Luncheon meat is one of the best illustrations of the British relationship with food; call something Luncheon Meat, and it’s sold as a product in the supermarket’s budget range at £4 a kilo; call it Jagdwurst, Stuttgarter, Schinkenwurst or Mortadella, and it costs five times as much!

We just don’t value our own British products. Admittedly, the budget Luncheon Meat has a little less actual meat than its fancy-named counterparts, but this doesn’t have to be so. If it were held in higher esteem and commanded a higher price like its continental counterparts, this could be changed.

This luncheon meat is not an easy project; it has quite a few stages. 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, sodium ascorbate or erythorbate and citric acid.

Please note: I made Polony at the same time as this; production photos may be of either.

The finished sausage needs more garlic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice luncheon meat, but garlic sausage it ain’t! I’ve increased the amount I used, below.

We start by curing the ham that will be the ‘lumps’ of meat in the final product.

Ingredients

500 g Lean pork shoulder
7.5 g Salt
3.5 g Sugar
1 g Cure #1
0.2 g Sodium ascorbate

Cut the meat into strips about 12 mm (½”) in size and mix well with the other ingredients. Put it into a food-grade bag and massage it for a few minutes. Cure it overnight in the fridge. The next day, mince/grind through a #12 plate.
Put it into the fridge; we’ll add it at the end.

We also need to treat the garlic to make it safe:

Mix 2 g of citric acid with 50 g of warm water. Mix to dissolve the citric acid fully. Slice the garlic into thin slices (2-3 mm/ ⅛”) and submerge it in the liquid for 24 hours. Rinse and then make a puree of it, either in a pestle and mortar, mini food processor, or by adding a little of the salt from the seasoning mix below and mashing it with the side of a large bladed knife.

The next day

Put a tray of water, about 250 g to allow for some spare, in the freezer. You want it at the point of freezing but not actually frozen.

Next, we make the spice mix:

Ingredients

16 g Salt
2.5 g White pepper, ground
0.6 g Ginger, ground
0.6 g Allspice, ground I didn’t have any on hand!
0.5 g Mace, ground
0.4 g Coriander, ground
0.4 g Nutmeg, ground

Mix the ingredient together well.

Now, we make the sausage paste:

Ingredients

1 kg Pork shoulder, 70/30 visible lean – or a mix of shoulder and back fat to make 70/30VL.
40 g Rice flour
40 g Cornflour (US-Cornstarch)
1.9 g Cure #1
0.4 g Sodium ascorbate
2.5 g 6 g Fresh garlic, pureed – see above
21 g Seasoning mix – see above
150 g Icy water – see above

Method

Using a mincer/grinder:
Mince/grind the meat through a #12 plate, then add the salt, seasoning mix, cure #1, ascorbate, and garlic and mince/grind it through a #5 or #6 plate, followed by a #3 plate. If your mincer/grinder is not a large, 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.
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 cornflour (cornstarch) 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.
The pieces of ham that we made are added last and mixed in.

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 a couple of times before tying a tight knot. Fold the casing back on itself and tie it so that the end of the casing is doubled over, making it watertight

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.

Cool the sausage in an ice water bath.

Use it for sandwiches, salad, buffets and salami sharing boards. It might also be good in a ‘spam’ fritter recipe.