flavor for me at least I feel like this particular sample was just a hair too salty nothing overwhelming but when I ate it I definitely felt like the salt was a little more present than I would have liked as far as texture goes it was brilliant we had that sausage texture bouncy feel absolutely perfect our last sample had 2.5 salt in it this particular sample was way too salty it was very difficult to eat distracting I felt like I needed to get a big glass of water and it was not a pleasant experience on the other hand the texture was absolutely perfect plenty of protein extraction nice mouthfeel perfect sausage texture so what we have here is a bit of a Goldilocks situation between flavor and texture and I can tell you this when it comes to saltiness of food the older you get the more sensitive you're going to become to how salty something is here's an example if you're less than 35 years old you could probably tolerate food that has a higher salt content and so if you ate a sausage that was a two percent salt sausage you'd probably find it okay you would probably say absolutely perfect don't change a thing but if you're between the ages of 35 and 50 there's a decent chance you might find it a bit salty and you would gravitate towards that 1.6 1.5 percent sausage now if you're over 50 and the more over 50 you are you're probably going to find that 1.5 sausage a bit too salty and you're going to gravitate towards that 1.3 1.2 and so it is a very subjective spectrum and a lot of it has to do with age and you know health concerns and things like that and so when we talk about the amount of salt and sausage take all these things into consideration as we form form that linear Spectrum for minimum and maximum salt content based off of everything we saw here I would say 1.25 salt is about as low as you want to go for sausage I did think that the one percent salt was just a little too low and we were starting to have quality issues and on the other end of the spectrum I would say two percent is about as high as you want to go so anywhere between 1.25 percent and two percent and just remember the lower you go with salt the more the quality of the sausage is going to be affected if you're looking for more of a traditional sausage texture I would start at about 1.5 percent anything above that is going to give you that classic sausage texture at that point you just have to determine you know whether it's salty enough for you personally I'm a 1.5 guy I find that this appeals to the largest audience most people who eat sausage don't have a problem with 1.5 percent and I suggest that if you make this experiment at home start with that and determine for yourself one last thing to remember remember that we're talking about total salt content in your sausage so if you add a curing salt and regular salt you got to make sure that you combine both of those numbers to get the total salt content keep that in mind the next time you make sausage one last little thing if you've been making sausages for quite some time and there's a percentage of salt that you tend to gravitate to in your sausage recipes do me a favor a bit of a social experiment if you don't mind in the comment section below leave me a comment with your age and the percentage of salt that you typically like to use and I'm trying to get to the bottom of this theory that age and perception of salt are directly related I appreciate your help with that thanks for watching this video if you got anything out of it don't forget to give me a great big thumbs up and if you have any questions you know where they go if you're new to sausage baking and you want to level up your game be sure to click that subscribe button in that notification Bell because we cover all things sausages both recipes and Beyond the recipes we'll see you in the next one bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 28,297

Keywords: Celebrate Sausage, Easy Sausage Recipes, sausage, cured meats, meat preservation, pork sausage

Id: 6xuF4wh-V8A

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 25 2023