Over the next few weeks I'm going to be making lots of sausages, a typical Thai sausage is part meat, part rice or noodles and strong flavourings like chillies and garlic and we have many types. It doesn't take a lot of equipment to make sausages, I use a baking syringe with a long nozzle, as I don't have a sausage maker.
This sausage is chicken, with rice as the filler, and the spicy Thai basil as the flavouring.

Ingredients
250 gms Chicken Mince
200 gms Cooked Fragrant Rice
1 Teaspoon White Ground Pepper
1 Teaspoon Chopped Coriander
10 Sliced Kaprow Basil Leaves
10 Cloves Garlic
5 Coriander Roots
1 Tablespoon Oyster Sauce
1 Tablespoon Light Soy Sauce
1/2 Teaspoon Salt

Preparation
1. Rinse salt off the sausage skin, and run water through the center to clean it.
2. Pound the white pepper, garlic, and coriander together.
3. Mix all the ingredients, and blend to a course paste.
4. Pull the sausage skin over the end of the syringe, fill the syringe with pork meat and fill.

Tip: If you want to taste and adjust the seasonings before filling the sausage, take a little of the mixture and microwave it.

This is also called Sour Isan Sausage ( Nam Side Gorg ) , because it's left a few days to sour in the fridge, but that stage is optional! The sausage is a pork sausage, padded with sticky rice. The sticky rice needs to be soft, to get a softer consistency you can soak the pre-steamed rice in water for 5 minutes.

Ingredients
150 gms Pork Mince
100 gms Sticky Rice
50 gms Galangal
50 gms Lemon Grass
5 Garlic Cloves
3 Coriander Roots
5 Chillies
4 Kaffir Leaves
1 Teaspoon Salt
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper

Preparation
1. Soak the sticky rice in hot water for 1 hour, (or cold water for 8).
2. Steam the rice in a Thai steamer (or on a sheet of foil with holes in it in a regular steamer) for 10-15 minutes until cooked.
3. Leave the rice to cool, if it is still too firm, soak for an extra 5 minutes in water.
4. Blend the galangal, lemon grass, garlic, chillies, coriander root, kaffir leaves together.
5. Mix all the ingredients together.
6. Pipe into a sausage skin.

Continuing with the sausage theme, this sausage is pork, with noodle as the meat stretcher and mushroom as the flavouring. This sausage really needs a helping of fat to blend it, hence the addition of pork back fat.

Ingredients
175 gms Mushrooms (Shitake and Bleckfung/Rat Ear)
200 gms Glass Noodles
25 gms Galangal
10 gms Kaffir Leaves
25 gms Lemon Grass
100 gms Pork Fat (Finely Chopped)
350 gms Pork Mince
10 Garlic Cloves
4 Coriander Roots
1 Teaspoon Black Pepper
1 Tablespoon Salt

Preparation
1. Rinse the sausage skins, mine came packed in salt, they needed extensive rinsing.
2. Soak the glass noodles and mushrooms in water for 6-8 hours.
3. Blend the galangal, lemon grass, kaffir leaves, garlic, coriander root and pork fat together in a blender.
4. Mix all the ingredients together. A food mixer is a good idea at this point, you want a well blended mix.
5. Pipe into the sausage skin.

Remember that you can taste and adjust the filling, by cooking a spoonful in the microwave and tasting it.

Lamb is hardly eaten in Thailand, we think it has a strong smell and so it's only sold in the larger supermarkets, usually for westerners. When we do eat it, you'll find it disguised in other foods, and that is what I've done for this sausage. The meat for this sausage is lamb, the meat stretcher is carrot and kaffir & red curry is the strong flavouring.

Ingredients
200 gms Lamb Mince
10 Cloves Garlic
50 gms Chopped Carrot
2 Tablespoons Chopped Coriander Leaves
1 Tablespoon Red Curry Paste
5 Kaffir Lime Leaves Chopped

Preparation
1. Chop the garlic, mix with the mince and all the other ingredients.
2. Blend in a blender until course but mixed.
3. Stuff the sausage skin, as before rinse the skin carefully to remove it's packing salt and use a sausage stuffer, or as I do, a large baking syringe.

A stronger sausage, similar to Side Gorg Isan, but with the added kick of old fish paste. This is something of an acquired taste, unless you are use to old fish sauce, try the sour or plain version of this sausage first.

Ingredients
150 gms Pork Mince
100 gms Sticky Rice ( Steamed )
50 gms Galangal
50 gms Lemon Grass
5 Garlic Cloves
3 Coriander Roots
5 Chillies
4 Kaffir Leaves
2 Tablespoons Old Fish Chilli Paste
1/2 Teaspoon White Pepper

Preparation
1. Blend the galangal, lemon grass garlic, chillies, coriander root, and kaffir leaves together.
2. If the cooked sticky is too hard, soak it in water for 5 minutes.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients.
4. Pipe into the sausage skin.

And yet another on the sausage theme. This sausage is a red curried pork sausage typical of North Thailand (Chang Mai etc.), and eaten as a snack.

Ingredients
Sausage Skins
200 gms Pork Mince
50 gms Galangal
50 gms Lemon Glass
5 Garlic Cloves
5 Coriander Root
5 Kaffir Lime Leaves
1 Tablespoon Red Curry Paste
1-2 Teaspoons Salt

Preparation
1. Blend the galangal lemon grass, garlic cloves, coriander root, and kaffir together.
2. Mix into the other ingredients and leave to meld for an hour or two.
3. Pipe into the sausage skin.

This sausage is one of the more popular sausage recipes in Thailand. It is a slightly sweet dried pork sausage. The drying is the most difficult part, I wrap it lengthwise in greaseproof paper and leave it to dry on the hot stone on my window ledge, the paper keeps the flies off it. However you can also dry it in an oven at 80 degrees celsius for 3-4 hours until it has shrunk and firmed up.
In the photograph you can see my sausage in the center, and top right is a commercial brand. This sausage isn't cooked yet, it needs further cooking to complete it.

Ingredients
500 gms Pork Mince With Fat
6 Tablespoons Sugar
4 Tablespoons White wine
1 Tablespoons Salt
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
Pinch of Pepper
Pork Sausage Skin, or Cellulose Edible Wrapping

Preparation
1. Mix all ingredients together and leave in the fridge for 1 hour.
2. Pipe into the sausage skin.
3. Wrap in greaseproof paper (roll it length wise) and leave for 3 days in a hot sun to dry out. Or place on greaseproof paper in an oven at 80 degrees celsius for 3-4 hours until the sausage is firm.