Merguez Sausages

I'm so excited to share my first homemade sausage experience with you. That's right, first time and I think I pretty much aced it! Although, the success has to be shared as I enlisted some experienced sausage makers – Howard's parents – to chaperone and make sure I was on the right track.

First thing, read the recipe and head out to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients: boneless lamb shoulder, garlic, harissa paste, ground fennel seeds, ground coriander, ground cumin, ground sumac, ground cayenne pepper, and sausage casings.

Using a large container (preferably with lid) for marinating, stir together the chopped up lamb, garlic, harissa paste, salt, ground fennel, ground coriander, ground cumin, ground sumac, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

This is where it gets exciting (because I've never done it before). Using the Multi Food Grinder attachment on my Kenwood Chef Kitchen Machine, fitted with the coarse screen, we did a first pass with the lamb mixture. This will make the second pass through much easier.

At this point, rinse the casing and soak it in cold water.

Next up, we attached the multi food grinder attachment with the medium screen and added 1/2 cup of ice water to keep the lamb mixture moist. Look! It looks like the ground meat you find at supermarkets! Success!

Okay, final pass. This time we loaded the large nozzle attachment and fitted the sausage casing over it. This was the point in the process where I was a bit nervous. What if we couldn't keep up with all the meat loading into the casing? But luckily, with the motor control on the Chef, we could set it to a low speed and carefully take our time to make sure the casings were filled properly.

Make sure you have a helping hand at this point; you'll need someone to push the meat and someone to hold onto the casing. Teamwork!

Once the casing is stuffed with lamb mixture, twist into 5-inch (12 cm) links. Refrigerate until you're ready to cook.

Hungry? Place the sausages on a greased grill over medium heat and close the lid. Grill, turning once, until browned and juices run clear when sausage is pierced. Cut the links, the sausages will hold to finish.

These sausages are good! They have a great amount of spice and flavor, the consistency of the meat was good too. Everyone was raving about them and incredibly impressed that they were homemade. We polished off all 10 links that night!

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post by Canadian Living and Kenwood. I received compensation for it. There was no requirement to produce a positive review of this recipe. All opinions are our own.