Like so many, trying new things in the kitchen is a fantastic pastime. You may have extended passed hamburger patties, and wish to try something new. Pork sausage may come to mind, although they are relatively easy, and you may desire more of a challenge and also another taste.
While browsing recipes for your BBQ summer sausages, you may come across venison sausages for your sausage making adventure. However, what you may nor realize is that these food products from your local butchers have a certain fat content. You’ll discover that pork fat is used to add flavor when cooking, although some recipes may ask for bacon grease, yet this makes a poor pork backfat replacement.
While tasty, these animal fats are soft like rendered pork fat rather than chunks of ground-up pork butt shoved inside your sausage meat. Another issue could be that your local butcher has no fat you can purchase. So, now you search is on for replacing pork fat in your sausages.
Luckily, in our guide, we look at the best substitute for pork fat. Not only is replacing pork fat an excellent way to get the best from your venison sausages, but it could also lead to a healthier sausage.
By the end, you’ll have options of how to replace pork fat, and which pork fat substitutes to avoid be it an animal fat or emulsified olive oil as has been used to make a hot dog. No matter what you use, you’ll be able to follow your favorite sausage recipes with any fat replacer you choose. (Read Can I Freeze Canned Mushrooms)
Breakdown of Sausage Requirements
No matter what recipe you are following for your sausage, as with any baking, you have a guide to the ratio of the foods content.
Here is what you can expect to find or add into your sausage to get the best overall taste, texture and cooking experience.
- 70% meat such as pork shoulder
- 30% fat (pork fat or your substitute for pork fat or fat replacer.)
- 10% of the total volume of added liquid plus sausage seasoning.
Using a blender and an ice-cold liquid, you grind the meat, fat, and seasonings. This creates the primary binding that is placed inside casings.
Non-Pork Fat for Sausage
Even though these meats don’t have a neutral flavor like pork fat, beef, chicken, and lamb fat can be used to produce sausage.
1. Beef Fat
Because beef fat is sometimes yellow in color, it can completely alter the appearance of these sausages involving no additional substances. It may vary depending on whether they fed the animal grain or grass.
Always choose grass-fed animals; although compared to pig fat, it has a distinct flavor that far from neutral.
Using this substitute for pork fat will depend on your preferences, but can still be an enjoyable addition.
2. Chicken Fat
Lots of fat is integrated into the flesh while making chicken sausages from chicken thighs, which frequently mixes the muscles together. Because of this, it’s pretty difficult to overcook chicken thighs when you fry them.
3. Lamb Fat
Lamb has a distinct flavor, and once more, it isn’t neutral. You must initially enjoy the flavor of fat. The animals age and whether it was only fed its mother’s milk affects the flavor of lamb sausages, or using the fat as your substitute for pork fat.
Older sheep’s meat and fat, or “mutton,” has a very distinct flavor and requires a lot of garlic and rosemary to give it a unique flavor.
Fat Grind or Fat Cuts for Sausage
It entirely depends on the size of your grinding plates and whether you’re creating salami or a fresh sausage.
- When grinding, a fine maximum of 4-6 mm would be suitable for a smaller 25 or 28mm sausage.
- For a 50 or 60 mm dry-cured salami, however, it could be preferable to cube the fat 5–12 mm.
- For the kind of sausage you want to make, this is crucial. Another choice for a more appealing appearance is to fine cube the fat.
Best Pork Fat Substitutes
Pork fat is one of the most popular types of fat you can get. That means that if you want to replace pork fat with something else, you have a lot of choices. (Learn How Long Can Mashed Potatoes Sit Out)
What is pork fat?
Fat from any part of the pig is called pork fat. Most pork fat comes from the fatback cut, the pork belly, the pork shoulder, or organs like the kidneys.
Pure pork fat is solid and white. Pork lard is made from pork fat that has been rendered. It is milky white, is soft but solid at room temperature, and lasts longer.
There are many ways to cook with pork fat.
We can add it to soups, stews, sausages, baked beans, chowder, and other dishes to add flavor, saltiness, and texture.
Pork lard can also be used as a cooking oil with a higher smoke point, which makes it great for deep-frying.
Instead of a grocery store or supermarket, a local butcher is often the best place to find fresh pork fat. You can make pork lard at home by cooking fresh pork fat until it melts.
Can you substitute pork fat?
It is easy to find something else to use instead of pork fat.
Because there are so many kinds of cooking oils and fats on the market, you have a lot of choices for replacing pork fat in a recipe.
You can use fat from another animal or something made from plants.
What to substitute for pork fat?
Here are a few alternatives you can use as a substitute for pork fat in your cooked food recipes:
1. Beef Fat
Pork fat is like beef fat in composition and texture, but beef fat originates from cows.
There are two types of beef fat: fresh and rendered (or known as beef tallow).
Any food or sausage recipe that calls for swine fat or pork lard, such as deep-frying, baking, or stewing, can use beef fat or beef tallow.
2. Olive oil
Olive oil is a different replacement for pork fat. Olive oil contains higher levels of antioxidants, vitamin E, and K and beneficial fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6.
As a result, it is helpful to human health in a variety of ways, particularly by enhancing skin health and lowering the risk of heart disease. (Learn How Long Is Tuna Salad Good For)
Because of its high smoke point, premium virgin olive oil is excellent for both high and low-temperature cooking, although you can use it for salad recipes. One downside with olive oil is that extra virgin olive oil is more expensive than an animal fat solution.
3. Vegetable oil
Another pork fat substitute is vegetable oil. Vegetable oils come in a variety of varieties, including, but not limited to, sunflower, canola oil, peanut, and soybean oils. You can add in coconut oil, yet this has an intense coconut flavor that may not sit well when making sausage.
Compared to pork fat, vegetable oil has a lower smoke point, making these oils better suited when you cook stir-fry recipes or basting meat in baking rather than fat substitutes form your sausages.
4. Vegetable Shortening
If you are on a vegan diet, then you’ll want a substitute for pork fat for your cooking. Vegetable shortening can quickly fill the void of meat-based or animal fat for cooking.
The texture of this item is like butter, yet it is entirely vegetarian. Because it needs specialized equipment, you’ll need to purchase vegetable shortening from the grocery rather than trying to make at home. Cooking food using shortening will give your foods a rich flavor and texture.
5. Butter
Another substitute for pork fat is soft butter.
Butter is a dairy product that enhances the flavor and texture of any food when used as an ingredient in cooking, marinating and sauce-making. You can get butter that is salted or with no salt added.
When you cook, you’ll discover most recipes call for unsalted butter to be used.
Studies Of Replacing Pork Fat With Vegetable Oils
This study evaluated the quality properties of emulsion-type pork sausages when pork fat was replaced with vegetable oil mixtures during processing.
Note: there were no added spices as this would detract from the results.
Pork sausages were processed under six treatment conditions:
- 20% pork fat
- 10% pork fat – 2% grape seed oil – 4% olive oil & 4% canola oil
- 4% grape seed oil & 16% canola oil
- 4% grape seed oil – 4% olive oil & 12% canola oil
- 4% grape seed oil – 8% olive oil & 8% canola oil)
- 4% grape seed oil – 12% olive oil & 4% canola oil
According to proximate analysis, the moisture, protein, and fat substitute contents of the different emulsion-content pork belly sausages differed significantly.
In emulsion-style lean pork sausages, replacement with vegetable oil mixtures significantly reduced the ash content and improved their ability to hold water.
Test 6’s cholesterol content was significantly lower than test 2’s. In the texture profile investigation, replacing animal fat combinations with vegetable oil mixtures significantly reduced the hardness and chewiness of emulsion-type pork sausages.
The test group 4’s cohesiveness and springiness matched group 1’s.
Lean pork sausages made with emulsions have more unsaturated fatty acids because of the substitution of vegetable oil mixes.
The qualitative aspects of emulsion-type lean pork sausages were unaffected by replacing mixed vegetable oils with ground pork fat. The product’s lower content of saturated fatty acids gave it the desirable qualities of healthy meat products for consumers. (Read Can You Freeze Chicken Salad)
FAQs
Is pork fat the same as lard?
Rendering pork fat yields lard. Leaf lard is made from the kidney fat of pigs and hogs. Mild in flavor and texture, it’s excellent for baking. Raw lard is just fat.
How to Replace Fats in Baking
- Applesauce.
- Beans.
- Pumpkin.
- Shredded Zucchini.
- Bananas.
Do I need to add fat to pork butt for sausage?
Sausage fat has no right or wrong amount. When preparing sausage, you’ll find that some recipes ask for 40% fat and others for 10%. Venison sausages may ask for more as the meat is lean compared to pork.
Can you use lard instead of pork fat in sausages?
Use fat back or jowl fat instead of lard.
What can I substitute for pork fat?
Butter works well as a lard replacement. Most recipes that call for lard should be substituted with unsalted butter unless your recipe specifies otherwise. There are further options available. Use shortening or oils like coconut, vegetable, or olive if you’d like.
Are lard and bacon grease the same thing?
One variety of lard is bacon fat. That being said, the bacon fat will taste smokier than lard, which should have a perfectly neutral flavor, and the product you can buy branded lard is not the same.
Why do we need fat substitutes?
We can preserve the original quality qualities of the food while avoiding the hazards connected with consuming fats thanks to the use of fat substitutes in food products.
Products made with fat substitutes often have fewer calories than their full-fat equivalents because they lack energy-dense fat molecules.
