     |
Making Sausage at HomeWe offer a SEARCH feature right from our site if you would like to just quickly get several choices to find your starting place. The Second thing that you must have for making sausage is good meat. Now we know that you have all heard that sausage is made from the scrap meat left over from the butchering process (cutting the roasts, steaks, chops, and so on). While this is usually the case, you still want the meat to come from a quality market. If you have liked the steaks, roasts, chops, and burger from the shop, then using their meat for making sausage is probably going to work for you. Wild game is especially well suited for making sausage. We have successfully used deer, elk, javalina, wild hog, antelope, and moose in our sausage. Many people that have eaten our sausage can not believe that it is wild game. If conditions prevent us from processing our wild game, we insist that the shop that does it for us, take out all of the lymph nodes. These body parts will give the meat an undesirable taste and smell if left in the meat. If your butcher does not know what they are and where they are found, you should find another butcher. You should just try a small batch on your first few attempts at making sausage before investing in equipment. You can use the ground burger and ground pork from your local market. Then just add the recommended spices from the recipe, mix, and you have your pan sausage. Let it set for few days in the freezer to be sure the seasoning has time to work, then cook some to see how you feel about the taste. On the next small batch, you adjust the spices and try again. You should label your sausage as to batch number and date. That way you can keep a record of what you like in the way of the seasoning. Let us talk about pre packaged sausage seasonings. It seems that every one has their name on a special seasoning for making sausage. In our opinion, all of the pre packaged stuff is way over priced. Most of the spices are salt and pepper with just a few other things added (some have the cure added, some do not). Salt and pepper are cheap, so you decide if the convenience is worth paying as much as Ten Times for your spices. Grinding Your Own Meat
Great deals on Grinders. Quality Grinders. Mixers for Making Sausage
When we started our sausage career, we used the mixers that we got for our birthday. Those mixers are called HANDS. Be sure to use some type of rubber glove when mixing sausage by hand. You can not be too careful when dealing with your food. While hand mixing works and is cheap, it is also quite labor intensive. If the spices are not mixed very well, you get some meat with too much spice and some meat with no spice. Sausage that has the spices balled up in spots, is terrible. We have mixed hundreds of pounds of sausage by hand over the years, but finally purchased an electric mixer that was built for mixing bread dough. It works great, but you can only work with about 5-6 pounds of meat at a time and it is hard to divide out the spices correctly. Originally, we mixed the dry spices into the meat by hand. This is the hardest and most labor intensive part of making sausage. I promise, if you make more than 15 pounds by hand, you will be very tired and sore. We learned from trial and error that mixing most of the spices in liquid, makes for better mixing and a more uniform dispersal of the spices. The Crushed Red Pepper and Pepper Corns do not mix well with liquid, so we add that dry as we mix. We now use a large hand operated mixer that that can handle over 15 pounds of meat at a time. It is made of Stainless Steel and can be taken apart to be cleaned easily. A mixer like we use for making sausage can be found at these suppliers: Stainless Mixers. When you get to the site, you can copy this item number into the search box 38-611-471-1 to go to a mixer like ours or just use the Keyword meat mixer in their search box. Quality Mixers. This company sells quality items and backs their products. Just search for meat mixer in their search box. And as always you can use the SEARCH feature listed earlier to find many choices for an affordable mixer for making sausage. Stuffing Your Sausage
Once you have a Pan Sausage recipe that you like, you can progress to making sausage by stuffing the meat into casings. As said before, we like the stuffed sausage because it is the most versatile for us. We prefer using our smokers, yes we have 4 now and just love the flavor of our wild game smoke cured sausage. The Grandkids will take our smoked jerky and sausage as quickly as candy. What would your prefer your children and grandchildren to eat? They even love to help, since their Dad usually helps in providing the meat. The stuffing requires using casings. There are many sizes and types of casings. We usually will use the size that makes a sausage between 1 and 1-1/2 inches in diameter. That makes for easy smoking and that size is usually carried by most places that sell casings. We buy the casings in HANKS (a butcher's term) and that makes them more affordable. A hank can make over a hundred pounds of sausage and if you do not use the whole hank in one job, the remaining casings can be stored for many months if done correctly. Some butcher shops carry casings for making sausage. You will need to either call around your area or order from one of the several sausage making suppliers that can be found by using our SEARCH feature. Your book of recipes and information on sausage will explain the types and sizes of casings. Stuffers, like grinders, come in various shapes, sizes, and construction. Stuffing Tubes are simple but require a lot of hand work and makes a big mess. They are ok for making the summer sausage, but too cumbersome for the link sausage. The hand operated Horn Type are good for small amounts (up to 35-40 pounds at a time), but require a lot of effort. They are usually made of cast iron and are plated to help prevent rust. The cheap ones are not worth the freight to get them to your home. The plating comes off and will get into the meat making it unfit to eat. The better made and brand name units will work much better and the STAINLESS STEEL ones are best. The stuffer attachment for your grinders (hand or electric), will work well also. The small grinders (smaller than #12) are very slow and generate a lot of heat. Be sure to use very cold meat and ice water when using these small stuffers for making sausage. The hand operated Screw Type stuffers are rather expensive, but as you may guess, they are great for medium to large jobs (25 pounds and up). They come in 2 quart to 8 quart volume sizes and in some cases they are advertised as 5 pounds (1-1/2 to 2 quarts) or 10 or 15 pound size. The stuffers rated in pounds (weight) rather than quarts (volume), tend to be lighter in weight than the sturdier cast iron models. Almost all of the Screw type stuffers are of very good quality. We are a bit concerned about the use of plastic gears in some of the stuffers. We would rather have metal gears and screws. These places are our recommendation to look for stuffers: Great deals on Stuffers. When you get to the site, you can copy this item number into the search box 38-612-061-71 to go to a stuffer that includes seasoning or just use the Keywords sausage stuffer in their search box. Quality Stuffers. This company has a number of items and some heavy duty stuffers for making sausage. Just put sausage stuffer in their search box. Mostly Used but sometimes new Stuffer. It is possible to get a very nice stuffer at a very reasonable price here. Just do your research and know what you are looking for. Ask questions and get satisfactory answers before committing to purchase. We have had very good luck with this site. If you try the above sites and still would like more choices, try our SEARCH feature for almost unlimited choices. We have made a video on the subject and hope you enjoy watching.
|
