Fritz!

My wife recently came home from a trip to Adelaide with a complete bung of fritz! Yay! I was trying to explain this to someone today, and while looking on the internet found this recipe from the ABC’s The Cook and the Chef. If I can findte required “1 length wide sheep bung sausage casing”, I will have to give this home cooked version a go!

Ingredients
1 length wide sheep bung sausage casing
100g of salt to clean the casings
2 lemons juiced to soak the casings

75g onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon dried marjoram, crumbled
¼ teaspoon ground mace
½ teaspoon mustard powder
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon freshly-ground white pepper
1 large egg white
1½ teaspoons sugar
15 to 20g sea salt (the correct small good ratio of salt would be 2 per cent of the meat volume which is 20g, I find this a little high but if you are after a real smallgood flavour use the 20g)
60ml cream
450g lean pork, cubed, and kept on ice
340g lean beef, cubed and kept on ice
200g pork fat, cubed and kept on ice (somewhere between 20 and 30% of fat to meat ratio depending on your taste)
String

Method
Salt down the sheep bung for a day or two in 100g of salt (this draws out impurity’s and the associated stinky smell) Rinse several times and then soak the pig casings overnight in lemon juice nd water.
You can buy a synthetic casing if this is too daunting!

Combine the onion, garlic, and spices in a food processor and blend to a smooth paste. Add the pepper, egg white, sugar, salt and combine thoroughly.

Put all the pieces of the mincer on ice or in the fridge to really cool them down then and fit together. Mince the pork, beef and pork fat through the medium blades of a meat mincer. Pass through the mincer again using the fine blades to get it as fine as possible, keeping the meat as cold as possible.
Add the seasoning puréed onion spices etc, from step one to the mincer and flush through, adding a little ice at the end to really clean it out.

Mix the mixture together and add cream, check for seasoning. If the meat has got warm, cover the bowl and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. If you want a really fine creamy texture, push through a fine drum seive. The mixture should feel a little sticky in your hands if the mincer has worked the proteins; if not, slap it lightly against the sides of a bowl until it feels slightly sticky and clings to your hands. This is necessary protein binding which will hold your fritz together and prevent it crumbling when cooked.

Attach casing to sausage maker, and feed the sausage mix through until you get the desired shape and length (be careful not to overfill). Or use a piping bag and a second person, and push the mix into the casing making sure that you have got all the air pockets out.

Tie the end of the casing using string, then take the string and loop around the other end to take the pressure off the first tie and make a loop that you can use to suspend the sausage in the water so that you don’t get a flat spot. (if you don’t understand this, check out the way fritz is tied at your butcher).

Place in a large pan of gently-simmering water and parboil at about 80C for 20-40 minutes depending upon the thickness.

Immediately take out of the simmering water and place in to a bowl of iced water. Cool completely. Slice thinly (the fritz will not appear as pink as a commercial product because of the lack of nitrite salt which is used to preserve colour and is a common additive in some smallgoods).

Serve with fresh bread and tomato relish, you can fry the slices of fritz if you want an extra dimension to the flavour.

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6 Responses to Fritz!

  1. Well, David, while I realise that ‘de gustibus non est disputandum’, I just have to say that Fritz tastes as bad as it looks. How can you possibly justify eating this stuff? (OK, I’ll understand maintaining your cultural identity, but otherwise…)

  2. matthias says:

    I take it Schutz that this is a Barossa/Australian Lutheran recipe. I ‘ll stick to Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding-thanks,or tandoori chicken and saffron rice

  3. Sharon says:

    For a Lenten penance it mightn’t be too bad.

  4. David Schutz says:

    Yep, Matthias, pure Barossa Deutsch!

    And Sharon, I felt guilty eating such a delicacy in Lent!

  5. An Liaig says:

    David,

    Indeed you should feel guilty. Excess in self mortification is to be avoided!

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