Sai Ua
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott/Not Quite Nigella
Preparation time: 1 hour (faster if you have a sausage stuffing machine)
Cooking time: 10 minutes
- 240g/8.4ozs pork mince
- 125g/4.41ozs. pork fat (get the butcher to grind this for you)
- 1 tablespoon shrimp paste, crumbled
- 4 cloves garlic, peeled
- 10 kaffir lime leaves, sliced
- 3x lemongrass sticks, the fatter half, split in half
- 3x coriander roots, well washed
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 shallots (two bulbs), peeled and sliced in quarters
- 2cm.5/1inch piece of turmeric, peeled and sliced in a few pieces
- 1-3 small red chillies (depending on how spicy you like it), top removed, chopped in half
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Sausage casing for a third of a kilo of meat*
You will need to pre order sausage casing at the butcher. How much you need depends on how many kilos of meat you need to make into sausages. It isn't cheap at $15 but natural casings are better for flavour and visual appeal.
Step 1 - Place the shrimp paste, garlic, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, coriander roots, brown sugar, shallots, turmeric, chillies and salt in a food processor and process until it becomes finely chopped. Transfer to a mortar and pestle and bash away until you get a paste. You can do this entirely in a mortar and pestle but it takes longer and I'm lazy.
Step 2 - Mix the pork mince and fat together. Then add the paste and mix well. I put on latex gloves for this but you can also use a spatula to mix.
Step 3 - Have a funnel or a piping bag fitted with a plain tip in it. Find the end of the sausage casing and insert two fingers to widen the hole to feed through the mince. This is the most time consuming bit. Sai Ua is one large coil of sausage meat which is a bit more difficult to do this way. If you make regular linked sausages that is faster or you can make these into burger patties in which case they are still amazingly good.
Step 4 - Heat a frypan on medium to high heat and add a little oil. Fry on both sides until cooked through.