Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

Sai Oua, Northern Thai Sausage, Might Just Be Your New Favorite Sausage

Sam Slaughter
By

Sausage is a great all-purpose meat. A mixture of different cuts of meat (sometimes from the same animal, sometimes not) and spices, its utility is what makes it so great. You can grill sausage, you can smoke it, you can add it to soups and stews, or slap it on a nice hoagie roll with some peppers and onions. The possibilities are near-endless.

Sausage, too, can be found in pretty much every meat-eating society in the world, thanks to the necessity of using every part of the animal one can in as efficient a manner as possible. Whatever was left over – blood, organs, fat, et cetera – was mixed together, preserved with salt and spices, and stuffed into casings made from the animal’s intestines as a means of making one animal last longer. Skip ahead centuries and we continue to embrace linked meats.

Recommended Videos

What hangs some meat lovers up, though, is how sausage is made (hence the idiom). The thing is, it isn’t a scary or intense process. With modern butchery, it’s actually quite easy. So easy, in fact, that everyone should be able to do it. To facilitate that, we’ve found this delicious Thai sausage recipe that produces fragrant, spicy, amazing pork sausage. The recipe comes to us from Executive Chef Will Harris of Linger in Denver. Linger is a meat-lovers’ paradise of international proportions, with dishes ranging from the Thai Sai Ou below to a Bison Pastrami Reuben bao bun to Colorado Lamb Scotch Eggs, and more.

Related

Northern Thai Sausage (Sai Oua) Recipe

Sai Oua Northern Thai Sausage Recipe Linger
Linger

(Yield 2 pounds of sausage. Feeds around 6 people) 

“This particular recipe is quite unique in the world of sausage making. The lengthy process can seem daunting, and yeah sure, there are easier recipes for good-tasting links, but I promise you —  it’s worth it!! Grill this amazing treat slowly over charcoal and you will experience an explosion of flavor and depth. At Linger, we serve ours over a bed of crispy rice me krop noodles tossed with a sour plum sauce, black ants, crickets, and fresh herbs.  The dish is finished with a spoon sauce made from lime juice, fish sauce, and tomatoes. If you aren’t up for cooking like us, don’t stress. This sausage is fantastic lightly grilled and served as is or on a bed of rice or greens.”

Ingredients for meat mix:

  • 1 lb pork belly cut into small dice
  • 1 lb freshly ground pork shoulder. (Harris recommends asking your local butcher to do it for you)
  • 1 c of chopped fresh cilantro (with stems)
  • 1 tbsp curry powder
  • 1 tsp finely chopped kafir lime leaves
  • .25 cup fish sauce
  • 1 tsp quality kosher salt (Harris prefers Pacific Blue by SaltWorks– any quality kosher salt from your local market will do)
  • 1 lamb or pork casings (available upon request at your local butcher)

Ingredients for paste:

  • 2 oz ginger root pealed
  • 2 oz shallot
  • 1 oz garlic
  • 2 oz turmeric root (or 1 tbsp turmeric powder)
  • Zest of three limes
  • Small handful of cilantro
  • Pinch of salt

Method for the paste:

  1. Grill all of the ingredients slowly over a fire or on a gas grill until tender. Don’t burn them – just lightly brown. If you don’t have a grill, lightly brown them in a dry pan over medium heat and then finish in the oven until soft.
  2. Next, transfer to a mortar and pestle, add salt and pound until a paste is formed. If you do not have a mortar and pestle, use a small ceramic bowl and pound with a spoon. You will have a little more than necessary for 2 pounds of meat, but you can also add it all for maximum heat. It’s best to make this the night before.

Putting the sausage together:

  1. In a medium sized bowl, mix meat with the paste and all of the other ingredients. Make a small taster patty by slowly cooking it in a pan or on a grill.
  2. Once you have established a level of heat and spice that fancies your taste buds, you can stuff the sausage in lamb or pork casings.
  3. They’re ready to grill at this point. If you don’t have a sausage-stuffing device, do not worry. Hand shaping small patties of the mixture is also a smooth move and will cook up beautifully.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Sam Slaughter
Sam Slaughter
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Sam Slaughter was the Food and Drink Editor for The Manual. Born and raised in New Jersey, he’s called the South home for…
Applestone Meat Company’s Vending Machines Could Be Your New Contact-Free Butcher
applestone meat company vending machine butcher

Not long ago, vending machines represented the bottom rung of the on-the-go food hierarchy -- somewhere between gas station sushi and Economy Class airplane lunches. That’s still true of most vending machines, but times are changing. Now, one innovative New York City butcher envisions a future where customers can shop gourmet-steakhouse-quality cuts of meat any time of day at the push of a button.

Applestone Meat Company is looking to revolutionize the fresh meat game by selling gourmet cuts through 24/7 automated vending machines. The NYC-based butcher currently stocks two locations just north of the city with fresh dry-aged steaks, pork butts, whole chicken, and ground lamb. Every piece is humanely raised hormone-free on a Hudson Valley farm, then prepared in ready-to-go, vacuum-sealed packaging. As with old-school automats, customers swipe their payment, make their meat selection, and watch the automated machine spin and drop it into place for them to take home.

Read more
The Burger Show’s Alvin Cailan Shares His Burger-Making Secrets
Chef Alvin Cailan

The hamburger is a staple of American comfort food and with Labor Day Weekend coming up, there is no better time to indulge in one or four. No matter where you go -- a barbecue, a drive-thru, or even if you get takeout from an upscale bistro -- you're likely to find some iteration of a burger on the menu these days, featuring everything from generic yellow cheese to truffle mayo and more.

While the customizable nature of the burger definitely contributes to its popularity, there’s something to be said for learning how to make a classic, straightforward, Platonic-ideal version of this flame-broiled wonder. And that’s a pursuit that Chef Alvin Cailan knows very well. On The Burger Show, Chef Alvin travels the country in search of must-try patty creations, and at his laid-back NYC restaurant The Usual and his iconic Los Angeles eatery Eggslut, Cailan serves up traditional burgers with clever twists, all made from top-quality ingredients.

Read more
How to Make Your Own Homemade Peanut Butter
homemade peanut butter

Peanut butter is a healthy, delicious staple in the best of times, but now that people are focusing more on shelf-stable items that are also good for you (or bad for you, we’re not here to judge, and we’d be lying if we said we hadn’t stocked up on cheeseballs and Totino’s Pizza Rolls), the classic sandwich spread has taken on a whole new level of importance. If you are looking to try your hand at maybe making your own with all those new cooking skills you’ve been mastering (move aside, Fieri, there’s a new mayor of Flavortown), the thing you might not know is you only need a few ingredients and a blender and boom, you’ve got yourself a batch of creamy peanut butter (or chunky -- again, not judging).

In order to help in your quest to become the next great quarantine chef, we reached out to a pro to get her recipe for how to make peanut butter at home. This recipe comes to us from chef Sara Bradley of the Freight House in Paducah, Kentucky. Bradley uses an in-house peanut butter (recipe for that here) as a basis for a decadent and delicious pie topping. While you can do that as well, you can also make the peanut butter and use it for, well, whatever else you would use peanut butter for. (We’re fans of a classic peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, but hell, go crazy – it’s quarantine, there are no more rules).
Freight House Peanut Butter
Ingredients:

Read more