Make Sausage

Making your own sausage takes a bit of an investment to truly make it from scratch. You need a meat grinder and a sausage stuffing machine, but the results are well worth the time and effort. Not only will your sausage be tasty, but it'll be tailored to your specific taste buds. What's more, you'll have plenty of sausage to go around. Each of these recipes makes about five pounds of sausage.

Steps

Getting Ready to Make Sausage

1. Gather your ingredients. Buy the meat, and select the ingredients that you are going to use to make your sausage. You don't have to follow the recipe exactly. You can choose the spices that you like and eliminate the ones that you don't care for as much. Get creative and blend your own spice mix.
2. Get a meat grinder. If you want to make your sausage from scratch, especially if you plan on doing it more than once, it's worth getting a meat grinder. It makes sure that the meat is ground up properly, and it also enables you to grind the sausage to the exact specifications dictated by your recipe. More importantly, it saves time.
   • Some standard mixers come with a meat grinder attachment, which works very well for making sausage.
   • Get a grinder with both coarse and fine settings since different recipes call for different meat textures.
   • If you would prefer not to grind your own meat, you can ask the butcher to grind it for you.
3. Buy a sausage stuffer. This is another vital piece of equipment if you plan on making sausage more than once. Stuffing sausage into pork casings greatly improves the taste of your sausage because it allows the flavors to mix and marinate with each other. This doesn't happen as much when the meat isn’t in a casing. You can stuff sausages by hand if you’re an expert stuffer -- which you’re probably not. So, most likely, the results won't be as good.
   • Some meat grinders come with a sausage stuffing apparatus.
   • If you prefer not to buy a sausage stuffer, you can make loose sausage meat by forming it into patties instead.
4. Choose casings for your sausages. The most common casings are made from salted pork intestines. They are available at many butcher shops as well as online, and they are most commonly sold by the foot. Fifteen feet (4.6 m) of pork casings, for instance, is roughly equivalent to 1 pound.
   • If you prefer not to use the traditional casings made of pork, synthetic casings made from collagen are available as well.
   • You also can use blanched savoy cabbage leaves as casings if you want to avoid using pork.
5. Chill the meat and sausage-making equipment. Before you get started, clear out your freezer to make room for the meat, fat, and all of the equipment you'll be using, including the bowls. It's very important to keep everything cold while you're making sausage. If the fat starts to get soft, it won't properly emulsify with the meat. That means when it comes time to cook the sausage, the fat will separate from the meat instead of cooking with it. In other words, the sausage will be ruined. Keeping everything cold prevents this from happening.
   • Freeze the meat and fat solid before you get to work. This way when you’re working, it will still remain cool even as it thaws.
   • Place the equipment in the freezer for a couple of hours before you start making sausage.
   • When you're ready to start, check to make sure everything is cold enough. The ingredients and equipment should be so cold that it's uncomfortable to work with them. If your meat and materials start to warm up during the sausage-making process, periodically put them back in the freezer to cool down. Then, take them out when they’re cool enough to work with again.

Grinding the Meat

1. Make an ice bath. Fill a large bowl with ice, and place a smaller bowl inside it. Then, place your meat in the smaller bowl. This is how you’ll keep your meat cool while you’re working. But as mentioned above, if the meat starts to get too warm, put it back in the freezer to cool again.
2. Cut the meat and fat. Quickly cut the frozen meat and fat into small chunks about one inch (2.54 cm) across. Then, place the meat and fat back into the small iced bowl as you finish chopping it. Again, this is to make sure the meat remains cool during the process.
3. Mix the meat and fat with the spices. Use a clean spoon to mix the meat and fat while it remains on the ice bath. Then, add the salt, pepper, herbs and spices. Work quickly so that the meat doesn't begin to warm up. When the ingredients are completely mixed, remove the bowl from the ice bath and cover it with plastic wrap.
4. Freeze the meat mixture for 30 minutes. Don't freeze the meat for more than an hour before you grind it. If you freeze it for too long, it will be difficult to grind. It should be slightly soft in the middle and frozen on the outside to grind correctly.
   • If you're making a recipe with wet ingredients like vinegar, sherry, or honey, mix the wet ingredients and place them in the refrigerator for later.
   • If you're using sausage casings, remove them from the freezer and place them in a bowl of water to soak and soften.
5. Grind the meat. Remove your grinder from the freezer, and set it up according to the manufacturer's instructions. Place a cold bowl under the grinder's spout to catch the ground meat. Take the meat out of the freezer and run it through the grinder using either a coarse or fine setting, depending on your preference.
   • Some recipes recommend using a specific grinding setting, but many leave it up to individual preference.
   • The coarse setting is similar to a rough chop. It grinds the meat into thick chunks, while the fine setting grinds up the meat finely.
   • If the meat seems to be getting warm during the grinding process, put it back in the freezer for a few minutes before continuing. Then, only continue when it’s cool enough.
6. Freeze the ground meat. When you're finished grinding, cover the bowl and put the meat back in the freezer. Don’t let it freeze solid, but only on the outside. While you wait for the meat to freeze, clean up the grinder and put it away.
7. Mix in the wet ingredients. Remove the bowl from the freezer and add the remaining wet ingredients, such as vinegar, sherry or honey. Use either a standard mixer, a spoon or your hands to mix the ingredients until the sausage meat becomes sticky and holds together.
   • If you aren't planning on stuffing the sausage into casings, your sausage is now ready to cook or store. You can form it into patties and freeze it for later, or go ahead and cook it in a skillet for five minutes on each side.
   • If you're making sausage links, place the mixed sausage back in the freezer and prepare the sausage stuffer.

Stuffing the Sausage

1. Prepare the sausage stuffing equipment. Take the sausage stuffer out of the freezer, and set it up according to the manufacturer instructions. Run warm water through the sausage casings, and get them ready to stuff by draping one end over the rim of the bowl while the tail continues to soak in warm water. Prepare a cold platter on which to place the stuffed sausages. Lastly, remove the sausage meat from the freezer.
   • When you run water through the casings, check to see if there's a leak. If you find one, discard that casing.
   • Try to keep the casings from getting twisted since you might accidentally rip one if you have to untangle them.
2. Slip a casing onto the stuffing tube. Each casing is several feet long. The entire casing should be slipped onto the tube with a tail of 8 inches (20.3 cm) or so hanging off the end. When you stuff the sausage, the meat will fill the casing. In some cases you only need one casing for an entire batch of sausage.
3. Stuff the casing. Place the meat into the sausage stuffer all it once. Crank down the stuffer so that the meat begins emerging from the stuffing tube and fills the casing. Use one hand to help the casing slowly slip off the tube as the sausage meat fills it, and use the other hand to guide the sausage into a coil shape.
   • It takes some practice to get the hang of how fast to crank the stuffer and fill the casing. So, go slowly at first since you don't want the casing to rip.
   • If you have sausage meat that won't fit in the stuffer, keep it in an ice cold bowl until you run out of sausage. Then, quickly fill the stuffer again.
   • If you run out of casing, remove it from the stuffer, tie off the end, and resume with a new casing. Keep stuffing casings until you run out of meat.
4. Form the links. You should now have one or more coils of sausage knotted at one end of the casing and open at the other. Form the links by measuring six inches from the knot, pinching the sausage with your thumb and forefinger, and using your hands to twist the two pieces toward yourself three times.
   • Measure another six inches down the coil, make a pinch, and this time twist away from yourself three times. Continue in this fashion down the coil until you've run out of room to make more links. Knot the end of the coil tightly against the meat.
   • Make sure you twist one link toward yourself and the next link away from yourself. This makes sure the links don’t unravel.

Drying and Storing the Sausage

1. Hang the sausage to dry. Use a wooden drying rack or another type of rack to hang the sausages up to dry. Drape them over the rack at every other twist so that the links hang down but don't touch. Let them dry for an hour and a half.
2. Pop the air bubbles. Sterilize a needle by heating it over a flame, and use it to prick each sausage where you see an air bubble. This lets out any air that is trapped inside and flattens the casing against the meat.
3. Store the sausages. Place the sausages in a container in the refrigerator overnight so that the flavors continue to meld. After eight or so hours, the sausages are ready to eat. Cook them within one week, or freeze them for up to several months before eating.

Ingredients

Breakfast Sausage

• 4 pounds pork shoulder
• 1 pound pork fat
• 4 teaspoons kosher salt
• 3 teaspoons black pepper
• 4 teaspoons finely chopped fresh sage
• 5 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1½ pounds pork casings

Sweet Italian Sausage

• 4 pounds pork shoulder
• 1 pound pork fat
• 4 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• ½ cup toasted fennel seeds
• 3 teaspoons
• 1 cup minced fresh parsley
• 1 head garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• ¾ cup dry sherry
• ¼ cup sherry vinegar
• 1½ pounds pork casings

Chicken Apple Sausage

• 2 pounds boneless chicken thigh, skin-on
• 2 pounds pork shoulder
• 4 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon crushed red-pepper flakes
• 1 cup peeled, chopped apple
• 2 tablespoons honey
• ¼ cup ice water
• ¼ cup Calvados
• 1½ pounds pork casings

 This video shows how to make breakfast sausages.

Tips

• To make semi-dry or dry sausages (think pepperoni, kielbasa, and the like), you will need to use a cure, which is somewhat more complicated.
• Stainless steel sausage makers/stuffers usually cost more money than plastic ones but are well worth it if you plan to make a large amount of sausages.

Related Articles

• Make a Sausage Sandwich
• Make Sausage Rolls
• Make a Bean and Sausage Bake
• Make Chicken and Sausage Gumbo
• Make a Stuffed Sausage

Sources and Citations

See also

• Make Healthy Sausage
• Cook Black Pudding
• Cook Sausages
• Cook Italian Sausage
• Make Turkey Sausage
• Smoke Sausage
• Make Summer Sausage
• Make Sausage Rolls

What links here

• Cook Sausages
• Gut a Pig
• Make Breakfast Sausage with Spices
• Make Healthy Sausage
• Make Turkey Sausage
• Smoke Sausage