Rokas Vasiliauskas sausages
Before taking over the leadership of 14Horses restaurant, head chef Rokas Vasiliauskas took time off from the professional kitchen to master the butcher’s skills. Rokas crafts his dishes with respect to an animal and its parts.
At the LRT program “Beatos virtuvė”, chef Rokas Vasiliauskas shares his tips on how to tell a quality cut of meat and shows how to make everyone’s favourite dish – simple beef sausages. At his side – the host of the show Beata Nicholson.
Find the recording of the program below.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg ground beef (chuck, breast)
- 200 ml water
- 5 gr dried garlic
- a handful of fresh thyme and parsley
- 5 gr dried onions
- 5 gr dried sweet paprika
- 5 gr dried coriander
- 5 gr dried carraway seeds
- 10 gr sugar
- black pepper
- 23 gr salt
- sheep intestines for stuffing
Preparation
1. Make the mixture of meat that will hold the sausage together. Ground part of the meat 3-4 times or blend in the blender with water. Add generous helpings of spices and flavourings – dried onion and garlic, sweet paprika, coriander, carraway. Add chopped thyme and parsley. Mix in sugar, salt and freshly ground pepper.
2. Add the rest of the ground meat and mix well.
Sausages are great dish to use up cheaper cut of meat, such as chuck or breast.
Tips from Rokas:
- Meat has to have 20-30% fat content for softer, more moist sausages.
- Add some water for moisture.
- The sausage meat must have something that holds it together. For this recipe, I have repeatedly ground a part of beef (3-4 times). You can use the blender as well.
- If you choose to use dried garlic and onion, the sausages will keep longer in the fridge.
3. Put the intestines on a sausage maker attachment and slowly stuff them with a meat mixture to form a long sausage.
4. While twisting, form 20 cm long smaller sausages and leave them to rest for 2-3 hours in the fridge.
5. Grill them the same as you would grill a piece of steak: on hot coals 2-3 minutes per side. Let rest. Enjoy!
