A good sausage, despite what you may have heard, eaten or read, is made from good meat. It isn’t a hospital, and no meat going into a sausage is going to get better simply by being put in a casing. That said, you can finely mince up some harder-to-use bits to make very good products, but bland, watery, lean factory farmed meat won’t ever make a very good banger.
We like to use old-breed meats, particularly pork, for its flavour. Berkshire has a really wonderful porky taste. Wessex Saddlebacks have a luscious sweet flavour and plenty of fat. We also think free-range pigs, which are slower growing, are a cut above. The best result comes if the meat is both from an old breed and free range.
A good sausage, in our view, doesn’t have fillers such as rice flour or gluten. It doesn’t have binders or emulsifiers, and certainly doesn’t have preservatives (though a salami may benefit from some special curing salt). A good sausage tastes of the animal from which it came; meaty, yet more complex than a simple roast; rich with enough fat to make it moist without being greasy; and always delicately seasoned to let the true taste of good-quality meat shine through. The best-flavoured meat for sausages is shoulder — a working muscle that is good minced. Invest in a quality mincer before you start.