Sausages

Just like Christmas in western countries, Spring Festival is the most important and meaningful day in China. It is the day that Chinese use to celebrate the New Year. Every year during Spring Festival which usually last a few weeks, there would be numerous strings of sausages hanging in my home yard. All of them were made by my grandparents.

In Spring Festival, we used to get lots of pork, especially large ham, from relatives and friends. Since the pork was too much that couldn't eat them all, my grandparents made them to sausages to keep long.

I like eating sausages sold in supermarket, but I have to say that no sausage could taste better than that made by my grandparents. One reason is that the purchased ones have less meat but more starch than our homemade ones.

Making sausage is a very complicated process. I saw my grandparents working on that a few times. First, my grandma cut a chunk of meat into small pieces. Fat meat and lean meat were mixed together. And then she add sugar, salt ( a lot), Chinese liquor and ginger in the meat. I don't remember the accurate amount of each ingredient she put, but it's not a big deal since personal preference depends a lot. After one or two attempts you may find the best amount of each ingredient for you.

The difficult part is to inject the meat into the sausage coating. My grandpa tied one end of the coating with a line and injected the meat from the other end. He made a funnel with a plastic bottle. He cut the bottle in half and used the upper part. Afterwards he inserted the bottleneck into the open end of sausage coating and poured the prepared meat into the coating through the plastic funnel. Air should always be prevented from getting into the sausage coating.

Our family could keep eating the sausages for two months after Spring Festival. Sausage is attracting me to go home.