Learn how to make Chinese sausages at home with two types of flavors, spicy mala sausages and sweet Chinese sausage (lop Cheung).
Chinese sausages are our favorite New Year food and it is always satisfying to have some in the kitchen cabinet. You can easily cook them along with a pot of rice or use them in fried rice.
Each year after the winter solstice, we begin to make sausages and air cured pork belly at home. Traditionally Sichuan mala sausages are smoked. However for healthier reasons, air-cured method is much more popular than traditionally smoked way. I have introduced two types of flavors–Sichuan Mala and Cantonese sweet flavor. Both of the two types are quite popular in China now. And we usually make half Mala sausages and half sweet sausages (for the older and children).
Basic ingredients (this can make around 50 Chinese sausages, each around 20cm long)
- 5 kg pork (lean meat vs fat=7:3)
- 3 meters sausage skin (natural or synthetic)
Seasonings for sweet sausages
- 30g salt (curing salt)
- 150g rock sugar, well smashed
- 30g Chinese white spirit (In cantonese cuisine, people love to use rose wine)
- 20g ground pepper
- 1/2 cup light soy sauce
Seasonings for Mala Sausages
- 60g to 75g salt (curing salt)
- 150g chili pepper powder
- 50g freshly ground Sichuan pepper powder or whole seeds
- 50g rock sugar, well smashed
- 50g Chinese white spirit
Equipment needed
- a special sausage stuffing tool or funnel and chop stickers for stuffing the sausage
- needle (pricking the sausages to release trapped air)
- Scissors and cotton lines for tying the sausages
- Clean cloth (drying the sausages after hot water washing)
No matter what flavor you prefer, cut the pork into thin and large pieces (around 6 cm long and 4 cm wide with a thickness of 0.4cm to 0.5cm). We usually use the pork leg meat. The best ratio for Mala sausages is 7 portions of lean meat and 3 portions of fat. And the recommended ratio for sweet sausage is 2:8 (fat vs lean meat). You can slightly adjust based on your own preferences.
Then add white spirit (Chinese Baijiu) and mix well. If you cannot find Chinese baijiu, use other hard liquid to replace.
Mix all the other seasonings. For Mala sausage, mix sugar, salt, chili pepper powder and Sichuan pepper powder in. For sweet sausage, mix salt, sugar and white pepper. Massage with hands and make sure all the ingredients are well combined. Then set aside for 30 minutes.
Then soak the skin in lukewarm water.
Then set up the equipment and wrap the skin over the funnel tube. Or you can use a funnel and a chopstick as plunger. Tie one end and then cut off the remaining skin.
The machine we use is sometime like a automatic plunger. The pork meat is pushed ahead when shaking the hand shank. If you do not have this equipment, use chopstick or wood stick to push the pork..
Once finished, use a cotton line (around 10cm to 12 cm long) to tie and divide the sausage into small sections around 20cm long, so we can continue hanging and drying process.
In a large pot, add enough warm water and clean the surface. Be gentle and don’t break the sausages. You can further sterilize the sausages by brushing hard liquid (In China, we use Chinese Baijiu 白酒).
Dry with a clean cloth, then hang and dry.Left them dry outdoor during the day and hang in the kitchen at night.
We will need to wait for 10 days to 12 days for air drying.
Chinese Sausages
Ingredients
Basic ingredients (this can make around 50 Chinese sausages, each around 20cm long)
- 5 kg pork , lean meat vs fat=7:3
- 3 meters sausage skin , natural or synthetic
Seasonings for sweet sausages
- 30 g salt , curing salt
- 150 g rock sugar , well smashed
- 30 g Chinese white spirit , In cantonese cuisine, people love to use rose wine
- 20 g ground pepper
- 1/2 cup light soy sauce , Note1
Seasonings for Mala Sausages
- 60 g to 75g salt , curing salt
- 150 g chili pepper powder
- 50 g freshly ground Sichuan peppercorn powder , or whole seeds
- 50 g rock sugar , well smashed
- 50 g Chinese white spirit
Equipment needed
- a special sausage stuffing tool or funnel and chop stickers for stuffing the sausage
- needle , pricking the sausages to release trapped air
- Scissors and cotton lines for tying the sausages
- Clean cloth , drying the sausages after hot water washing
Instructions
- No matter what flavor you prefer, cut the pork into thin and large pieces (around 6 cm long and 4 cm wide with a thickness of 0.4cm to 0.5cm). We usually use the pork leg meat. The best ratio for Mala sausages is 7 portions of lean meat and 3 portions of fat. And the recommended ratio for sweet sausage is 2:8 (fat vs lean meat). You can slightly adjust based on your own preferences.
- Then add white spirit (Chinese Baijiu) and mix well. If you cannot find Chinese baijiu, use other hard liquid to replace.
- Mix all the other seasonings. For Mala sausage, mix sugar, salt, chili pepper powder and Sichuan pepper powder in. For sweet sausage, mix salt, sugar and white pepper. Massage with hands and make sure all the ingredients are well combined. Then set aside for 30 minutes.
- Soak the skin in warm water.
- Then set up the equipment and wrap the skin over the funnel tube. Or you can use a funnel and a chopstick as plunger. Tie one end and then cut off the remaining skin.
- The machine we use is sometime like a automatic plunger. The pork meat is pushed ahead when shaking the hand shank. If you do not have this equipment, use chopstick or wood stick to push the pork into the skin.
- Once finished, use a cotton line (around 10cm to 12 cm long) to tie and divide the sausage into small sections around 20cm long, so we can continue hanging and drying process.
- In a large pot, add enough warm water and clean the surface (the purpose is cleaning). Be gentle and don’t break the sausages. You can further sterilize the sausages by brushing hard liquid (In China, we use Chinese Baijiu).
- Dry with a clean cloth, then hang and dry. Use a small needle to prick the sausages to release trapped air. Left them dry outdoor during the day and hang in the kitchen at night.
Notes
Nutrition
After 12 days of air-drying in cold wind. Cut off the extra lines and place in air-tight container; freeze up for half year.
How to cook Chinese sausages
The easiest method is to cook a long log along with steamed rice in a rice cooker and thinly sliced before serving. Or you can pre-slice them and cook in clay pot rice.
Hi Elaine,
I would like to seek clarification about the ingredients. You said the 5 kg pork is enough to make 50 sausages. How about the seasoning itself? The amount indicated for the sweet sausages is enough for 50 sausages too or 25 (assuming that you make both flavours)?
Hi Tammy,
That’s a good question. All the seasonings I listed are for 5 kg pork (around 50 sausages). I make those two flavors in two different batches.
Well then, isn’t the salt content way too low (6 g per kg meat for the sweet version and 15 g per kg meat for the Mala). AFAIK the lowest salt content in sausages is about 20%, plus curing salt plus starter cultures. What is going to prevent spoilage here?
Vladimir,
I am using local well salt instead of coarse salt. So there is no need to use such a high salt content. Besides, we make those sausages only in cold water with strong natural wind or smoking. After drying, the sausages are kept in freezer.
Hi Elaine ,
I would like to know about how much humidity is going to need and is there anyway to accelerate the drying time.
Hi Thant,
To make sausages, lower humidity is the best. If you want to accelerate the drying time, hanging them in places with stronger wind can help.
is there any way to dry the sausage within 4 to 6 hours by using oven, I want to accelerate the drying process as fast as possible. because I’m produce lots of sausage now and so much demand. I want to accelerate like a commercial producer.
I love the Chinese sausage with liver in the mix. Do you know how to do this? I like the plain ones like your recipe, too, and use them when I can’t find the others, but the ones with liver (I suppose from Viet Nam), are really my favorite. Thanks for the recipe and instructions. They will get me started. 😉
Hi Beejay,
I love to help but I am not familiar with liver sausage. There are some people mix liver and pork together, but I have never tried before.
Hi ,
Want to make them but it’s summer at the moment and usually make them in winter and hang them to dry in the cold air so what is the other option of drying the sausages? Can I use a dehydrator?
Thanks
No, dehydrator cannot produce the same flavor with air drying in cold winter.
Hi
For how long do we sterilise the sausages in the pot of boiling water?
That process should be very quick, as long as the sticky lay is removed.
Hi there! I’m kind of late to the game but I noticed you don’t include any curing salts (sodium nitrite) in your recipe. Botulism is a real possibility with this recipe if you are air drying it. It could be ok if temperatures are low enough but still.. I wouldn’t recommend anyone try this without curing salts. You may not get sick but it is like playing Russian roulette. About humidity, lower humidity isn’t necessarily better for drying. Yes it will dry faster but only the outer most portions of the sausage will dry leaving the inner portion still most and increasing the risk of spoilage.
Anyways I had some of the spicy smoked sausage in China last year and it was amazing. I’m definitely going to try your recipe. Thanks!
Andy,
Thanks for the helpful information. In China, we don’t use table salt and curing salt. All of the salt are used during the cooking process and can be used directly for dried foods.
But you give us a very good point concerning about this problem. I will add this as a supplementary information in the recipe.
For the humidity, relative humidity should be around 60% to 70%. We have relative humidity higher around 92% in winter days. High humidity is not a good option for air-drying and smoking.
I would like to try your recipe. I don’t have a weighing scale, only volume measurement (like tablespoon, cup, ect..). The recipe script poses an impediment until I could get a weighing scale.
Other than that, the recipe looks very good. I have been searching around the internet. Will try at later point in once I have all the ingredient.
Dan,
The recipe comes with large weight. I believe cups and tablespoon really is time consuming to use. So I give the grams only. I am quite sorry, but I don’t think I get the problem to add the volume measurement in a near future.
Yes, hot water is just used to clean the sausage.
I just finished making the sweet sausage with your recipe yesterday. My back and shoulder is still hurting from the 6 hours manual labour (I didn’t think that I would need a sausage stuffing machine). One can certainly do it with a pair of chopstick and a funnel (I cut out the top of a water bottle since I didn’t have a funnel available in my kitchen at the moment). I had a few pieces of meat left pver so I went ahead and fry them up for a quick snack with some rice. They were delicious! The seasonings were just right, and I did add around 30 to 40 grams of chilly and paprika powder because I like it just a tiny bit spicy. They are being dried s0 I can’t really say anything about it, but I am so excited. I do take them in when the sun goes down and allow them to air dry with the help of a blowing fan at high speed. I can’t waot to see how this would turn out! Thank you for sharing your recipe!
wow, you make such a big batch. I can image how tough those 6 hours can be since we used to make sausages with chopstick and funnel. but Let me know how it turns out. By the way, where are you located and what’s your temperature.