Kosher Sausages

Kosher sausages conform to the same manufacturing rules as other sausages, the difference lies in meat selection.

The meat selection is pretty much defined by the Jewish Bible:

• You may eat any animal that has a split hoof and chews the cud: the cow, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the antelope. The camel, rabbit and coney can not be eaten.
• Of all the creatures living in the water, you may eat any that has fins and scales. That means no eels, oysters or lobsters.
• You may eat all clean birds: chicken, poultry. Eating birds of prey such as eagles, falcons, or nighthawks is not permitted.
• Pork is not permitted; that includes pork fat, which is normally added to venison, poultry, or fish sausages. This puts certain limitations on the recipe as pork back fat is a superior ingredient that is added to most quality products.
• Beef is the material of choice; it has great water-holding properties and binds meat and ingredients well together. Its meat contains a lot of myoglobin and develops a strong dark red color when treated with sodium nitrite.

This forces you to improvise, but there are a few choices:

• Beef or lamb fat (suet).
• An emulsified olive oil at about 10%. Flax oil, sunflower oil. or a mixture of both can be used at 6% or less. Otherwise, there will be a noticeable change in flavor. Adding oils will lighten up the sausage.

Avoid adding lamb or venison fat as they don’t taste right. Chicken fat tastes good; the only problem is that it melts at room temperature, and you may end up with pockets of melted fat inside your sausage. An old remedy is to massage sausage with fingers during cooling occasionally.

Adding vegetable or olive oil is a good choice; as long as you don’t add more than 25%, the sausage will be of acceptable quality. Emulsifying olive oil with soy protein isolate is a great idea as it helps bind the ingredients together and increases its protein content. Sausages made with oil are lighter in color than those made with solid fat. Poultry fats melt at lower temperatures than meat fats and become liquid during processing. This may cause fat separation during processing and create fat pockets. Adding an emulsifier such as soy protein or caseinate will reduce the problem.

Kosher head cheese and meat jelly are easily made. Chicken and fish look extremely attractive and taste wonderful when added to the naturally made clarified stock. It is easier to produce a natural chicken gelatin when chicken claws are added to meat broth. Concentrated chicken broth takes the first place in nutritional value compared with broths from other meats. It is also distinguished by its pleasant flavor.

To produce aspic (gelatin) from fish stock, we need fish parts that contain collagen (skin, bone and fins). When slowly cooked in a little water, they produce rich in gelatin broth. This implies that after filleting the fish, the rest of the body, with the head included, is added to the pot.

You should be able to modify any recipe so that it conforms to the requirements of Jewish rules and tradition. /p>