Makes about 15–20 sausages

The Toulouse is one of our favourite sausages. It relies on great pork. Old-breeds are best for this sausage as there is no fat added to the minced shoulder. It’s just tasty pork with a little bit of technique involved, which highlights the pleasure and simplicity of making your own sausages. Be mindful of the amount of nutmeg you add to flavour these sausages, as too much will create numbness on the palate.

1 full-length natural hog casing

2 kg (4 lb 8 oz) old-breed free-range pork shoulder, skin off (see note)

20 g (¾ oz) pure sea salt

1 tablespoon ground white pepper

1 pinch ground nutmeg

Soak the sausage casing in cold water for 1 hour, then rinse it well inside and out. Thread the casing onto the sausage nozzle, put it onto a plate and keep in the refrigerator.

Remove the sanitised mincer parts from the freezer and assemble the mincer as per the manufacturer’s instructions. Cut the meat into pieces small enough to grind through the mincer. Using a medium-sized disc, grind the meat into a non-reactive bowl that has been sanitised and kept in the freezer.

Wash and sanitise your hands (some people prefer to use gloves, but we think you can lose the feel of what you are doing, and with sausage making that is important). Combine the ground meat with the salt, pepper and nutmeg. Place in the refrigerator.

Fill the bowl of the sausage cannon with the mixture — be careful not to leave any air pockets as this will create air pockets in the sausages, which you want to avoid. Attach the nozzle to the end of the sausage cannon. Tie a knot at the end of the casing, pumping the mixture out of the end of the nozzle before you tie the knot as this will also stop air pockets from forming. Slowly start to crank the cannon and fill the casing to make sausages. Be careful not to overfill or underfill the casing — overfill and you will break the casing every time you twist it to form links; underfill it and you will be left with baggy snag bags. It gets much easier with practice.

Guide the casing out of the cannon using your thumb and forefinger onto a clean work surface as it fills. Once it has finished, massage the sausage to ensure that it is filled evenly. From the end that is tied, twist the filled casing at 13 cm (5 inch) intervals to make individual sausages. Once you come to the end, tie the final knot. Hang the sausages overnight in a coolroom or the refrigerator to set. Use within a couple of days or wrap tightly in plastic wrap and freeze.

NOTE: If you haven’t got your hands on some old-breed pork with a good ratio of fat to meat (fat would be about 15–20%), you will need to replace some meat with minced pork back fat.

VARIATION: You can also make Tuscan pork and fennel sausages by omitting the nutmeg and replacing it with 1 tablespoon ground fennel and 1 tablespoon fennel seeds.