Sichuan style spicy lap cheong 川味麻辣香腸

Chuan wei ma la xiang chang (in Mandarin) 川味麻辣香腸

川 = Sichuan    味 = flavoured    麻 = numbing
辣 = hot   香 = fragrant    腸 = sausage

Lap cheong (Cantonese)/ la chang (Mandarin) 臘腸

lap / la  臘,  in Chinese this normally means wax but in this context it means cured.

cheong is Cantonese for sausage, in Mandarin it sounded as chang.

I have been making my own lap cheong many times now I no longer buy them anymore. Using a manual meat grinder and sausage making adaptor to fill the lap cheong makes the work so much easier.

For a change of flavour I added a lot of spices to make these Sichuan spicy lap cheong. The resulting lap cheong are somewhat like Chineasy pepperoni or chorizo

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:
2 - 2.1kg trimmed and skinned pork shoulder or leg of pork (pork butt), with about 1.7kg lean meat to 300- 400g fat

1/2 cup light soy
15g salt
1/3 cup sugar
5g #2 cure salt (#2 prague powder)
1/3 cup Chinese cooking wine or shaoshing
15 - 40g chilli powder*
1.5 tbsp ground Sichuan pepper
1 rounded tsp five spice powder

about 4 - 5 metres natural or synthetic skin/casing (22 - 26mm), for natural casing sheep is within adequate size hog casing is usually 30+ mm far too thick for making lap cheong. I used synthetic skin.

* I used 40g of Korean chilli (red pepper) powder less spicy and can use more to give a deep red colour to the meat. If using other chilli powder use according to your own taste or spiciness of chilli powder or some chilli powder mixed with paprika

Method:

1. Cut the meat into very tiny pieces or coarsely ground. 
2. Mix all the marinade ingredients together. Mix thoroughly with the meat. 
3. Leave in the fridge for few hours or overnight.
4. Fill into sausage casing. Tie ends with string. For method of filling see this post and this other for more tips. 
5. Hang them to dry near somewhere airy for about 5 - 7 days till very firm.

After drying the total weight of lap cheong is around 1.45kg

Keep dried sausages in fridge or freezer.

Slip casing into tube first, tie end with string then start filling Make lap cheong into pairs. Tie a string in the centre for hanging to dry.	Fill lap cheong with manual grinder Hang lap cheong with cloth hanger and leave somewhere near an open window to dry for 5 - 7 days.