Korean Bulgogi Sausage

Are you ready for something fun? This recipe is an adaptation of a recipe I got from the You Tube Channel Our Final Freezer. The spirit behind this sausage is simply incredible and really opens the door for countless possibilities.

Korean Bulgogi is a classic beef stir fried dish. Generally the beef is thinly sliced, marinated in a sugar, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce mixture overnight then stir fried. This dish is incredibly delicious.

To turn a recipe into a sausage there are a few rules we must follow. First and foremost we must remember the most important rule of sausage making. The meat is the star!! This means we do not want to overload the recipe so much that we take away from the star of the show…. The Meat.

Secondly we must remember to portion our ingredients accordingly. Too much of any one ingredient will throw the balance off completely. When it comes to salt we want to stay around 1.6% – 1.8% of the weight of the meat. This will give us a nice bind and not make the meat too salty. As far as sugar is concerned we want to stay around 1.5% or lower (it’s up to you).

This recipe uses soy sauce as the salt so we need to understand how to determine how much soy sauce to add in order to have 1.8% salt content. The easiest way is to follow my recipe below as I’ve already figured it out for you but if you want to jot this down for future use let me show you how I figure it out. Let’s start by looking at a label for Kikkoman Soy Sauce

There are 2 things you need to know. The amount of sodium and the serving size. You will see that the amount of sodium is 960mg and the serving size is 1 Tablespoon. With that information here’s what you need to do.

Multiply the amount of sodium by 2.5 then divide that answer by 1000. The final answer will be how many grams of salt in every serving size (in this case it’s a Tablespoon). So lets work the formula:

960 (sodium) X 2.5 = 2,400
2,400/1000 = 2.4
ANSWER: 2.4 grams of salt in every tablespoon

So if you have 1000g of meat/fat and you need 1.8% salt, you will need a total of 18 grams of salt. Using this brand of soy sauce where every tablespoon has 2.4 grams of salt you will need a total of 7.5 tablespoons (or 18 grams salt) in your recipe. Make sense?

Now for the curve ball. Remember when I said in the beginning about balancing the ingredients. In the example above if we add 7.5 tablespoons (1/2 cup) of soy sauce to 1000g of meat it will overwhelm this sausage with too much liquid. Here’s how you can compensate for that. Instead of adding 7.5 Tablespoons of soy sauce we will add 4 tablespoons of soy sauce (9.6 grams of salt) and then add kosher salt to make up the difference. In this case it would be 8.4 grams of kosher salt giving us a total of 18 grams of salt or 1.8%.

This method allows us the opportunity to use liquid ingredients as seasonings (fish sauce, shrimp paste, soy sauce). Just remember that we don’t want to add more than 1/4 cup of liquid per kilo of meat used. If we add too much liquid our sausage won’t turn out right and the texture will be all messed up….

In my recipe below I’ve already calculated the amounts necessary but If you have any questions about this formula be sure to leave them in the comment section below.

Follow basic sausage preparation practices when making this sausage.

1. Clean and Sanitize all of your equipment.
2. Keep your meat and grinder parts super cold (below 34F)
3. Any liquid that is added to the mince needs to be ice cold
4. Mix your very chilled meat and seasonings till the mince becomes very tacky
5. Form sausage patties or stuff the mince into sausage casings and prick out any air pockets
6. Cook till the internal temperature reaches 155F

Here are a few things you might find useful when making sausage

• High Quality Natural Casings (AA Grade)
• Iodophor Sanitizer
• MK4 Thermapen (Accurate Thermometer)
• Chef Knife – KOTAI
• Boning Knife
• Sausage Pricker
• Iwatani Professional Chef Torch
• Non Fat Dry Milk Powder
• Meat Grinders
• Meat Mixers
• Sausage Stuffers
• Smokers
• Bella’s Cold Smoke Generator

Enjoy the video and the recipe. If you have any questions feel free to ask away. If you make this at home I’d love to hear about how it came out!!

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