Sausage Casings: A Comprehensive Guide
Sausage casings are an integral part of making sausage. After all, when you look at what sausages are composed of, you have, of course, the meat casing and the sausage seasoning. What’s more, a sausage can’t be a sausage if there is no something to stuff it in. In addition, sausage casings are also vital in making sure that your end product is scrumptious, flavorful, and processed efficiently with a good texture. The type of casing you decide to use will depend on the tradition but also differ by processing methods, size, and ingredients. You need to know that most sausage casings are natural, fibrous, or collagen and come with different applications and sizes based on sausage types. But what are sausage casings? Can the sausage casing be eaten? How are sausage casings made? Well, make sure that you have continued reading this comprehensive guide to learn more about this.
What’s a sausage casing? Well, you need to know that this is the material that encloses the sausage fillings. We have natural casings that consist of animal intestines, but can also consist of some cellulose and collagen materials.
What are sausage casings made of? Typically, sausage casings are made either from sheep or beef intestines, cellulose, or collagen. We also have sausage casings that are made of plastics such as bologna and lunch meat, but are uncommon.
What are the types of sausage casings? You need to know that sausage casings come in different types, including natural casings, hog casing, sheep casing, beef rounds, beef middles, and beef bung caps.
Natural Casings
The submucosa of the small intestines is used in making the natural casing. The Submucosa is a layer of the small intestine that consists of natural collagen. Natural sausage casings have now been used for many years, back in the centuries. Natural casings are still common, and up to date because of the snap they produce when bitten. What’s more, natural casings are soft, flexible, easy to staff, and long-lasting enough. If you want to cook fresh sausages, brats, and more, natural casings are an ideal choice.
Hog Casings
Like natural casings, you need to know that hog casings are a traditional choice for preparing any type of sausage link such as bratwurst, Italians, and kielbasa. Hog casings are also used for preparing smoked Polish sausages.
Sheep Casings
You need to know that sheep casing is the softest of the natural casings. Sheep casings have a tiny diameter and this makes them ideal for preparing small link sausages such as breakfast sausage and hot dogs.
Beef Rounds
Beef rounds have their name from their round shape. They have little fat and are suitable for preparing fresh, smoked, or cooked sausages like Mettwurst, blood sausage, and such.
Beef Middles
These are straight, long casings whose wall has a heavy texture with small fat. These beef casings are suitable for preparing dry and semi-dry sausages like liverwurst, salami, and summer sausage
Beef Bung Caps
Lastly, we have beef bung caps that are obtained from the large intestines of cows. Beef bungs have a big diameter sausage casing that is normally utilized for bologna, headcheese, and souse.