I have Greek food on the brain. The current infatuation has many diverse origins. For starters this summer is the ten year anniversary of an epic trip through southern Greece, and I have been reading old food notes from the journey. Also I’ll be doing a class on Greek mezze for Metro Continuing Education this fall. With all this in mind last week I made a Greek lamb sausage.
In 2008 I spent five weeks in Greece, eating in tavernas two or three times a day. I don’t think I ever had a sausage like this. In other words this sausage is not traditional, but it is very much inspired by Greek loukaniko, a pork sausage flavoured with orange zest.
This version is made with 100% lamb shoulder, so I figured we may as well go ahead and use lamb casings. And we may as well wrap them up into adorable little coils and skewer them. I never saw this in Greece but it makes for an interesting mezze. And as I wrote here, Canadian Greek food is very much wanting for interest right now.
Greek Lamb Sausage
Ingredients
- 2.270 kgs lamb shoulder – I like Four Whistle lamb
- 35 g kosher salt
- 54 g garlic, minced fine
- 25 g orange zest (I use a zest compound called Perfect Purée)
- 6 g ground black pepper
- 3.6 g allspice
- 2.38 g dried oregano
- 1.8 g cayenne pepper
- 1.17 g bay leaf
- 0.9 g chili flake
- 240 mL chopped parsley
- 220 g ice water
Procedure
- Cut lamb shoulder into 1″ cubes. Mix with salt and spices. Spread onto a sheet tray in a single layer and semi-freeze.
- Grind meat using a 3/16″ plate.
- Transfer mixture to the bowl of a stand-mixer. Add chopped parsley and water. Mix on speed 2 for two minutes.
- Stuff mixture into lamb casings. To make the spirals shown in the photo above, stuff into 19-21 mm lamb casings. Be careful not to over-stuff as spiralling puts a bit of pressure on the contents. Link into 22″ lengths. Cut the links apart. Curl into spiral shape. Set spirals right up against each other on a sheet tray so that they are holding each other in shape. Skewer.
Yield: Approximately 16 spirals