Ahh Sausage. Encased meats, so basic yet so complicated. One of the oldest forms of processed meats (it’s mentioned in the Iliad), it has become a basic food in many countries and cultures across the planet. From the exotic of fermented meats, to the simple of fresh sausage, to the messy packing of blood sausage, it seems to be something that every meat eater cannot do without, at least for long.

The ones that we made are simple, fresh sausages. Not smoked and not aged with no nitrates, this is the most common you will see in a supermarket. I will be doing smoked meats later this winter, and will post that also. But for now, what happens in the making of fresh sausage is the basis of all. That being the case, Let’s start here.

Since we make a lot of tomato-sauce based foods, we decided on two types; a standard sweet Italian and a Sicilian wine sausage.  Both can be eaten on their own, or used in many recipes. I have made many types of sausages in  the last few years, but we have found these to be the ones that we use the most.  Without anymore of this introduction, let’s get going!

To make sausage at home, you can do it on the really small scale, which is an awful lot of manual labor for each pound, or you can do it the way that I have found to be a nice, comfortable level. Craigslist and Ebay help with this, as buying the necessary equipment new can be quite expensive. The basic two machines you need are a grinder and a packer. Here’s a picture of mine:

On the left is a thirty’s era Enterprise stuffer, on the right is a meat grinder (#22, this means something to the butcher, and has to do with the diameter of the cutting plate). Both were obtained very reasonably on ebay, both for under three hundred dollars total, and they have easily earned their keep. If you want to do home sausage making, these two items are the going to make your life much, much easier!

I make sausage when the cost of pork sholder drops below .90 cents a pound. This is ususlly  a very good sale price, and makes the extra effort worth it, as a minimum size of sausage making is 15 lbs. Once you set up to do it, the bigger the volume, the better!

Ok, so lets get to the meat end of it. Cut the meat up into pieces that will fit into the grinder. Grind it all up. For these sausages, I use a coarse grind, as finer will give an incorrect texture to the finished product, the sweet italian sausage

Now, since sausage is also a place where butchers utilized excess fat, I add 2 lbs of pork fat to 15 lbs of shoulder. (Sausage is a lot of fat, and it is hard to get away from that fact)

Now, with both ready, run it all through the grinder! Once they are all through, the mixing with the spices will begin.

Add the spices. For this sausage, and amount, the following soices are used:

For 15 lbs. total meat weight (fat and meat) we added:

• 6 Tbls of salt
• 4 Tbls of Paprika
• 5 Tbls of whole Fennel seed
• 1.5 Tbls of fine ground Anise
• 1 Tbls of ground Black Pepper
• 1Tbls of powdered Garlic
• 5 Tbls of Red Pepper flake

Once added, mix well, I mix for 10 minutes by hand, to make sure the spices are thoroughly mixed into the meat.

After mixing, it will be thoroughly mixed and look something like this:

Now comes the fun part; packing the sausage into casing. Casing itself is a rather complicated discussion. There are many types, pork, beef and sheep. Each has its uses and advantages, as well as drawbacks. We are going to use pig middles, which are a very basic casing, easily obtained.

Heres what they look like, after soaking and rinsing:

Yup, that’s right, they’re pig intestines! These are from the small intestine of the swine, and are probably the most common used in home applications

So, let’s get the sausage stuffer prepared! To do this, we put the packing tube on the stuffer, and load in the loose sausage.

Oil the stuffing tube, and place about one tablespoon of olive oil in the end of the casing. This will allow for easy loading of the casing onto the tube and for easy packing of the sausage into the finished sausage.

Once the length of casing is started, continue till the end, it may be more than you need, but it is better to have more than less.

Make sure to keep the casing wet during this process, as drying out could increase the chance of the casing bursting during the packing process.

Next, we’re going to load the stuffer. The stuffer I have is one that can take 15 lbs of ground sausage at a time. That’s why I work with that amount.  Take all of the ground sausage and put it in, rotate the packing disk down and we are ready to start.

Loading sausage

Make a knot in the end of the casing, and we are ready to stuff!

It comes out fast, so get ready for it! Make sure to keep your hand close to the packing tube, trying to eliminate any air spaces that may happen. You want to keep these to a minimum.

Keep going till the packer bottoms out. You will always have about ¾ lb left over that can’t be pushed out. This can be reserved for bulk, or added to the next load of sausage..

When it is all packed, we will make the links. This is basically taking the sausage and putting in a twist, first clockwise, than counter clockwise, until you have done the whole sausage. Make the links as long or short as you wish them to be. It’s very forgiving.

Keep going till completed. This what the final product looked like, the first batch:

It’s a great way to spend an afternoon, and it goes real well with home-made sauerkraut, another thing I must get on, as the 70lbs we have going right now is probably ready to be packaged.

Ahh sausage, Ahh Humanity……………….

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