I wrote about Polony back in 2013 and said that I wasn’t happy with my recipe and that it needed more work. It got forgotten about and life got in the way.

I’ve now had a chance to revisit it. The recipe below is an amalgamation of ones in old books, mainly those by Frank Gerrard, such as The Book of the Meat Trade. I’ve looked at 11 recipes in all; there are startling similarities between some of them – I guess that plagiarism was alive and well back then!

I know that “self-praise is no praise”, but I’m pleased with the result. The texture’s fine; it was too soft before. The spicing is fine as is.

All of the recipes reviewed grind the meat finely and are uncured. However, the ones from the supermarket are cured and are what are called emulsion or emulsified sausage. They’re made in a machine called a bowl chopper/cutter. We can approximate this using a food processor.

This polony is not the easiest project; quite a few stages are involved. You’ll need a mincer/grinder, sausage stuffer, and a fairly robust food processor. You also need scales that measure in grams. This recipe needs accurate scales to measure small amounts of chemicals. These can be bought on sites such as Amazon – I use a Uniweigh Digital Pocket Scale – they’re about £15. You’ll also need cure #1 and sodium ascorbate or erythorbate .

Please note: I made garlic ham luncheon meat at the same time as this; production photos may be of either.

Percentage figures are percentages of the weight of meat.

Ingredients

For 1 kg of 70/30 VL pork shoulder

120 g (12%) Rusk
120 g (12%) Rice flour
105 g (10.5%) Iced water, only use as much as needed

Spices

20 g Salt
9.5 g White pepper, ground
3.3 g Mace, ground
2.25 g Coriander, ground
1.8 g Nutmeg, ground
0.8 g Cinnamon, ground

This mix makes 38.85 g. You add it to the meat at 3.885% of the meat’s weight. There’s enough in one mix for 1 kg of meat.

Method

Put a tray of water, about 150 g to allow for some spare, in the freezer. You want it at the point of freezing but not actually frozen when you use it.

Using a mincer/grinder
Mince/grind the meat through a #12 plate, then mince/grind it through a #5 or #6 plate. Add the salt, seasoning mix, cure #1 and ascorbate, and mince/grind it through a #3 plate. If your mincer/grinder is not a powerful one, place the meat into the freezer for 20 minutes between each.
Mix well and place in the freezer for 20-30 minutes.

Next, using a food processor
Puree/grind as much of the meat mix as your processor will cope with comfortably – don’t fill it full and expect it to cope; it won’t. Do small amounts at a time. My Magimix 5200 has a 1100-watt motor, but even so, I only process 500 g of meat at a time.
Add the iced water to keep the temperature low – use the same proportion of the iced water as you have of the meat in each grind.
Use a thermometer and ensure that the meat doesn’t go above 15°C/60°F; it will ‘split’ if it does.
Add the rice flour and rusk (pro rata) about halfway through.
If it gets to 12°C/54°F when you’ve added the proportion of crushed ice, put it into the freezer for a while.
You need to make a smooth meat puree.
Repeat this process until all of the meat is done.

Optional step
Vacuum-pack the mix and leave it overnight in the fridge; this reduces the number of air bubbles in the finished sausage.

Using a sausage stuffer
Stuff the mix into a large casing/casings. Tie the end; twist the casing to make sure the meat is tightly packed, and wrap a length of string around it, tying a tight knot. Fold the loose casing back on itself and tie it so that the end of the casing is doubled over, making it watertight. The traditional casing is thinner than the one I used, about 45mm. The one I used is 66 – 72mm diameter.

Cooking the sausage
Poach it in water at 75°C/167°F until the internal temperature is 70º C /158º F. I use my slow cooker; when the water is 75°C, I turn it to the “keep warm” setting, and it holds the temperature. Another option would be to use a temperature controller – mine was a one-off build, but they’re now available at sensible prices online from Inkbird.

Hold it at 70°C internal temperature for 2 minutes.

Cool the sausage in an ice water bath.

Enjoy!