about to embark on my sausage journey

stetch · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject: about to embark on my sausage journey

well, I've been waiting for this for a while. Saturday night I have a friend coming over so there are extra hands, and going to try to make sausages. I've read a bunch of what there is to read on this, and am hoping for the best.

making : Irish Breakfast sausages, italian sausage, and some country sausage.

Picked easy stuff that doesn't require any special curing, drying, or smoking for the first round. All pork.

So onto the inevitable question -

I purchased some shoulders, and it looks like they trimmed them up. So I think there won't be enough fat. I am going to go to the store and ask to buy some pork fat, which sounds absurd. Should I just add some bacon to the shoulder? or is there likely enough internal fat?

Wish me luck. any thoughts on the fat thing, please let me know.

I know to sterilize the equipment, semi-freeze the meat, etc. I've got hog casings and am hopefully good to go. just have to pick/make sure I have enough of the side ingredients...

Harry Nutczak · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject:

Back fat would be my first choice, un-cured skinned bellies my 2nd choice.
because cured bacon and "Salt pork" may add a flavor that should not be present in the sausages you are planning to make. I bet they will be good though!!
I could really get into eating some brats made with cured & smoked bacon. But I think it may funk out the Italians a bit.

One other option would be to get "Suet" from the store, it is the fat from around the kidneys on beef. it has a super low melt-point, nearly flavorless, and no connective tissues. Make sure it is actually suet and not just trimmings (some unscrupulous grocers will sell run of the mill beef fat as suet) 20%-25% is your minimum amount of fat some recipes call for up to 50% any less than 20% and they can get a dry and crumbly texture.

Place all your meats in the freezer to firm up just til the get stiff & crunchy, make sure you chill your grinder too, I freeze my worm drive, keep the stuff as cold as you can, one other option os to grind your fat seperately and keep it frozen then add it during mixing. make sure your blade is sharp and the disk is flat. Lube the disk with fat before grinding to save the cutter edge a little.

Mix the meat well, you'll want it to get sticky and tacky. this is the myosin (protein matrix) coming out of the meat and it binds the sausage so you do not get a crumbly texture when cooked. I almost can say you can not mix too much (watch your temps, and re-chill if needed)

Rinse those casings well, soak them as directed so they are pliable enough and less chance of splitting while stuffing.

before stuffing fry up a small patty of meat to test your seasoning, if something is off you can still fix it. the sausages should sit for 24+ hours before cooking for the flavors to meld properly.

if you have too much salt, the only way to fix it is by adding more meat, adding sugar does not counteract saltiness, it just makes it sweet, and still too salty.

Weighing your spices is more accurate then measuring by volume. kosher salt is recommended over iodized salt.

and the most important main thing of all!!
Have fun with it!! You'll never buy sausage from the store again!
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Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

stetch · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject:

right on, thanks!

I'll report back. I purchased casings from a butcher, who just threw them in a bag. I added them to a ziplock container with some salt water to save them. Hopefully that is good, that was what he said to do, but I wonder if I used too much water.

We'll see. if not I'll be making a lot of sausage patties.

Harry Nutczak · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject:

When I have extra casing left , I drain them as much as I can, and add dry salt so they are crusty with salt and no water. I get the short ones sold as "Home Pack" and they seem to work out well. Nothing over 4-5 feet is in the package, the commercial ones can be quite long.
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Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

stetch · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject:

Harry Nutczak · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject:

stetch · Posted: Jun 25 2009 Post subject:

cool, tks. I assume it makes sense to cut the casings into 6' segments for ease of handling...?

stringbender128 · Posted: Jun 26 2009 Post subject:

Stetch, Good luck, I'm sure it will be great!
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buroaks · Newbie Joined: 20 Jan 2008 Posts: 74

Unless you are just in love with that whole grinding process, your meat market will sell you what ever grind you want, usually for the same price as the whole meats.

There is no art in grinding. Everything after grinding is art.

stetch · Posted: Jun 27 2009 Post subject:

here is what I'm making.

Northern Italian sausage
=======================================
3 feet medium hog casings
2 1/2 pounds lean pork butt, cubed
1/2 pound pork fat, cubed
3 teaspoons coarse salt
2 teaspoons coarsely ground fresh black pepper
2 teaspoons finely ground coriander
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon or more, to taste,
crushed red pepper for hot sausage

=======================================

Fresh Garlic sausage
=======================================
5 feet medium hog casings
3 pounds lean pork butt, cubed
1 pound pork fat, cubed
2 teaspoons sugar
3 teaspoons finely minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon freshly fine-ground black pepper
1/4 cup coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 cup dry white wine

=======================================

Irish Breakfast
=======================================
2 1/2 cup Fresh white bread cumbs
1/2 cup Milk
2 1/2 lb Lean pork, such as pork shoulder, chilled
2 1/2 lb Pork belly or fatty pork butt, chilled
1 tbl Plus
2 x Tst salt
2 tsp Freshly ground pepper
2 tsp Thyme
2 lrg Eggs
8 x Yards prepared casings, about 4 ounces

starting tomorrow 3pm. I'll cube and ground the lean meat in advance. Fat and some of the pre-ground fatty is coming over with the person who is going to help with the sausage-ing...

Harry Nutczak · Posted: Jun 28 2009 Post subject:

I am not seeing any fennel or anise seed in that Italian Sausage recipe, That is kinda the determining factor. But it also depends on how far north you are too? French cuisine tends to influence Italian at that point.

I think some chopped flat-leaf parsley would liven up the Italian too, and the salt seems low to me. I could be wrong though. Fry some up before stuffing to adjust seasoning if needed.

lets us know how they turn out when complete, please!
_________________
Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

stetch · Posted: Jun 28 2009 Post subject:

ugh, long day.

Started 1pm sterilizing the kitchen area and grinding meat.
Found out how not to do fat in the grinder. after messing up a bit, all was good.

started out with about 3 of these:

chopped about this big of pieces:

Had a bit of problems with grinding the fat:

But quickly learned how to prevent that. Luckily my partners in crime purchased some extra fat so I was able to toss the mush.

Much better with lean meat:

First made the Italian Sausage, total rookie casing stuffing/work:

Then the garlic sausage, where we got a hair better at stuffing:

And finally the breakfast sausage, where we were much more consistent.

Action shot, friend holding the sausage while we stuffed, her husband had the camera, who was much better than my son with it...

It doesn't look like it, but we had well over 15 lbs of meat. This was the breakfast sausage meat. The bowl is my largest mixing bowl, it is huge:

We basically made 2.5 of these bowls worth of sausage. The clips above were less than HALF of the sausage we made.

I grilled up some of each. The Italian sausage were good, we didn't add the hot peppers because the kids liked them when we fried them up. I too though it was strange with no fennel, but hey, first time out i follow directions. I was AMAZED at how a little spice goes a long long way with the meat in sausages. It tripped me out I could taste 1/4 a tsp in 5 lbs of meat.

The garlic sausages are good, but bizarre, I'd definitely leave out or significantly reduce the nutmeg. Almost makes it kind of middle eastern-ish having it in there

The irish breakfast sausages were a good breakfast sausage. The Irish guy not visible in the shot says we hit it right on, he was loving it.

Thanks for the help. It was a lot of meat to get through, took about 7-8 hours front to back, not including the final cleanup.

One tweak we had to do, I was trying to push the meat through the small holed thing-ie-bob when I was stuffing, I gave up and only single cut the meat. Still came out pretty good in sausage. I wish I took pictures of the cooked stuff.

I'm definitely doing this again. The folks who helped out brought about 6 lbs if store bought ground pork, the color was totally different from mine. Not sure if there was a taste difference, hard to tell because we mixed theirs with mine for the breakfast sausage.

Harry Nutczak · Posted: Jun 29 2009 Post subject:

Stetch, Lose the stuffing tubes for the KA mixer!! that is very difficult and unenjoyable, sausages should not be that difficult to make.

Grizzly industrial is selling a 5# vertical stuffer for about $60.00 right now, I got it and it works very well. It comes with 3 tubes, easily cleanable, and very little leftovers in the cylinder when done, usually just enough left to fry a 1/4 pound patty.

I can stuff by myself with no problems and controlling the speed is so much easier with manual hand cranked model stuffer. Plus on a manual stuffer, the sauage will lay on the table and coil naturally.

next time your grinding fat, freeze it first, grind it, and get it right back in the freezer until you mix your meat.

I am glad it worked out for you. The deck was stacked against you using a KA mixer to stuff.
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Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

stetch · Posted: Jun 29 2009 Post subject:

thanks.

The KA was there and available and I'll go a couple of times to make sure this is a "keeper hobbie" before investing. We knew the entire time that the stuffing can go much quicker and easier, but it as tolerable. Would have been more tolerable with a beer, but that had to wait till taste/package time.

I'll check out the grizzly, sixty bucks isn't much.

I did freeze the fat, but the thing I did was listened to the KA manual which said cut the meat into strips. The fat got stringy and clogged up the output and that was my problem. Once I cut into cubes so there weren't long strands of fat, it was fine.

Fun stuff, the irish breakfast sausage is tasty, had some with some eggs and toast for breakfast.

teakettle · Posted: Jun 29 2009 Post subject:

When it comes to figuring out how much salt you need in your sausages a good rule of thumb is to use around 2% salt by weight. For my taste buds I have found I like 1.75% salt for a sausage that will be grilled and 2% for ones that will be poached.

Weighing the salt and spices can seem like a pain but it leads to a more consistent end product and you can make very small tweaks also. I prefer the metric system weights because I find it much easier when you want to scale a recipe.

Don in Texas

stetch · Posted: Jun 29 2009 Post subject:

cool. I'd need to get a better scale for the tiny amounts of spices.

Harry Nutczak · Posted: Jun 30 2009 Post subject:

I do not know if you caught this bit in another thread, but salt should always be weighed instead of measured by volume.
Different brands of salt can weigh wildly different for the same volume.

For instance, 1 cup of Mortons kosher salt weighs close to 8 ounces, but 1 cup of Diamond kosher salt weighs about 4.5 ounces. So if you are reading a recipe that calls for 1 cup of diamond brand kosher salt, and use 1 cup of mortons kosher salt instead, you would have nearly double the amount of salt as the recipe called for.

That is another reason for frying a small patty of meat before stuffing the casings, if the seasoning is off, it can still be fixed in most cases.
_________________
Just remember that the toes you may step on during your climb to the top will also be attached to the a$$es you'll be forced to kiss on your way back down!

Oregonian2 · Posted: Jul 10 2009 Post subject: KA

stetch · Posted: Jul 11 2009 Post subject:

as an interesting followup.

just pulled some from the freezer, a couple of garlic sausage. they were good texture when I froze them.

well, they were absurdly dry, but still sliceable when I cooked them today on the grill.

guess i need more fat.

the breakfast sausage cook well from the freezer (defrosted) and I'm wondering if my slow grilling to cook thru is drying out the sausage.

in either case, definitely more fat next time.

NumberCruncher · Posted: Jul 14 2009 Post subject:

Stretch, thanks so much for this post. What a great case study in beginning sausage makine 101. I've been thinking about trying it for some time and I've been hung up on what equipment to use, what kind of casing to use, where to get the casing, etc.

Questions for the group that I know have been somewhat answered in other places, but I think this might be a good place for a recap.

1) Grind your own meat, or buy it ground and simply mix and stuff? (Under this method, all I would need to buy is a stuffer, right?)

2) Grinder / Stuffer, or separate equipment? I was thinking about buying a #10 counter mounted hand crank grinder from Gander Mountain and using that as both a grinder and a stuffer. Will that work better than my KA? (or refer to question 1)

3) Is collagen casing ok, or should I use natural? From what I can tell the collagen is easier to work with and stores better, but does it taste fake? I was happy to find that both are available at Gander Mtn. so I can get them when I want them instead of ordering on the internet and waiting for shipping.

Thanks guys! I love this site and I ALWAYS logoff hungry. Smile

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