This South African fresh sausage literally translates to “Farmers Sausage”. This sausage gets it’s incredible flavor from the coriander, vinegar, salt, and other unique spices. Boerewors almost always contains beef but can also have pork and/or lamb in it with a 30% fat content. This sausage is cooked over a BBQ till the internal temp reaches 150F – 155F. My BBQ pit had an unfortunate accident so I had to improvise.
This farmers sausage has a unique style of preparation that requires very little mixing. Unlike traditional sausage where the mince is mixed so that it is very sticky with no air pockets, this sausage is rather gently mixed if you have air pockets in your mince that’s ok. I’ve even heard that crushed ice is added to the sausage to create small air pockets as the ice melts (maybe someone out there can verify that for me).
After the liquids and spices are gently mixed the meat is placed into the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. After this resting period it’s time to stuff your sausage and form into a coil. I actually place my coiled sausage back into the refrigerator uncovered so that the casings can dry out a bit and the sausage can continue to develop in flavor.
To cook this sausage toss on a BBQ grill and heat till the internal temp reaches 150F -155F. Enjoy.
Here are a few things you might find useful when making sausage
- Book: Charcuterie For Dummies
- High Quality Natural Casings (AA Grade)
- Iodophor Sanitizer
- MK4 Thermapen (Accurate Thermometer)
- Chef Knife – KOTAI
- Boning Knife
- Insta Cure #1
- Potato Starch
- Sausage Stuffers
- Meat Grinder
- Bella’s Cold Smoke Generator
If you are looking for a good book that really simplifies the process of making sausage and other charcuterie I have to recommend the book Charcuterie for Dummies by Mark LaFay. In todays video we not only get to make South African Boerewors but we get to talk to Mark LaFay about his book, his favorite sausage, and his “Golden Rule” for sausage making. It’s a great book to have if you are interested in this craft.
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South African Boerewors
Ingredients
- 500 g lean beef
- 250 g lean pork
- 250 g pork back fat
- 18 g kosher salt
- 2.5 g black pepper
- 8 g coriander
- 1 g clove powder
- 2 g nutmeg
- 2 g all spice
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or any dark vinegar
Instructions
- Clean your meat of any silver skin, sinew, arteries and cut into small strips or cubes. Place in the freezer for an hour or until the temp reaches 32f – 34F.
- Prepare all of your seasonings
- Grind your very chilled meat on a course plate
- Add your seasonings and any ice cold liquid to your mince meat and begin to gently mix the chilled ground meat. Be sure not to overmix (you are just looking to incorporate all of your liquids and seasoning). Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
- Rehydrate and rinse out your casings. Stuff your mince meat into the casings and wrap into a coil.
- Place the sausage in the refrigerator overnight uncovered. This will allow the casing to dry out a bit and allow your seasonings to fully incorporate.
- Cook on a BBQ pit, a griddle, or over an open fire and enjoy.
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Would love to give this a try. Thanks for all the help. Jim
Hello Eric thanks for the recipe.
I’m looking at making fresh sausage with horseradish powder.
Would you be able to advise how much I should use per kilo
It really depends on what you want the end result to taste like. Adding 1.5% will be enough to at least notice. From there it’s all about taste. You might want to experiment with a small batch and see how it turns out. Sounds interesting. Let me know what happens
Just wanted to say how much that I enjoy your channel and site and am learning a lot. This sounds like a great sausage to try. Could you go a bit higher with the fat to get get a juicer product since the pork (ham) and beef is so lean? Can’t wait for the other 30 varieties.
Sure. I say go for it. Typically this sausage has 30% fat but it’s your Boerewors and if you want more fat I say bring on the fat!! 35% – 40% would make this sausage super juicy and very flavorful!! If you try it out be sure to let me know how it turned out. Also I did a course grind on mine you can do a medium grind for a different texture. Lots of room to play with this sausage. Although the purist out there might disagree 🙂
Hi Eric.
Found you from a bump link from a Sausage Making Forum, have to say you and your team are doing a fantastic job. Great for beginners and as reminders for those that have been doing sausage making for sometime.
Question re SOUTH AFRICAN BOEREWORS have a friend who eats this in semi dried form. Has to buy his luxury at expensive store prices, any hints as to converting this recipe to semi dried smoked. Keep up the fantastic work.
Hello Graham. Glad you found my site. To turn that sausage into a semidried sausage follow the recipe for Pepperoni (https://twoguysandacooler.com/pepperoni/). In the boerewors recipe increase the salt to 2.3% (or 23 g/kilo of meat), add .25% instacure #1 (or 2.5g/kilo of meat), add .4% dextrose (or 4g/kilo of meat), and add a starter culture. I used LHP dry which is great at lowering the ph of the meat very fast. (Flavor of Italy is another great starter culture that has a nice mild and well rounded flavor). Then use the rest of the Boerewors spices. If you follow the instructions on the pepperoni recipe you’ll be able to ferment, dry, then cook. Should turn out good!!
Hi Eric
South African Dried Sausage = Droëwors
You actually use the same recipe as for boerewors, you just omit the pork and pork fat.
Here is a good at
https://www.biltongmakers.com/recipes/droe-wors-recipe/
Looking forward for you to try it
Regards
JP
Great work and I really appreciate the info. I am fairly new to sausage making and had a question on your process here. After you put the ground meats & spices in the fridge overnight, did you mix it the next day to get a sticky mass? The video doesn’t show this but it looks like it was mixed further when you were stuffing into casings. Thanks again for your work.
Hi Eric,
I have made this sausage at the same time as the Loukaniko and it tasted great but I think next time I will omit the vinegar. The vinegar made the sausage texture crumble as with the Loukaniko I could not achieve a proper primary bind of the ingredients. I have had no issues with any other of the recipes except ones containing vinegar. Love your work mate.
Hi Joe. The vinegar is part of boerwors flavor and it is a coarse ground (9mm plate) so is juicy but crumbly sausage. It would be crumbly with or without.
I wish you knew that you should put lamb in this sausage, it makes it so much better!!!
Is there any reason you can’t vacuum seal and freeze some of this prior to cooking?
nope. This freezes great!
Thanks.