Minced Meat and Sausages: Factors to Consider When Purchasing Minced Meat and Sausages

Minced Meat and Sausages

Minced meat is the main ingredient of a wide range of dishes. It costs less than other types of meat, but – if minced freshly from high quality meat – can be quite expensive as well. When compressed into a tube (generally made of sheep intestine), minced meat along with salt and other flavorings can be used to make sausages. Different countries make sausages in different ways, resulting in a variety of sausages around the world.

1. Factors to Consider When Purchasing Minced Meat and Sausages

There are several factors to consider when purchasing minced meat and sausages. Most importantly, is the source of the meat - whether it is beef, pork, chicken, turkey or veal. This will have an effect on its price, as well as the signs it shows in freshness.

Minced meat that is made of beef, for example, should be a bright, red color and smell fresh. Fresh minced meat that is pale in colour implies a high level of fat content. Such meat is undesirable – not only for health reasons, but also for the texture that it forms once cooked, which is usually hard and gritty.

Fresh sausages should be pink in colour and moist in texture. Sausages that are grey in colour, and have a sweet odor as well as dry edges, are not considered fresh - they should not be purchased.