Lamb Sausage
Pure lamb sausage with fresh mint and rosemary: this pairing is a direct British inheritance.
| Lean lamb shoulder | 600 g |
| Lamb breast (with fat) | 250 g |
| Pork fat (back fat) | 150 g |
| Fresh mint, finely chopped | 25 g |
| Fresh rosemary, finely chopped | 8 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 10 g |
| Breadcrumbs | 60 g |
| Iced water | 60 ml |
| Fine salt | 18 g |
| Ground black pepper | 3 g |
| Ground cumin | 2 g |
| Sheep casing (Ø 24–28 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut the meats into 3 cm cubes. Refrigerate at 0 °C for 2 hours. The quality of the lamb is paramount: the local New Zealand breeds (Merino, Romney, Corriedale) produce a milder, less strong-tasting meat than their European equivalents, thanks to an exclusively grass diet.
- Mincing: Mince the lamb and the fat through the 6 to 8 mm plate. Coarse mincing is characteristic of the New Zealand lamb sausage: the pieces of meat must stay visible at the cut.
- Preparing the herbs: Finely chop the fresh mint and rosemary. Do not use dried herbs: the freshness of the herbs is what sets the artisanal lamb sausage apart from its industrial versions.
- Hydration: Mix the breadcrumbs with the iced water, then leave to swell for 5 minutes.
- Seasoning: Add the hydrated breadcrumbs, the fresh herbs, the garlic, the salt, the pepper and the cumin into the minced meats. Knead for 4 minutes to a homogeneous but not too compact forcemeat.
- Resting: Refrigerate for at least 4 to 6 hours, ideally overnight. This rest is essential for the aromas of the mint and rosemary to penetrate the meat.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the sheep casings, forming sausages of 12 to 15 cm.
- Cooking: Grill on the barbecue over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes, turning regularly, or pan-fry over medium heat in a little oil. Serve with mint sauce, steamed potatoes and a green salad.
New Zealand has about six million inhabitants and close to twenty-five million sheep. The local breeds (Romney, Merino, Corriedale), selected over more than a century, are fed exclusively on the grass of natural pastures, which gives the flesh a mildness and a fineness that intensively raised lambs do not reproduce.
The lamb-mint pairing is a direct British inheritance: in Britain, mint sauce has accompanied roast lamb since at least the eighteenth century. The settlers who arrived from the 1840s brought this tradition, and mint acclimatised so well that it grows today in a semi-wild state. To work it directly into the sausage, rather than serve it as a separate sauce, is a properly New Zealand evolution. Rosemary, less expected in the sausage of English tradition, reflects the influence of Italian, Greek, and Lebanese immigration since the 1980s.
The mint and rosemary must be fresh: dried, they lose the volatile essential oils that constitute the essence of their contribution in a quickly cooked forcemeat. The hydrated breadcrumb (60 grammes per kilo, a British inheritance) absorbs moisture released by fresh mint during kneading.
It is served grilled on the barbecue, with mint sauce and steamed potatoes. Its consumption is domestic and from the farmers’ markets. New Zealand exports about 400,000 tonnes of sheep meat a year, but never fresh sausages: the lamb sausage remains a strictly local product.
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