Corned Beef & Guinness Sausage with Quick Kraut and Caraway Mustard

As someone who is half Irish, I celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day on Saint Patrick’s Day, not on the river-dying, drunk at 8 AM Saturday, and, despite it not being actually Irish, with a twist on corned beef. Last year, we had corned beef tongue, which was excellent, but this year, I have been on a sausage kick.

I made corned beef sausage a few years ago after trying and liking the beta test of bacon sausage. The thought was that making sausage from cured meats is relatively simple — the seasoning is done, for the most part, before actually making sausages. That was then and this is now. Without overcomplicating a good thing, I wanted to build on that idea.

Uncooked Corned Beef Navel

I started with a beef navel, instead of a brisket, and corned it using the recipe from Ruhlman‘s Charcuterie – Upgrade #1.  The fat content on the navel is a huge plus in making a great sausage. Briskets are delicious, but may be slightly too lean to make a great sausage. Next, I added some basic garnishes of roasted napa cabbage and steamed carrots as well as a mustard component of dried mustard powder, mustard seed, and allspice – Upgrade #2. Corned beef is delicious, but corned beef, cabbage, and carrots with mustard is better. Consider this an encased corned beef hash, but heavy on the corned beef.

Finally, I added beer. We have been reading a lot about the boozy sausages from Butcher & Larder, but what would fit better with corned beef than Guinness? – Upgrade #3. In Charcuterie, most sausage recipes use wine as the binding liquid, which can add a little too much to the flavor, but with a rich stout in its place, you get a little of the alcohol, but not the strong wine flavor. It adds just enough to know that it is there without dominating the sausage flavor.

After bring the beef navel for five days, I ground it and added the garnishes and spices along with the stout and combined it all into the sausage. The sausages were stuffed onto hog casings.

Upon grilling these sausages, it became clear that the fat content in the beef navel requires that you watch these sausages very closely as the fat catches fire quickly and you could lose a batch of these in a minute. In fact, while grilling may be a superior method, when I cook up the rest of these sausages, they will be cooked in a cast iron skillet.

Adding a quick kraut and caraway mustard to this encased meat on a bun really rounded it out.  The sweet richness of the corned beef begs for the tartness in the kraut and the punch in the mustard. I had thought of finding rye hot dog buns, but could not find them anywhere, so instead, I added freshly ground caraway to the mustard.

Corned Beef & Guinness Sausages

• 2 pounds corned beef, ground
• 3 ounces guinness
• 1/4 cup roasted cabbage, chopped
• 1/3 cup steamed carrots, diced
• 1/4 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1/2 tablespoon mustard powder
• 5 allspice berries, ground

Step one: Procure corned beef. Preferably, make your own. Grind it or have it ground for you.

Step two: Combine all of the ingredients in your stand mixer and, with the paddle attachment, mix until combined. Be sure to work quickly as keeping everything cold is a must.

Step three: Chil for 3-4 hours and stuff sausage into hog casings. Alternatively, these could work as meatballs if you don’t have any way to stuff sausage into casings.