Sausage making?

[Questor]

I'm thinking of making sausage, bratwurst sized, probably pork. Probably some wild hog too. Maybe some beef. Can you recommend the best way to go about it? Where do you get sausage casings?

[Beers]

This time of year you can usually find sausage casings in any well stocked grocery, ask them at the meat counter. If not, you can order them from an online source.

I highly recommend these guys: http://www.butcher-packer.com/

As far as how to go about it, you do need some basic equipment... Meat grinder with dies of various sizes and a stuffer attachment or (much preferred) a sausage stuffer. You'll also need lots of Kosher salt, iodized table salt doesn't cut it.

Recipes vary as far as seasonings go, but whatever type of sausage you have in mind, you want to make sure you've got the right ratio of lean meat to fat. The fat should make up roughly 25 - 30% of your mixture by weight. Salt is another thing that doesn't really vary between different kinds of sausage, 1/3 oz. per pound is the rule of thumb (BTW, a kitchen scale is indispensable for sausage making). Always season the meat before grinding.

Another thing to be sure of is that you've completely removed ALL sinew and gristle from the meat. It will bind up on your grinder blades and cause your meat to be smashed through the dies rather than cut, this will ruin the texture of your sausage.

Finally, Keep your meat and all your equipment COLD. Put anything that will contact the meat in the freezer for a while before grinding or stuffing. Grind the meat into a bowl set in an ice bath. If you're making a lot of sausage, keep your seasoned meat and fat refrigerated and pull it out in small batches for grinding, do the same when stuffing.

All you really do is season the meat, refrigerate it (I actually prefer to pop it in the freezer until it just starts to freeze), grind it to the desired consistency, mix it (usually by hand) with the amount of whatever cold liquid the recipe you're using calls for (this is called "binding"), then stuff it into your casings.

Stuffing does take a little practice... but it's not difficult. Just thread the entire length of a casing onto the stuffer, knot or tie off the end and try to let the casing slide off the stuffer at a steady pace. You don't want air in the casing, and you don't want to over stuff them. Easy does it. You will wind up with a few small air bubbles in your casings when you're done, just prick them with a clean needle. Once your casing is full just tie off or knot the other end and twist them into links.

That's about all there is to fresh sausages. If you enjoy your work and the end results and think you might like to try some more interesting things like smoked, emulsified or dry cured sausages... Let me know, I'll be glad to help.

Good luck!

[Questor]

Thanks, Beers. I appreciate the thoughtful and thorough answer. It seems like this is a good time of year to do this. It's about as cold as the inside of a a refrigerator outside, so things will stay cold. I've got a Kitchen Aid mixer with a meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment that we've seldom used. I figured it's a good time to start using it.

[Hodr]

The best source of seasonings I have found are  Leggs Old Plantation . You can find them on the internet.  A butcher up on the rim made some of the finest sausage I ever had.  He sold me a pack and when that was used up, I got there number on the net and called.  Seem to be nice folks and a load of advice.  Now my sausage is the best around.  I have to turn 60 lbs of hog into breakfast sausage to take to my wife's family.  I did it a few years back and now they sort of look forward to it.  I already have that much elk sausage made for them and in the freezer.

blindhari

[GH1]

Mmmmmmm, sausage!
When do we eat?
GH1

[The Hermit]

I think Beers pretty much summed things up perfectly. I used to make sausage every year, lots of folks looked forward to it and I enjoyed it a lot. Its more fun when you have family and friends there to help.
Even though I still have all the equipement, living alone I just make a cooked baloney stick in the oven these days.
Questor, jump right in, you will love it and have lots of fun. You may be surprised someday when somebody out of the blue says " do you remeber the time we helped you make sausage?"
Go for it, my friend.


   The Hermit

[Questor]

The Hermit:

Thanks for the tip. I had not thought of having somebody help me. My son would get a kick out of it.

[CannonKrazy]

A good source of seasoning for sauasge is your local grocery store meat department. I always ask the manager for the sausage spices. He has a basic blend for the store brand flavor. With this he also gave me directions of what to add and how much for different flavors. I can usually buy pre-mixed spice to season 25 pounds of meat for under 5 dollars. Usually you can find the casings there too.

[Captain Emo]

Penzey spices has pre-mixed sausage mixes that are quite good.

[BRL]

I have heard of people, and chefs, using the food processor to grind meat. Has anyone used this process as opposed to a grinder? I'd like to start making sausage and would rather spend the money on a stuffer, casings and other tools, etc. than a grinder when I already have a nice food processor. My processor manual even discusses grinding meat. But, I've heard it's easy to over grind the meat and turn it into mush with the processor.

Thanks!!

[uncowboy]

I used a food processor and was discoraged with the results. Made it too fine like patay. I think it over heated the meat as well. J.Michael

[Buckskin]

I agree with going with Butcher/Packer for seasonings and supplies. They have all you need at reasonable prices.  Also they carry a book called Charcuterie, which is an awesome wealth of knowledge and recipes that are easy and very good.  Here is a website that has a lot of information also.  http://forum.sausagemaking.org/

I make several different sausages every year as well as my own smoked bacon.  My Dad used to raise 400 hogs at a crack, now he only does 20 or so a year for friends and give each of us kids one for Christmas.  We butcher ourselves and have gotten pretty good at the sausages over the years.

Biggest tips I can give you off the top of my head is keep the meat (and fat) slightly frozen or near freezing when grinding, buy a stuffer unstead of using the grinder to stuff casings, keep the fat % around 30%, and fry some up to test seasoning before stuffing the batch so you can adjust before stuffing if needed. Nothing worse than stuffing 25 pounds of crap you can't eat.   And buy bulk spices from B/P instead of a grocery store when making your own spice.  You will save about 1000%.

[Captain Emo]

Great advice .  . .  fry up a test-patty.   You might find you left out something important.  This saved 25lbs of sausage for me last year.

[The Hermit]

Texture is important. For years some locals tried to duplicate an Italian sausage made by Gorri's Market in Upstate NY. Frank Sinatra used to have it shipped to him where ever he was. Even with a copy of the old mans recipe, they couldn't duplicate it. I ran into a couple of older ladies from that neighborhood one time and the topic came up. One replied " well for one thing, the old man used a grinder with 1/4" holes in the cutter and it made the texter better".  Bingo!! It makes a big difference when you eat it. He mixed his spices in with the chunks of meat and only ran it through the grinder/stuffer once. Hope this helps.

    The Hermit

[Buckskin]

That is very true about texture.  I also run it through a 1/4" plate only once.  BUT... You need to use quality meat trimmed very well if you do this.  Or you will have a sausage with a lot of canardly's in it.  The better the meat the better the sausage.  Which is why high production sausage you buy is so poor.

[eye shot]

Here is the best site IMO. The Sausage Maker INC. and the best book. Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing by Rytek Kutas.

[The Hermit]

BRL, You don't really need a stuffer. My indian friend makes his into patties, cooks them through but not hard and packs them in a crock and covers them with lard. They keep all winter. When ever he wants some, he digs a few out and drops them in the frying pan. I have packed them in wide mouth canning jars and they kept all winter. You can always make patties and freeze them. Just put a waxed patty paper between each one before freezing.
When I was in my teens all I had was a big old hand crank grinder, still got it in fact. You know you done some work when you put half a hog through it.

   The Hermit