Home made sausage

Bob, I'm just starting this process too, we've made and stuffed Italian sausage with the Kitchen Aid. I found that my Cuisinart food processor does a much quicker job of chopping the meat, and I just bought my fiancee a sausage stuffer for his birthday, he'll get it on Friday. When he was a kid (a long time ago, LOL) he worked for a Sicilian grocer named Castelicci in the Detroit area, so he wanted to re-create the sweet italian sausage he made when he was a teenager. This is what we got and it was darned good:

I bought him a LEM stainless steel sausage stuffer for right about $100 on Amazon. It's not motorized, many other home sausage makers complained that the motor driven stuffers don't allow the "stop and go" needed to link sausage or that they work too quickly. No pictures or recommendations yet, it's still gift wrapped on the dining room table!

We also decided to cure our own pancetta, and it's so delicious, even I was impressed. Easy too....

I highly recommend Brian Polcyn's book "Charcuterie" for recipes and instructions.

Good luck, and have fun. I can't help you on the meat supplier, I grow all my own beef and pork. I can tell you that I used much, MUCH less fat than the recipes called for and the sausage was well received by everyone who has tried it.

Annie

Hi Annie, Bob and Pat,

I too am a new sausage maker!! I just requested a sausage making forum on the GW suggestion forum. I was using my Cusinart but have ordered an electric grinder from Target.com. The one we ordered is: Deni Professional Meat Grinder - 3200 . They also have another that is about $20 less. Thanks for the book recommendation. I will check online to get a copy. I just purchased a book tonight from Barnes & Noble on sausage making but it does not have any recipes for Pancetta or Bacon. My first sausage was Old Fashioned Country Sausage and Sicilian Lemon & Orange. Both seasonings were purchased from a guy on eBay. I had absolutely NO thought about making sausage but while surfing eBay one night I saw this seasoning and thought how nice it would be to have some really fresh sausage. Now I will be mixing my own spices. Next purchase for us is a smoker so we can cold smoke salami. We are going to make bologna also.

If you have time go over to the Suggestion forum and reply to my suggestion for a sausage forum - the more people who reply the better chance we have in getting a sausage/bacon forum.

Here is a link that might be useful: GW Suggestion forum

We had a Sausagethon on the Cooking Forum last summer and it was so much fun. We had about 7 members who made sausage. I made a mild Italian Sausage and a Chicken Apple Fennel Sausage and both were delicious.

I cube the pork and put it in my food processor and pulse until it is the consistency I want. It does not take more then 2-3 pulses or it will be mush so be careful.

I make mine into patties, place on a cookie sheet and freeze and then put 4 per zip lock bag. It stacks nicely in my freezer and uses less space. And the pattie form is more convenient for DH to make for breakfast.

The pork butt I had was extremely lean and I think mine would have been better if it had more fat. In fact almost every one in the Sausagethon said that their pork was too lean. Some added bacon to increase the fat content.

Mild Italian Sausage

Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2005

3 pounds well-marbled pork butt, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons toasted fennel seeds
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground anise
2 tablespoons freshly chopped Italian parsley leaves
3 tablespoons dry red wine
Pork casings, optional

Combine the pork butt, garlic, paprika, fennel seeds, salt, pepper, cayenne, anise, parsley, and red wine in a large bowl and toss well to coat. Refrigerate covered overnight or up to 24 hours.

Pass the mixture through a meat grinder fitted with a medium die. (Alternately, transfer to a food processor in 2 batches and process until finely ground.) To test the seasoning, heat 1 teaspoon oil in a small skillet, and cook about 2 teaspoons of the mixture. Adjust seasonings, to taste.

Using the sausage attachment on a mixer, stuff the meat into the casings, if being used. Twist and tie off to make 4-inch sausages. Alternately, shape into patties. Cook sausage in usual manner, making sure the internal temperature of the sausage links reaches at least 150 degrees F. Uncooked sausage can be stored in the refrigerator up to 3 days or freeze and use within 3 months.

Chicken-Apple-Fennel Breakfast Sausage

Recipe courtesy Emeril Lagasse, 2005

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup grated Granny Smith apple
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 1/2 pounds ground chicken
1/2 pound ground pork
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage leaves
1 3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Heat a saute pan over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Toast the fennel seeds until golden brown in color, about 1 minute. Add the onions and grated apple to the pan and saute until the onions are translucent and most of the moisture has evaporated, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic and sweat for 30 seconds. Remove from the heat and place the onion mixture on a plate to cool. While the onion mixture is cooling, combine the chicken, pork, sage, salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper and nutmeg in a medium-size mixing bowl. Once the onion mixture has cooled, fold it into the meat mixture until blended.
Form your meat mixture into 8 (3 1/2-ounce) patties. To cook the patties, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Add 4 patties and cook for about 3 minutes per side, or until cooked through. Remove from pan and serve warm. Repeat with the remaining tablespoons of oil and sausage patties, if desired. Alternately, uncooked sausage patties will keep, refrigerated, for 3 days or frozen and used within 3 months.

Michelle

The person who has been involved with most of the sausage threads here is me. I make every kind of suasage you can think of. We almost got a seperate forum just for meats, curing, and sausage making. I do NOT use a Kitchen Aid mixer, with attachments or any of the other whimpy grinders. I just posted a link to Northern Tool about a great grinding machine that I use here. Its big enough to handle most any kind of cut of meat, beef and pork. I also have been able to find different sized cutting plates to get different sizes of chopped meat. I have made chorzo, beer bratwurst, salami, pepperoni, kielbasa, and all kinds of italian sausages ranging from some with peppers and onions to ones with cheese. Also beakfast sausages. I also cure meats like Canadian bacon and pastrami. When I make a batch, it can be up to 50 pounds at a time. I have a sausage stuffer that does 15 pounds per filling, and a meat mixer that can handle about 15 pounds per batch. Even my huge stainless mixing bowls hold about 25 pounds each and are easly stored in my fridge. Here are some of the places I buy saussge supplies from:

http://www.sausage-stuffer.com/
http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/index.php
http://www.sausagesource.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Affiliate=google
http://www.sausagemania.com/tips.html
http://www.butcher-packer.com/
http://www.sausagemaker.com/

Feel free to pick my brain as I have many tips (about 30+ years worth) here.
Ken

Ken, I got the casings and seasonings from www.butcher-packer.com too. The service was fast and efficient and it's based in Detroit, so it's local for me (kind of).

I did find that a locak meat packer will happilyl sell me casings and supplies, although I refuse to use pre-mixed seasonings, I mix all my own. It's convenient to get casings locally, though, and I don't have to pay shipping.

Michelle, I also made a turkey sausage with dried Michigan cherries, cinnamon, cloves and some other "sweet" spices. I just made patties of those.

Elery says next we are going to make hot dogs. Since I have a whole freezer full of homegrown beef and pork (about 700 lbs. LOL), I'm game.

I don't have a smoker, so at this point it's strictly fresh sausage, although a friend sent me seasoning and instructions for Linguica, a Portuguese smoked sausage, so maybe a smoker's next on my list of gifts/purchases.

Annie

ok Ken I would like to "pick your brain" or recipe file for your kielbasa recipe. Thanks.

Count me in as another enthusiastic sausage maker - (thanks to Ken's encouragement). I purchased a sausage grinder from E-Bay about a year ago. It is called Small Timer. I've seen these little rascals from time to time, usually called by different names.

It works great - and we've been doing Italian sausage type for some time. Haven't ventured into smoking them yet, but perhaps will - (if I can conquer my sourdough bread "larning" first - LOL).

Doing onion rye today - and it did a great job of rising - we shall see.

Bejay

For breakfast sausages, I use sheep casings. For most others I use hog casings of different sizes. The biggest is good for kielbasa. Kilebasa is made of 60-70% pork meat and 30-40% pork fat. Because pork has been bred to be much leaner now, its very hard to find any decent quantity of pork fat. I also use the skin of the pork. I used to buy small containers of pork casings at local supermarkets, but these were always small pieces (under 3 feet) many holes, all sizes, and not very fresh. I NEVER use a salt pork, or pork fat back, in sausages. Its because its already cured and will melt and break down too quickly. Kielbasa is basic, and benefits by plenty of garlic, both fresh chopped and dried are used. Marjorum is the spice used to make kielbasa, and I also add some coursly ground pepper and ground mustard seeds. I don't use any string to tie up my sausages. The kielbasa is filled to about 20 inch long piece and the ends are simply tied in a knot. I 'coil' the piece up and pack in Food Saver bags for freezer. I do this with most of the bigger sausage types. I also make a very thin pepperoni snack stick which uses dried formed collegen (mahogany color). My stuffer has very narrow 1/2 inch diameter stuffing tube that the whole 22 foot long collapsed dry casing will slide onto. I never use my meat grinder to stuff sausages as its never enough pressure used, unless your pushing very hard on the input side with a plunger. I lucked out when I bought my 15 pound capacity SST stuffer, as I was able to modify one stuffing tube to hold the 1/2 inch diameter one inside it. This stuffer usually runs about $300, but because I bought it from a company that had all kinds of prototypes, I decided to try a horizontal stuffer, that didn't work very well for me. The stuffer supplier was very helpful and had given me a few opportinites to test other machines before deciding on the one I, and they currently recommened. The one I have now is a vertical one. Its similar to my original 5 pound capacity machine (was cast aluminium), but has dual gears which speed up the exit of the plunger when the stuffer is empty. Its also all stainless and has an air relief valve in the plunger to reduce air from getting into sausages. I do like the mixes for some things, like the Canadian bacon brine mix, which works very well to make $1.79 or less, per pound Canadian bacon. I also prefer to use nitrates in mine as I don't always have 40 degree temps in my kitchen when making sausages. I have even dry cured salami and regular pepperoni, both of which use about 60% beef, and a slower dissipating nitrate. A few others I have made are beef and tomato, oriental pork, using that red 'Au So' sauce in them, as well as an everything italian sausage, with peppers, onions, garlic, cheese, thyme, oregano, basil, and fennel. One of the sausage suppliers also offers dried beer flavor and high melting temp cheddar cheese that really holds up to the BBQ when cooking them. I also buy quite a lot of dried peppers, both red and green sweet types. At the present time, if I had the time and space, I could probably make about 200 pounds of various sausges if I had enough meat. Pork fat, by the way, can be thawed and refrozen, and will not affect its quality. Also, I like to add some soy protein, as well as a fat replacer, and some phosphates that help to get meat to hold its shape and its moisture when its cooked. Someday, I may consider smoking, but at the present time, I use liquid smoke flavor. Most all of my sausges are quite lean, and are just at the texture point where any less fat, would make them dry.

Here is a link that might be useful: Northern Tool

Will everyone posting here PLEASE go over to the suggestion forum (link below) and respond to my request for a sausage/meat forum. If no one responds the folks at GW will not set this up. It only takes a minute. Thanks!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Suggestion forum GW

Thanks everybody we now have 4 responses to my suggestion AND I made another request. I also sent a request to the "contact us" link at the bottom of all GW pages. I reminded them that Vegetarians have their own forum so maybe .........

Don't want to comment on my suggestion post on the Suggestion forum?? No problem. Go over there and make your own post - the more the merrier :-))

Meat eaters unite!! Yum!!

Been there, and done that. This same suggestion was also made last year and didn't seem to take off very much, except for a few threads here. At least its easy to find a subject alled "meat", "sausages", "curing", and "brining".

Wow what a response. Thanks to everyone. I have also posted on the suggestions forum so maybe we can get the new one started. It apparently is really needed. We ordered the meat grinder similar to the one on sale at Northern except I paid way too much for it on Ebay. Just got too anxious. Everything that I read agreed with my thoughts about overloading the Kitchen-Aid mixer trying to use it for everything. I also ordered the small sausage stuffer from Northern (3-lb size - $12 plus shipping). There were too many bad comments about the 5-lb and 10-lb models letting meat bypass the piston. I was also leery about the jointed handle. That seems like a weak spot especially given the amount of force you are using to compress the larger piston of meat.

My next question concerns using beef fat from untrimmed brisket. I am having a problem getting the pork fat. I was told that just about all of the meat now arrives pre-packaged and all the store butchers do is just price it and put it out on the shelf. Any time that we buy an untrimmed brisket, we end up disposing of a lot of fat before we smoke the brisket. Next brisket, I plan to save the fat and try it in the sausage process.

Thanks again to you all. Bob

About sausage being a bit dry -

I make sausage without added fat, but I fry the patties in oleo - in a slow frying pan without adding any water. A cover is helpful to make sure the center portion is thoroughly cooked.

The addition of beef fat is not recommended - I believe Ken addressed this in his previous postings.

We don't mind the less fat pork sausages - and find frying in oleo to help offset the lack of extra pork added.

My usual method for pork sausage is to pack the bulk sausage in small 1 lb sizes (for our small family). They fit nicely in the small baggie plastic bags. I buy styrofoam butterfly-type containers - in bulk - which are available in our local Smart and Final stores - for use by restaurants for carry-out of such foods as burritos or hot dogs. These containers hold 2 packs of sausage and are then frozen.

Actually, the containers will not hold up to a lot of juggling in the freezer - so it is best to stack them in an out of the way area - I also put a rubber band around them to hold the container shut.

I haven't had much luck with the sealing equipment that I bought awhile back, so find the double bagging use of styrofoam containers to provide and extra precaution against freezer burn. Outside of the need to give a little more room for safety sake, I find these containers have worked well. They are also used for small packages of frozen peas and beans - first enclosed in baggies, then the styrofoam outers.

Ken's advice over the past year has proven most valuable to me in my "meat" ventures. Hopefully, we will be able to attract a few more devotees.

You might also be interested in making corned beef and pastrami - he has the know-how on these two items as well.

Just my 2 c's.

Bejay

Have fun, Bob.

As I mentioned, I grow all my own grass fed beef and my own pork, and it's pretty lean. My meat-;acker doesn't trim my meat, at my request, but there still isn't much fat.

I just make it with less fat. At some point it will be dry, but mine isn't and I used about half the fat that the recipes called for.

I won't eat ground beef with 20% fat, I'm sure not going to eat sauage with 40% fat! I make my own because I'm trying to eat healthier, I have high cholesterol and have lost quite a bit of weight. So mine must be much lower in fat than the "usual".

It's not just me, though. I've given that sausage to my daughter and son in law, to Elery's family, to my Dad. No one has complained that it's dry, everyone loved it. I made it sweet, with a combo of pork and beef, a bit of Asiago cheese, fennel, sweet white wine and some other seasonings. Yummy, low fat and chemical free!

Annie

Beef fat isn't recommended in any sausages. Its only useful when its allowed to remain on pastrami and corned beef to act as flavor. Pork fat has less cholestrol, and dark meat turkey is the highest in cholesterol. Locally, there are both some small butcher shops as well as a few supermarkets that will save some pork fat for you. You must ask ahead of time, and make sure the butcher/meat cutter knows your going to make sausages out of it, and pick it up the following week. Most ALL commercial pork sausages of any kind, contain 40% pork fat to 60% meat. Here, I have about 15 pounds of cork fat thats been collected over several months. Some supermarkets do trim pork fat if its for something thats on sale that week, and doesn't display well. Any time I buy a boneless pork loin to make Canadian bacon, its always quite lean, but still can use a light trimming prior to brining. That way, I cut off any fat, and freeze it a swell. Here, I also add fat replacers, as I just don't like sausages to be mealy with a wet sawdust texture. Here is one source for a decent replacement that doesn't make meat get dry. I have tried adding vegetable oil to sausage meats and it just doesn't work to keep them moist. Cooking in margerine is not a healhy way to enjoy a sausage as its making a trans-fat, once the two meet and are cooked together. A while back I tried making cheese sausages and used Asiago cheese and it just stayed in litte globs that didn't dissolve. Now, I use a high melting cheddar thats, made for, and works well, with sausages that are grilled or cooked, as it will not ooz out once they are cooking. It gives them a very creamy flavor.

Fat replacer:
http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/1483

Soy additive:
http://www.butcher-packer.com/pages-productinfo/product-317/soy-protein-concentrate-1-lb.html

Another source:
http://www.sausagemaker.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1378

I even have some fat replacer that was bought a while ago from a company that offers one that's grain based. It has oats and a few other moisture absorbing grains that help hold in moisture. The phosphate also works well and will even give a firm texture to things like salami and pepperoni, where you don't want any crumbling to take place, and want to make thin slices.
The only reason I add a nitrate is because of the dangers of food poisoning. I can't grind and stuf my sausages at 35-40 degrees in my kitchen, and have no walk in refrigerator. If I am making sausags, only have the recommened amount of nitrates are used. That equates to about a teaspooon to over 5 pounds of meat. Most commercial hams and sausages are using 3 times that amount.
My stuffer looks like the following:

Here is a link that might be useful: Vertical sausage stuffer

OK, dancinglemons, for you I went and added my voice to the sausage forum request thread! But I'm not sure I want these interesting discussions to go away from here where I am sure to see them........ ;-) I guess I will trust that you all will get so expert at it that when I'm ready to plunge into sauasge making you'll be ready to help me out!

;-)

We have been getting turkey sausages from our local grocery in recent years --- very tasty and half the calories of pork.

Zabby

I agree with Ken that pork fat is what you want for sausage. It is soft and flavorful, whereas beef fat is hard and has a different flavor (less I think).

I also agree with the desireability of a meat curing forum(not limited to sausage) on this site. It's worth trying again. Also, a fermented foods forum would be great to have. Don't give up. We were able to get a bean forum approved a couple of years ago and it has turned out well.

Jim

Here is the point I stress. For properly curing meats. Without it, it would be like canning foods without any heat processing, or any other concern about bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Sometimes adding chemicals (like vinegar and salt) are very necessary in canning. Why not observe the same safety rules for meats.

Here is a link that might be useful: meat curing safety

I agree, Ken, it must be done safely. I did use the "pink salt" or curing salt on the pancetta, but still froze it immediately after curing.

My sausage I add nothing to because I only make fresh sausage and it gets eaten promptly or frozen. I don't make any cured or smoked type sausage at all and don't foresee that I will in the near future because I just don't like it well enough to mess with it. We'll see if I change my mind.

As for the beef addition, I don't add appreciable beef fat, just nice lean beef from my own homegrown grass fed beef. You like it your way, I like it mine. (shrug) I added it to the Italian sausage because Mr. Castelicci's recipe called for it, along with the Asiago cheese. I didn't notice any "chunks" of cheese at all, just a nice additional flavor, but I didn't add much.

It's clear our taste buds are much different, Ken, so we'd probably better not sit down to a dinner of sausage together, LOL.

Annie

I have just started playing with making breakfast sausage. Eventually, I will get into the casings, etc., but for now I'm just making bulk sausage to shape into patties. I had the same problem with not having enough fat available to mix in with the meat.

My husband and I love bacon, fried very slowly so that it ends up quite crisp and I have always saved the rendered fat because I like the flavor far better for things like browning beef for stews, or pan frying a steak or meatballs etc.

So, I tried using some of that to mix in with the pork and whatever fat the pork came with. It helped, but I wasn't happy with the texture. I think that small chunks of fat, throughout the meat must melt slowly, and leave the sausage "lighter" in texture...sort of like the lard/crisco/butter in baked dough recipes like pie crust or croissants. The bacon fat just sort of blends in.

A market here in town sells bulk bacon, which is often more fat than anything else, so I was wondering about grinding that up "raw" and adding it?

Here are some interesting recipes:

French Garlic Sausage

5 lbs medium ground pork butt
1 1/2 TBSP salt
1 1/2 TSP black pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp cinnamon
8 cloves pressed garlic (very fine grind)
1/4 cup brandy
1 cup water

Combine all ingredients, mix well and stuff into hog casing. To cook - boil or fry.

French Garlic Sausage w/o spices

3 lbs medium ground pork butt
2 lbs medium ground beef chuck
1 1/2 TBSP salt
3 tsp sugar
2 tsp white pepper
8 cloves garlic pressed (fine)
1/4 cup brandy
3/4 cup water

Combine all ingredients, mix well and stuff into casing. To cook bake or fry

Armenian Lamb Sausage

5 LBS Medium Ground Lamb
1 cup finely chopped onion
8 cloves pressed garlic
2 TSP black pepper
1 TSP salt
2/3 cup fresh mint leaves - chopped not to fine
(I used dry mint but rehydrated it b/f adding - will use fresh when spring comes and my mint grows again)
1 cup water

Combine all ingredients, mix well and stuff into casing. To cook boil or grill. Can also pan fry - medium low heat. (We have not eaten this yet - will report back)

BTW I am a huge fan of Penzeys Spice House and The Spice House. I find the spices to be fresher than store bought. However Costco is gaining ground now that they have spices in containers that are a bit smaller.

Pork fat that has been previously cured, is NOT recommended for any sausage making. That includes bacon grease and any other 'collected' melted fats, as well as the salt pork and pork fat back. Because I also use the pork skin in my sausgaes and it virtually dissolves, its a great addition for flavor too. I make pork breakfast patties too and for them, I use ground sage, course ground black pepper, and coriander. For a hotter more spicy flavor, a bit more pepper and sage is added. For a more spicy hot flavor, a bit of red pepper. To 'taste test' before stuffing or forming, I fry up a very small amount while the rest is chilling in the fridge. Usually even a quick zap in the microwave using a few paper towels under the small spoonful will cook it very quickly. Sometimes I have to taste test 3-4 times before getting to a flavor level I like. Salt is also very important, and adding too much can spoil the whole batch, so thats why I don't use the Moron Tender Quick product as you cant easily control ts included nitrates.
Another posted thread here was about a brined butt, and with the very weak brine, and a smoking afterwards, that could result in a very perishable and dangerous piece of meat! A metal meat pump with long needle is a great investement for anyone wanting to do cured pork. Pepperoni is a favorite of mine as is salami. These two are the only 'dry cured' sausages I make, as they use the slower release nitrate. Once completed and dried, they can stay at room temps for months. The are stuffed in non edible casings, which are very tough and hold up to very high stuffing pressures. They get peeled before slicing, unlike my pepperoni snack sticks (look a bit like Slim Jims). Salami uses both beef and pork meat, as does a few others. Even pepperoni is made with mostly beef meat and pork fat only.

Annie, I think you would enjoy my Italian cheese sausages, as they are just regular Italian (use garlic, onion, aand a few italian spices, even a little oregano), but have the high temp cheddar added. I gave a few to the next door neighbor and saw them come out of his grill totally black. He apparently didn't know how long to cook them. I told him to just cook slowly intil nicely brown on the outside. He said both the black and regular cooked ones had a nice creamy flavor, something he has never had before. A while back, I bought some chicken sausages that flared up on the grill so bad, that I had to shut off he gas. They literally burned in their own fat, which was not a pleasent taste. I guess they had over 50% chicken fat and skin, as mine never do that.

Zabby,
Sorry these threads annoy you so much..

Here is a link that might be useful: #10 grinder plates for Northern Tool grinder

Ken - you mentioned Morton's Tenderquick - I used it in the last corned beef that I brined. It turned out well - and was evenly red inside after 2 days brine time in the fridge. I used the stainless steel injector - and it really does get the brine inside better.

My only problem was that the saltiness of the Morton's had to be leached out during the cooking process. Perhaps I should have soaked the meat in water first to release some of it before cooking. But as it happened to turn out well with using a baster to bale out the saltiness and adding more water, the finished product was great.

It was cooked with some cabbage, carrots and potatoes as a boiled-type dinner. But the left overs went into some very fine Ruben-type sandwiches, using some newly made sauerkraut along with it.

Should I have water soaked the brined corned beef after the Morton's? And if so - how long? That Morton's salt is really quite salty.

Bejay

Jim, I'm still with you on the fermentation forum and believe it would be worthwhile and popular!

Dancing, your Garlic Sausage sound yummy!!!

Bejay, I found a Small Timer Grinder on Amazon. Is this like the one you have. DH bought me one years ago and believe it or not I just found it. It's been packed away and I totally forgot about it.

Michelle

Here is a link that might be useful: Small Timer Grinder

Ken,

Could you post a couple of your Italian cheese sausages I'd like to see the ingredient list. Thanks.

Michelle

Michelle -

That looks like it! I'm pleased with the operation so far. Admittedly, I don't use it often - but like the ease of cleaning and it seems to be strong enough for anything that I've used it on. Simple to use and put together after clean-up.

Can't remember the price - I've seen quite a variation on selling cost, however. There are a lot of "look-alikes" out there too. Be sure to check the power - they differ also.

Bejay

Ken writes: Another posted thread here was about a brined butt, and with the very weak brine, and a smoking afterwards, that could result in a very perishable and dangerous piece of meat!

I just weighed the amt of salt that I used for 12 cups of water and it came out the equivalent of 9 oz per gal. What is the minimum I should have used? Several times over the last few years I've posted abt the meats I smoked for use in burritos and I've always noted that they were pressure cooked afterwards for safety and tenderness.

I just lost an hours worth of research and replies.. AHHH!! Here goes again. I don't like using Morton Tenderquick as you can't estimate the proper amount of it mixed with water and used as a brine. You mention its very salty and because of that, you should reduce the amount of the TQ to water ratio. Keep in mind that the TQ also has the nitrates, so if you added too much TQ, you have also got too much nitrates in there too, and thats not good. As to the small timer grinder, that is the same model Northern Tool sells and has a built-in breaker in case it gets overloaded. It also has a reverse button that you would use to free up a binding. The #10 grinder plates from the Sausge Maker will fit it nicely and gives you many die sizes to choose from when grinding. Most all of my brines for meats are made from prepackaged mixes, which are salt, sugar, and afew other minor additives, but no nitrates added. There are mixes for corned beef and one for hams and Canadian bacon. The later also has brown sugar added. A good kitchen scale comes in very handy. You weigh or measure out the amount needed for a batch of brine, and then add the necessary amount of water (per the instructions, and then add the nitrates, and any other flavors like liquid smoke, and inject. When injecting, any piece of meat smaller than 5"x5" a 24 hour soak is fine, anything larger should be soaked in the brine for at least 24 hours or more. Weigh the meat before its pumped with brine, and then follow directions to get it to the proper (higher) weight with the added/injected brine.
Butcher Packer has many unsual ingredients you can add to sausages, as well as a very big selection of mixes for all kinds of sausages. They are the company that sells high temp cheddar cheese, as well as dried beer flavor. The cheese comes finely diced and mixes in very easily. I used both when making beer bratwurst and my cheese Italian sausages. I don't really have any recipes, as I go by taste and know that italian sausages always taste good with plenty of garlic. If its a fennel flavor, I also add some anise seeds. Oregano, rosemary, thyme, fresh ground pepper, and onion, are also good, as is coriander. When I make a big batch of sausages, I usually start out with a salted base, then seperate batches to flavor some with cheese, or peppers and onions, and other herbs. Kielbasa is one of the ones I also make from a base of coursly ground pork meat and fat, then it gets plenty of garlic and Marjorum, as well as a bit of whole mustard seeds. Kilebasa is ground in a very course grinding plate, while Italian is a medium grind, and breakfast sausages are a smaller grind, almost like hamburg. Pepperoni is also a small grind for the pork fat and a medium grind for the beef meat.
I used to mix the meat, fat, and other ingredients with a big spoon, which took many minutes and lots of muscle. Now, I use a big stainless steel meat mixer, where you just turn the crank a few doezen times and its mixed quite well. This is when I spoon out a small amount and cook it, to taste it to see if its at a flavor and texture level I like. Be creative with your sausage making. Add things like nutmeg, allspice, clove, celery seed, or even lots of sweet red ground pepper with vinegar to make chorizo. I made some, but went overboard with the vinegar, so all that acid did a 'serious' number on the meat, as it acted like a super tenderizer and turned the pork to mush. I plan to remove them from their casings and add some to a larger batch of pepperoni at a later time. When I was making them, it never occured to me that after about 4 hours of all that vinegar in the meat, that it was actually 'cooking' it, so I didn't know what the final result was until days later. I figure in that way, it will be more diluted with other meat, and will still be safe to cure as it will be done in the dry curing method instead.
My cast aluminium sausage stuffer is still for sale. I bought it about 30 years ago from the Sausage Maker, when no one had these to sell. It handles 5 pounds of meat and comes with 3 different sized stuffing tubes. Rugged machine with a big crank on the side and a vertical piston with a big rubber O ring to act as the seal around the cast aluminium plunger.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hi temp cheese

There is a "home butchering meat curing" group on Yahoo dotcom that has recipes and seems to be quite active. I have applied for access to it and am waiting for the group administrator to grant the access. It is purely a matter of filling out a form and typing in a code that is shown on the page to keep out the mechanical responder programs.

The group looks like something that folks who have posted on this thread would be interested in. The nice thing about the groups on Yahoo is that there is a file section and a photo section that you can access anytime or post to. That way, the photos and files remain online for others to get to them very easily. Much more so than our posting recipes on here.
This site has an automatic block to keep me from giving the address.

Tried the lamb sausage tonight. Yum! Next time I will add more mint and perhaps some ground fresh rosemary. Will do again in spring when my mint comes up again then I can have fresh mint and fresh rosemary in with the lamb. BTW all of the sausage we are making now is patties as our sausage stuffer has not arrived yet. Some of the recipes we are using come from "The Sausage-Making Cookbook" by Jerry Predika. Also using spice mix we purchased on eBay called Sicilian Lemon/Orange - this stuff is fantastic!!

I know all you guys are way more advanced than me, but I like Alton Brown's recipe for plain sage-and-pepper pork breakfast sausage. I posted a link to the transcript below. I make this with my Kitchen Aid meat grinder attachment. I agree that it is not for high volume, but if you're an occasional user like me you might like it...the parts take up less space than another whole appliance.

I usually add some fatback or salt pork like he says, and then wish I had it out because there seems to be enough fat in the pieces of pork shoulder that I buy. I can't do casings, even the synthetic ones seem icky to me. Just give me some good old strong corn liquor and some fatback on the side.

Just wanted to add the opinion of a soft-cure charcuteuse for variety.

Melissa

Here is a link that might be useful: A Beautiful Grind transcript from Good Eats

DL, I made the French Garlic Sausage yesterday and fried up a piece as a taste test. I was very good and I enjoyed the slight brandy flavor. I did add some toasted fennel seed, but I love fennel and add it often. The Garlic Sausage makes a nice Sunday morning breakfast sausage!

Thanks for posting the recipe.

Michelle

The dried formed casings are easy to use. They are usually 'accordian like' collapsed and take up very little space. You simply slide them on the stuffer tube and tie a knot on the end, and stuff. Icky? The fresh casings are usually packed in kosher salt and keep for years in the fridge. A simple rinse in water is all that is needed to get them back to stuffing condition. The natural casings are VERY clean, as they have to be in order to use them in sausage making.

Suggest adding a little ground juniper berries to the lamb sausages.

I am currently on a organic gardening forum through Yahoo. Its not very active (only a few posts per week), and you cant see your posts, until the moderator releases them for public viewing, unlike here where they show up immediately. I have had to wait sometimes a week or more to post on that site and always see a ton of 'Yahoo stampings' attached to every post. I don't like the way they orgainze the site either as its not done by threads, but is simply showing new posts and takes a lot more effort to get other parts of a thread. Here, we can post photos and links right in each posting, as I do that all the time. If a link is blocked, its probably due to some kind of offese that was hadded out to the poster. I do know that here, they do not tolerate any ads as posts for new members, and will quickly delete the fake accounts. Posting files here are usually only recipes, and these can easily be printed out, or copied and pasted into text files if you prefer.
The use of pork fat back is not a good idea to use as a fat additive to pork sausage. Alton, may be an expert on other items, but to make sausages that are extruded right out of the grinder gives you very unpredicatable results. The grinder doesn't have enough 'force power' to push meat into casings, and the meat will sit at the grinding plates and be pulverized to mush. Fat back and salt pork are both heavily salted and will usually melt sooner than the meat is cooked. Because there are many healthier choices to using a lot of added fat, I prefer using the replacers if more fat is needed. I agree that todays pork is quite lean, but you can still get some fat saved by the butchers in most supermarkets, if you tell them to hold it for you and give them a day when you will return to pick it up. I have been lucky to get some pork fat for free, just like beef suet, which I melt for the birds in winter.

Found another site....

Here is a link that might be useful: Another group

I much prefer to stay here on this web site. If I were to become active in any more areas of interest, I wouldn't have time to even sleep, eat, or do any of my other hobbies.

Suggest adding a little ground juniper berries to the lamb sausages.

How much ground Juniper Berry? 1 tsp? 1/2 tsp?

Thanks for the info on the natural casings too.

Michelle

Thank goodness for stores that still butcher their own meat. There are a few still around. I happen to be lucky enough to live in a town with a bonified butcher shop. She will not give me the pork fat free but the price is great. I get butt from Costco. Here in Richmond VA Costco has started carrying pork butt -but- sometimes you have to ask for it. I get pork belly from an Asian store because none of the grocery stores carry it around here and the butcher wants WAY too much money for it.

I saw the Alton Brown sausage show also and I wondered why he would put fat back in sausage. Around here the fat back is heavily salted and cured.

The Alton Brown segment is what got us interested in making our own sausage. I was also surprised at adding pork fat back to the sausage. The butcher at our local Homeland store saved fat for about 4 days and got about 8 lbs for us. We packaged it in 1/2 lb ziplocks and froze it for later use. The butcher just packaged it with no price and he says that he normally throws it in the garbage. He does have a couple of others who periodically ask for it too.

Porkbutts, Boston Pork Butt, Boston Blade all seem to be the same cut and the price ranges from $1.59/lb up to about $2.09/lb in the stores. We just bought a 14 lb package and got it for $1.59. They were having a 5lb sale.

I am continually amazed at the price being so low when it cooks up so tender and makes such good meals. Prior to trying sausage with it, we always brined it, coated it, braized it in the frying pan on all sides and smoked it until internal temp got up to 190. The meat was so tender that it just fell off the bone and the flavor was fantastic.

When I was a kid in Mississippi, my grandparents always made smoked sausage and I just have never been able to find a commercial sausage that came up to the flavor of that home made sausage. I guess your taste memory over a 50 year period plays tricks on you.

My kids now (all in their 40's) are pretty excited about us giving this a try and we can see the time that they will all be here working together to put together a batch of sausage seasoned to each ones taste. One likes it HOT and others like it mild or more medium.

I think there are some great family times coming up with this new adventure and as we learn.

Bob

Yes, Costo has a decent price for the pork butt. Its bonelss to0, so at about $1.59 to $1.89 a pound its a real bargain. Ever price Canadian bacon? It usually sells for about $4.00 or more per pound. It costs me only the price of a boneless pork loin and the meat cure brine, and its a great savings. I wouldn't cook pork to 190 internal as its just overcooked. 160 to 170 is the most you want to go. Sausages with water and fat replacer added cook up faster as moisture heats up quicker than fat. Years ago, when pork was not as safe unless cooked well done, they would cook it to high temps, but its not necessary not anymore.
As to juniper berries, they are quite mild, so you can grind a few (teaspoon) to season a pound, and see if it gives u a flavor you like. Start out with a small amount as everyone (like Annie says) has their own flavor preferences. I use a small coffee grinder (blender type) for grinding up the whole spices.
When curing meats in the oven, start out at an oven temp of about 140, and every hour raise it 10 degrees until its at 200. By then, the internal temp should reach about 160. When I do a very tough chuck roast for pastrami, its done that way and is very tender. Even though a bit dry, its sliced thin, steamed then served. My electic stove oven has an offset adjustment that I can make, to get it to go lower than 200 degrees, and this helps to keep a very slow heat. Cooking/curing any faster or at a higher temp will melt he fats, and give you a dry grainy product. This is true for both pepperoni and salami.

ksrogers,

How about posting your salami and pepperoni recipe and instructions on the oven cure for both. My gas stove oven will go down to 150 degrees is this too hot to start??

Did not know 190 was too hot for pork as I always take mine to 175/180 and let it coast to high 180's while resting, it is usually nice and moist -- but I guess it depends on the fat content and method of cooking.

What say you on old refrigerator for hanging meats in "cool" location?? I can probably purchase one and remove all the shelves. I have a relatively cool basement but I also have occasional 'visitors' and they would absolutely love a midnight snack.

An old fridge that is working is a great way to store stuff like cured meats. Dealing with recipes, I don't usually have any, and because the pepperoni and salami are basilly starting out as prepackaged mixes, I don't really do much beyond that. I refer to many of the different recipes posted on a few of the sausage recipe links I have added here. Admittedly, I add a lot more herbs and spices, or hot pepper types for the pepperoni. I taste the meat by quckly cooking a spoonful to see if it is at a flavor level I like. As to nitrates, I use a little of the fast cure nitrate as well as a slow cure. The fast cure is for mostly fresh, and then cooked sausages, where the slow cure nitrate is the kind used to cure over a long period (like for weeks) at room emps. My oven can go down to about 150 at its lowest, if I fiddle with the factory preset offset. Yes, pork today doesn't have to be cooked to 190 anymore. Tricanosis (sp.) was a problem back in the early part of the 20th Century, so it had to always be well cooked. Most pork today only needs to be cooked to 170 degrees. Was just at Costo today and saw whole pork shoulder (bone in) selling at $1.09 I have seen it selling down to $.79 cents a pound at times. At BJ's, they were selling fresh Italian sausages with broccoli rabe added. Very interesting combination! Also found a new web site for many unusual stuffers, grinders, sausage mixes, and a lot of other old time goodies. Its located in Texas, and has been around since the 1920's.

Here are sites for MANY recipes and other help:
http://www.3men.com/makesaus.htm
http://www.sausagemania.com/
http://www.leeners.com/sausagetools.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas tastes

Ken, thanks I will look for plain pork fat if I ever make sausage again. I've been eating less meat because it's easier and I feel ok using vegetarian leftovers for 4-5 days.

I know casings aren't really icky, they just seem that way to me because they're membranes, whether natural or synthetic. I get grossed out by certain textures like the filmy skin on porridge. I do love salami and pepperoni, sliced so thin you can see through it, but I can only eat it hidden between bread, not plain the way I can eat cheese. I'm weird.

ksrogers,

Asking if you think "hanging" (like is done when making pancetta) in old fridge is a solution when hanging in cool room is not an option. Some of the recipes I am going to try have a "hang in cool room until...." portion. Not concerned about storage of home cured meat - want to know your opinion on using an old fridge (working of course)to "hang" meat in the curing process.

OK so you do not use recipe for pepperoni and salami but what DO YOU DO after you mix the mix into your meat?? Where do you get your mix?? Reading your postings here I can tell you are experienced in home sausage making so how about sharing some of the knowledge?? Tell us about your experience not a link to someone else site. How about it??

I have been getting he mixes from several different sources. Sometimes, a mix may lack enough heat or flavor (pepperoni), so I add dried red pepper flakes and also fennel. If it still needs a boost, I will add more garlic, or another kind of hot pepper like a little cayenne. To make the red pepper flavor more complex, I also use ground ancho pepper and maybe a few other kinds. For salami, I add lots of garlic and cracked (coursly ground) pepper, as well as a bit more of any of the other herbs listed on the mix package (unless it just says 'spices'). If your making pepperoni or pepperoni, suggest you do some research for the many hundreds of recipes that can be found on the internet. I will sometimes combine the herb/spice combinations from different recipes. At that time, you can concentrate on what herb/spice combo suits you. Just be sure to cook up a spoonful before committing the rest to casings. Some casings are non-edible, and these are quite stiff, very thick, and tough. You soak them in warm water about half an hour prior to stuffing, as the water helps to soften them a little. I use string to tie up the open ends once stuffed. One end is usually already tied. I use a white one (3" diameter) for salami, and a mahogany (1 1/2" to 2" diameter) one for pepperoni. I also make thin snack sticks, and these are very thin ones are a real chore to stuff due to their very small diameter. The snack stick ones are edible, but are stuffed dried. There, the meat must obviously be a finer grind, so the narrow filling tube doesn't clog.
While reading over the info on the latest link I posted above, Texas Tastes, they mentioned doing dry cures in a frost free refrigerator. In this way the temps are kept low, and the 'auto defrost' cycle will also remove moisture from inside the refrigerator, which will effectivly dry the sauasges stored in there too. The reason they 'hang', is because if they were previously smoked or heat cured, the fats can easily run off the ends. Also hanging will give more air circulation. If you can fit a small electric fan (muffin type) inside the old fridge, that will also help in air movement. Placing it at the bottom, and aimed up will give a nice air movement.
Usually, you never see flank steak or fresh briskets in supermarkets. While at Costco, yesterday, they were selling both a whole brisket as well as big sheets of flank steaks. Now I know where I can get this kind of meat. The briskets make for the best pastrami. For those on a low fat diet, I use eye of the round roast, which is injected with brine (same as corned beef brine), soaked overnight in it, and then coated with a mixture of ground pepper, mustard seed, coriander, bay leaf, garlic, onion, and sweet red pepper, all ground up and heavily coated on the meat. The baking/curing takes about 6 hours, as you start out at about 150 degree oven, raise it 10 degrees every hour and when its at 220, measure the internal and continue to bake it until it reads about 160 to 170 degrees internally. Even a very lean, tough eye of the round will be like marshmallow once its done and sliced. The mixes I use are found on the links I posted. I buy mixes from Butcher Packer, Allied, and Sausage Maker, and because of my recent discovery, the Texas Taste site. Again, I have no recipes that I cast in cement, and every time I make a batch or any kind of sausages, I will add more of what I feel was lacking in the last batch, or simply use the same mix I used before, or use a combinaion of different mixes from different sources. Be careful though, as many have the added salt and if you use too much of a mix, it can also get really salty. If that happens, I grind up a bit more meat and 'dilute' the mixture to reduce the saltiness. Breakfast sausages are the easiest and are just sage, pepper, and coriander. I also add liquid hickory smoke flavor to the breakfast sausages as well as to Canadian bacon, as I have no decent smoker here. Pepperoni also gets some hickory smoke flaver. Texas Tastes as a hickory smoke flavor in powdered form too.

Below, is the link for the full length Alton Brown show (Good Eats), for your veiewing. Its the episode where he mentions 'fat back', but as mentioned above the fat back you see in stores is usually cured. His statement is, he uses raw, uncured, uncooked fatback, which makes more sense for adding fat to a sausage.

Here is a link that might be useful: Weston Supply.

I agree on the fatback, several of the recipes in Charcuterie call for fatback, but it's fresh, unsalted and uncured. Cured or salted fat would certainly not be the same. Because I raise my own pigs for slaughter, I have access to as much fresh fat as I need, but I use very little of it. Of course, several of Bricn Polcyn's recipes also call for beef suet, depending on the sausage.

Since he's won many culinary awards for both his restaurant and his sausages and has written some in-depth books on the subject, I'm surmising that they are good recipes although I haven't tried anything with beef suet yet. That's also where I got the idea to tie links off with butcher's twine, it was suggested as an alternative if you don't have the metal clamps and you find your fresh sausage "unravels" when you try to twist off links.

I did just order some bacto-firm from butcher-packer, it's used for "fermented sausages" along with natural sheep and hog casings. The italian sausage we stuffed into "edible collagen" casings, but it would take a better person than me to eat the stuff, it would take more chewing than I'm wanting to do, that's for sure. Plus, they burst when cooking, even though I poked holes in the sausages.

So, until I get casings, all my sausage is bulk. That's fine, I use more of it that way anyway.

My next experiment? I have some smoked ham that I'm going to add to a kielbasa recipe for the smoke flavor. I just don't like that "liquid smoke".

As for combining spices with the meat mixture, I did it all by hand, although many sources suggest the use of a KitchenAid or similar stand mixer. I haven't done anything over 10 pounds so I haven't bothered but the recipe I have for all beef hot dogs calls for the mixture to be ground twice AND beaten, to emulsify the mixture. Since it's 4 lbs of beef to 1 lb. beef suet, plus seasonings, my mixer should easily be able to handle that, I would think.

Annie

The Northern Tool meat mixer is only about $100 for the 10 pound capacity one. I can put up to about 15 pounds of meat in to it and it mixes quite well. Its hand crank, and I just crank clockwise, then counter clockwise to get it mixed well. I used to use my electric mixer with dough hooks, but it took forever to mix any small amount of meat. Beef suet is used in a few recipes, but lacks flavor and texture compared to pork fat. When beef fat is cooked, it melts, pork fat will melt some too, but also leaves solids behind. You can freeze, thaw, and refreeze pork fat with no effect on texture or flavor. If the sausages are bursting in the casings, they maye be stuffed too tightly, or are very very lean. Once in a while if I overdo the soy additive they will burst. Also, if you add too much water to the meat, that can cause bursting. A lot of shellfish sold today is treated in phosphates that help to keep moisture in the fish. That same thing can be added to meats and acts as a binder, as well as holding more moisture. The edible dry collogen casings I use are only the very skinny 1/2 inch diameter ones. Most store bought breakfast sausages are made using the same dried collagen casings. I much prefer the sheep casings as they are a lot more tender for breakfast sauages.
When I stuff make pork sausages out of my stuffer, I twist the just filled casing 3 times in one direction, then start filling another length, and pinch, and twist 3 times in the opposite direction, then a third, pinch, twist in the same direction as the first, and so forth. What you end up with 6 twists per link, and they hold up quite well. I coat the stuffer nozzle with a bit of oil before starting too. Sheep and hog casings need to be soaked in water at least an hour before stuffing. Once in a while I get a very tough hog casing, but its usually due to the fact that I had used some supermarket small packaged ones, which I feel are 'rejects'. Many of the store boughts are bits and peices, and are peppered with holes. When I am stuffing, the sausages are resting in a very shallow cookie sheet style pan that helps to prevent them from untwisting. If I get a hole in the casing, I just squeeze out the meat, and cut that portion off, and tie a knot. The meat lost out the hole is put back into the stuffer again. I don't use any metal clips, and only use string to tie up the end of bigger dried sausages like salami and pepperoni. I have a few sauage making books here, and one is all kinds of Polish sausages. Many of the recipes are for 100 pounds of meat or more, however, and are a bit difficult to scale down to my needs.

I was just at Weston Supply and found some really cheap items for sale there. My stuffer is big, and when I am cranking, its hard to hold, and control the stuffing when using one hand. On the Weston site, they offered a really cheap price for an electric motor attachment that replaces the crank. This is controlled by a foot pedal. The original cost for a stuffer with the motor is over $600, but I got my stuffer for under $200, and the motor is now selling for about $137. They also have the 4 ounce capacity metal meat pumps selling really cheap too, at only $20, but they are back ordered until February. Yes, hot dogs benefit by a very fine grinding and a means to really pulverize the meat into a paste. They also can use some soy added. The powdered hickory, sold by Texas Tastes has the statement: "commerical labeling is allowed to state that the hickory smoke flavor is natural". I also saw a skinless casing, that is made of plastic and is removed after the franks are cooked. Because I will be making pepperoni (regular and snack stick sizes) soon, I also got some 1 1/2" diameter non edible mahogany casings, 12 inches long. A pack or 20 was only $10. Not bad..
That fermentation product is also used in making summer sausages.

Because I have problems trying to slice thin pieces of pastrami whis is usually eye of the round, or other large diameter cold cuts, I bought an electric slicer a long while back. Its a Rival, but I soon found it was just too small to deal with big cuts of meat that I didn't want to cut into smaller pieces to slice them. Weston has a 10 inch and 12 inch blade size on their slicers, and these are nearly commercial quality. I expected to pay $500 or more for one of these monsters, but Weston has them for about $250 to $300.

dancinglemons,

Good support is being shown on the "Suggestions" forum for a meat processing forum.

Our (my) experience in getting a "Legumes" forum started may give you some ideas about furthering the effort. The thread linked below is an example of some things which can be done to keep the idea alive and provide documentation beyond posts of support (which are important and which were provided in a separate thread). It was not difficult to compile this documentation using searches. Just how helpful it was in getting the Legumes forum established I really can't say. I tend to think it helped.

Good luck. I hope you (we) succeed.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Legumes Forum Proposal

With the upgrade notices we see dated Jan 7 and Jan 8, the web site here is doing some upgrades. Lets just hope that some of that includes the suggestions given regarding forums. After all, onions have their own forum, frut trees have theirs, and many other subjects also need to split up to make navigation and searches (which are TERRIBLE HERE NOW!!) much more detailed.

For those into very hot peppers, the Texas Taste site has powdered green jals, as well as a hot sauce making kit and bottles for storing it.

jimster,

Thanks for the info. I will compile a proposal and put it in the Suggestions forum AND send it to GW via the Contact Us link.

ksrogers,

Thanks for the detailed information. My grinder arrived finally. I will now be able to make some better sausage. Using my Cuisinart was OK but I was not really fond of the texture.

I agree that an atachment type grinder doesn't really do meat grinding justice. I used to attach the one to my Sunbeam/Oster Kitchen Center, and it came with only a single cutting plate that gave me hamburger consistancy. The one I have now, I have 5 different sized plates, ranging from 1/8" holes up to 1" inch holes (slots). Just found a source for a new knife blade too, as the grinder auger has a slightly larger square (1/2") for the knife compared to most common grinders of that size. Texas Taste had the knife, while Sausage Maker offers many plate sizes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Gunpowder

I'm so glad this post is going on! I've been dabbling witht the idea of making my own sausage, but wondered if it was really worth all the work. Some of the local meat businesses around here sell some really good sausage, but not the variety listed here.

Store bought sausages range in price from about $.15 to over $5 per pound. If you can find a fresh pork shoulder, and cut, grind, and make your own, the meat alone might run about $.79 a pound if you buy it on sale. Thats what I did when I made a big batch of Canadian bacon using a whole boneless pork loin. The cost was only $1.29 a pound when I bought the loin. Store bought Canadian bacon (looks like a very lean small ham) runs anywhere from $3 to $6 per pound! The Canadian bacon freezes quite well too. I usually slice it and pack it in some Food Saver bags, it keeps for many months.
Be creative with sausage making. I use dried onion, garlic, and sweet green and red peppers as some of the add-in basics, then you add fennel, cheese, chinese red sauce (Ah So), beer, spices, brocolli rabe, and even a little vinegar (for chorzito).

Hi everyone,

As suggested by jimster I compiled a listing of GW posts which relate to MEAT. Then I made a list of stats for GW management. This info was posted on the Suggestion forum. We shall see if they agree and give us a meat forum.

When researching, I found that there are folks on GW who process poultry, rabbits and goats. A MEAT forum would really be fantastic!! For me it is the experimenting and learning new things that I am excited about.

Since I still have chickens, raise my own beef and pork and I have, in the past, raised rabbits for slaughter, I added my vote for a "meat" forum.

Annie

great to see others here that process their own meats. i added my vote to the suggestion thread and encourage others to do so as well. there were not very many posts under the suggestion. please take a sec to click on the link in the upper part of this thread and add your two cents to the request. thanks.

annie1992,

Thanks for the recommend of Brian Polcyn's book "Charcuterie". I was in Barnes and Noble yesterday and read about 50% of it and now have ordered it. I want my own copy. I was particularly interested in the bacon & pancetta info. We have a local Vietnamese grocery store that sells fresh pork. Their pork bellies look fantastic. I have no idea where they get this pork because it looks "home butchered" but I have been eating it for about a year now with no problems.

I just found out about a year ago that most fresh pork sold in grocery stores is 'enhanced with different percentages of a solution' to make it tender. I have decided I do not want to use or eat the enhanced stuff. Costco pork is not enhanced but all of WalMart's pork is enhanced around here.

The 'enhancement' is a phosphate that has been added, which also adds moisture, and weight to the finished product. This is also true for some fish like scallops which are also treated with the phosphates. These treatments are not harmul, or have any taste, provided you use the recommended amounts like a tablesooon per gallon of water for a brine that also has salt and sugar in it. Its not really a tenderizer, but more of a moisture enhancer. Just adding moisture alone causes the meat or fish to become shreaded, so this phosphate also acts with the protein in meat to help it stay together and give the meat or fish a more firm product without getting it to become grainy or dry and flaky. You usually see these additives in poultry too, so that they hold up better to storage in he store as well as in he cooking at home. I even added a little to my fresh ground hamburg, which was very lean. It was so lean that if it was grilled, it would quickly crumble due to not at helping to hold the meat together. When I added a trace of phosphates the meat stayed like a hamburger patty and was very juicy even tough the outside was well cooked.

ksrogers,

I understand the reasoning and the chemistry (I think) behind enhancement but I will have mine without. I have a weird 'taster' I can taste the difference. It is really annoying at times but it is how I came from the factory. I sometimes smell smoke before smoke alarms go off. The first time I purchased ground beef from WalMart (and the last) I tasted something. I looked at the label and it said 'natural flavoring'. I thought that was weird becuase it was not a flavored ground beef. I called WalMart corporate and asked what was in their ground beef. They said nothing. I said then why does your package have 'natural flavoring' on the back of the label?? They said I will call you back. Several days later they called and said all ground beef in WalMart has Rosemary (the herb) mixed in very small amounts to keep it red longer. No one tasted it but me. Go figure.

Interesting that rosemary was used. I recall that the plastic wrap used for meat packing, has a nitrate added. This also helps to retain red color. Also, the lighting in stores has a special 'color temperature' that also enhances the red in meats. They also have another type for the green produce. Me, I'm lucky to be able to taste much of anything. With all the nasty chemicals I used to breath in years ago, in the electronics field, its affected my senses of smell and taste. One time a while back, however, I don't know what caused it, but I made a small batch of pork sausage patties that had a bleachy taste.. very odd! Nothing was added except sage, pepper, and coriander. Rosemary oils are injurious to people who have kidney issues, and are not recommended to be used in scented candles if the person breathing in the scent has kidney problems. My siser also had sensitive taste buds and would never eat my tomatoes until I stopped using any of the Miracle Grow fertilizers. She could taste these things, and didn't like the effect they had on a nice tomato. The phosphates are fairly tasteless like nitrates, but it also depends on how much seasoning is used in the meats. If you like all kinds of ham, there is a sure bet that many contain both a nitrate as well as a phosphate. Many years ago in my first apartment, not knowing, I used ammonia to strip many layers of floor wax, and added a small amount of bleach to it. Needless to say, that was all I could smell for many weeks afterwards. You name it, and its nasty, I have smelled it...

Dancinglemons, many times those "flavor enhancers" are a salt and water solution so that means you're paying whatever per pound for up to 10% water and salt. Pah. Makes me extra glad I raise my own.

I'm also one of those "super tasters" according to my doctor. I can taste the preservatives on bagged lettuce and on the vegetables at Subway, a metallic kind of "ick" for me. Plus, I've spent my life eating and am used to good, hormone and antibiotic free pork and beef, so I'm pretty spoiled about what I might put into any sausage I make.

That book's wonderful, isn't it? It was a gift to me and I just sat down and read it like a novel. This week my project is going to be hot dogs, that should be an adventure!

Annie

Annie, hope you have a very heavy duty blender to puree those hotdogs. Did you check out the skinnless casings used to make them? They are about half way down the page.

Here is a link that might be useful: Skinsless casings for franks

Ken, I have both sheep and hog casings, and will be using whichever of those strikes me. As you know, I tend to do as I please, depending on the day, LOL.

Brian Polcyn suggests in "Charcuterie" that the meat be ground three times, so that's what I'm going to do. The first "mince" will be in the food processor, that's fast. I'll freeze that until it's just firm, then run it through my hand grinder with the finest "blade", then run it through again. Spices and such are added and it all gets beaten with the paddle of the KitchenAid, then it'll get stuffed.

It'll give Elery and I a chance to use the new sausage stuffer I got him for his birthday, so that'll be interesting.

Annie

I can't wait for my copy of Charcuterie to arrive. Saw Anthony Bourdain on Travel network in Portugal and he was at a hog killing. They took one of the hams and put it in a chest of salt. That's it just salt - lots and lots of salt in a wood chest. Closed the chest and walked away. I do not remember how long they said the ham would remain there but you can bet I will be doing that.

Annie, What kind of sausage stuffer did you get? If its one of those lever ones with the semicirular plunger, I don't know how well they work, as I have never used one. They just seem to not be as easy to use compared to vertical piston ones, and wast more stuffing at the tapered nozzls end. Hog casing might be a bit tough as franks are usualy precooked prior to packaging. Sheep casings are a good choice however as they are much easier to deal with and cook up a lot more tender. Some old fashioned franks were hard to eat as the casings were tough and chewy. Might be fine for italian and polish sausages, but for franks.... I had tasted some salt cured ham many years ago, and because it was only in pure salt all the time, it was quite salty even after rinsing it off many times. We tried cooking, simmering, and recooking again and again with fresh water and still wasn't able to get rid of the excess. It must have been cured for several months in that salt. If you like all that salt (some people do!) go for it..

> Many years ago in my first apartment, not knowing, I used ammonia to strip many layers of floor wax, and added a small amount of bleach to it.

Yeesh! Ken, you're lucky you're still ALIVE, let alone tasting, mixing those two. I once read a mystery novel where that was the murder method: the perpetrator had some kind of set-up where there was, say, ammonia in the toilet bowl, and bleach in the tank, such that when the victim flushed the two would be mixed. Locked the door of the small bathroom from the outside to keep the vapours in....

Hey, anyone read Jane Smiley? Does anyone remember which novel it is where someone tries to kill someone else by putting something poisonous in, I believe, a jar of pickles? IIRC, the person doesn't die. I think it was _A THOUSAND ACRES_.

Zabby, who has the day off for the first time in ages and spent the afternoon reading

Ever since then, my nose just doesn't work as well, and I have had numerous sinus infections. You can't imagine all the other chemicals, acids and solvents I had to deal with at a job. Many today, are considered very toxic, and are only used under well ventilated areas. Some of the worst, mercury vapor, and asbestos.

Ken, we made the hot dogs with sheep casings, the hog casings are safely in my refrigerator in salt water.

Here's a picture of the sausage stuffer, and that's Elery's hand untangling the casings. He said it was like "trying to referee a worm wrestle". LOL My job was to thread the casings onto the tube, then link the franks as they came out of the stuffer, Elery turned the crank. No stress on my carpal tunnel there, he did all the work!

The ham wasn't salty at all, I added it to my kielbasa and it was good. The hotdogs were an even mix of beef, pork and turkey, ground twice and then mixed in the KitchenAid for 3 or 4 minutes. The texture is good, but they need a bit more salt. After stuffing they were poached gently, then cooled and frozen on baking sheets. After they were frozen I packaged them 8 per package because that's how many buns come in a package. After I did it all I realized that it was silly, I'd be baking my own hot dog buns and so the number of franks was irrelevant.

Annie

Looks like you tried my twist 3 times in one direction and 3 times in the opposite direction, as I don't see any strings this time. Sheep casings in a whole hank can be very tedious to untangle. I usually will get as much of a single strand out of teh tangled mess and then slice off each end, then start with another. Unless you going to use the hog casings right away, I suggest draining out all the water they are in, and plack them heavily in Kosher salt. They are not supposed to be stored in water for very long as they can spoil. Mine are almost dry when I remove the blob from the salt the are packed in. They are a bit easier to untangle, and one done, I will run water through the inside (as wall as on sheep casings), then let them sit in warm water about an hour before stuffing. Like your stuffer, its a smaller version of mine here. My old cast aluminium one is a 5 pound one, with a single gear drive, so I had to back the piston out by cranking backwards about 35 turns to refill it. My new one has two speeds and gears, and reverse is 3 times faster now. I just found a cheap motor attachment for mine. The motor has a speed control and direction as well as a foot switch. Most of the time I need to use two hands on the output end. That flat tray you have the finished sausages is, is what I place under the stuffing nozzle because if its lower, like yours is showing, going into a sink, its harder to keep the individual sausages from untwisting. If you find that the franks are a bit unsalty, you can heat them up in boiling salted water. I usually take a spoonful of the mixture and either fry it in a small frying pan or on a few layers of paper towels in the microwave. You quicky know if its got enough seasoning. I see a few sausage making suppiers selling knockwurst mixes too. I spread a bit of oil on the sausage stuffer tube before the casings are threaded on. It helps to give them a bit more sliding control. If they tend to grab after about half way through a length, just dip your fingers in some water and moisten the rest thats still on the stuffer, or push back the casing and reapply a bit more vegetable oil to the surface of the stuffer tube. The finest hole in one of my grinder plates is 1/8 inch. I use the 3/16 inch plate for breakfast links. For Kielbasa, I use a 1/2 in hole or larger plate. I even have one that has 4 slots measuring about an inch wide. When I do pepperoni and salami, both get the 1/4 inch cutting plate, but the fat goes through the 3/16 or 1/8 inch inch plate as I want it to distribute more evenly.
Happy sausage and frank making. If you want, you can add some soy protien to the batch as it is the most commonly used 'filler' for store bought franks, and works well to keep the meat juicy and firm. I only use about a 1/4 to 1/2 cup for 10 pounds of meat, and add water to the powder which is also needed in the meat, to help it stuff better nd smoother.

Has anyone seen the price of 'Boars Head' cold cuts in supermarkets? What are they doing? The cost of a pound of sliced turkey breast is $10!! Geez, I remember not long ago buying a whole breast and slicing it myself, and it only cost me about a $1.89 a pound. The Boars Head is way too overpriced, well beyond doubling the cost. The meats they offer are really way too expensive and they are serously gouging the public. Yet another reason to make your own cold cuts...

Annie,
If your planning on making more franks and want a less problematic casing that doesn't need untangling the link below sells a great one for making franks and these can also be used for breakfast sausages. They are even a bit more clear looking compared to natural sheep casings. They need no presoak and slide right on the stuffer tube. The length is about 20 feet after its expanded. Most store bogh breakfast sauages are made with these instead of the sheep casings. I have an even narrower one which is mahogany color for making the pepperoni snack sticks. The stuffing tube for these measures 1/2 inch as its outer diameter and is 12 inches long stainless steel. Talk about needing some serious force when stuffing!

Here is a link that might be useful: Edible frank casings

ksrogers,

I saw the Boar's Head turkey here for not much less than your price. Not only is the price going up but the quality is going way down. If you ever decide to purchase it ask them to give you an ingredient printout. I think I will just buy a turkey breast and cook/slice it myself. I really like turkey and can't stand for it to taste weird. Boar's Head was one of my favs but not anymore. One of the reasons I am now reading up on making my own. Next for me is an old fridge to put in my basement for hanging meat like pancetta and american bacon.

They sell pastrami, corned beef, roast beef, and ham too. Still don't kow what that black stuff is on the outside, as its not a baked product. All of them are at least double what everyone else sells them for. Canadian bacon is about $4 or more per pound, but when I make mine it costs me only about $1.79 per pound for the whole loin. It loooks exacly like store bought, but has my taste in mind instead. The Canadian bacon I make, I slice and freeze small packages in Food Saver bags where it keeps quite well in the freezer for many months. I also freeze whole chuncks of salami and pepperoni and then thaw and slice when I need it. I have an electric slicer that can be adjusted to most any thickeness.

Ksroger's,
I was following your posts on Winter onions and am looking for the same onions tht you have. I had them many years ago in Duluth. Now I'm in Minneapolis ane can not find them.
I hope you still have them and would be willing to share.

i dont get boar's head either. i saw some here in a high-end grocery in the DFW area and laughed at the prices. even the souse was 8 bucks a pound.

The winter onions I have are tiny, and about the size of a pea when mature. They die out in the heeat of summer, but send up a stiff stalk with a tiny bumpy ball of bulbs. I crumble these and sprinkle them nearby the othes. In fall, they start to sprout and are green all winter. Right now, I can go out and cut many of the greens and use them like chives. By about the middle of July, I should have some new seed bulbils, so be sure to keep that in mind and remind me. I also grow a purple walking onion, and these are VERY strong, but mellow and look like a shallot. They start sending up the bulbils about mid July too. I cut some of their greens and use them like scallions. My walking onion patch used to be huge, but last summer, I threw out about 3/4 of the bulbs, as I just didn't have the space for all of them.

If people don't buy Boars Head, maybe they will lower their prices. I doubt it. I have only seen that brand about 2-3 years now, and believe they think a cheaply made cold cut should cost more than a piece of tender steak.

Ken, those clear collagen casings are the ones we used for the Italian sausage we made earlier. It was easier to work with but I didn't like the consistency, much like chewing very tough waxed paper. We've just been peeling it off and throwing it away, which has kind of defeated the purpose of making links in the first place...

Annie

annie1992,

Sure am glad you posted that message about the collagen being chewy. I was about to get some to try it. Now I won't. Thanks :-))

When I make larger sized italian, I use hog casings. The only ones I use that are these dried ones are the very narrow type for the pepperoni sticks. Because the sticks are quite chewy after being dried, the casing isn't as tough. It may also be that there are a few different makers of the edible collagen casings, and some make a thinner variety. The store bought breakfast links I see, use these and once cooked, the sausages are quite tender. I recall some 'natural casing' franks that were quite chewy, and you had to peel the skins off, but they were not easy to remove. The last time I made regular pepperoni and gave some to a friend at work, and asked him how he liked it. At that time, I was using the inedible casings that are very tough, dry, and hold up to a very strong pressure without bursting. He told me that they were really chewy, especially the skins. I asked him if he peeled them first, he said no, and he didn't know they he should have done that first. Needless to say, he wasn't very smart.. A local Italian store (Joe Pace & Sons) has some very nice looking Italian sausages and they are in those same almost clear casings. They also use string to tie each off. Never tried them, but suspect that they are similar in toughness. My edible casings are the mahogany color ones, and are the narrowest size you can find.

I got my copy of Brian Polcyn's book "Charcuterie" and it is totally FANTASTIC!! The only equipment left for me to get now is a cold/hot smoker. I am looking at the smallest Bradley because there are only 2 of us. Until then I will be making bacon, pancetta and sausage -- unsmoked.

Just wanted to say thank you for the inspiration. I decided to try Emeril's Mild Italian Sausage recipe (only did 9 lbs and ended up giving a pound to my neighbors who are my taste testers). It's not nearly as pretty as the other pics, but it was fun. I used my grandmother's #2 Universal grinder...

Messy, messy? Thats part of the fun I guess. I usually grind my meat and then add the spices, salt and flavorings after its ground. I don't use my meat grinder as a sausage stuffer, even though it does come with a stuffing nozzle. Today, I got the balance of a back order from Texas Tastes, and it was for a salami sausage. The package contained the recipe, nitrate, spices, salt, and even the large non edible clear collagen casings which are flat, and tied off at one end. Not a bad deal. Soon, once I get rid of these 30 Gateway Profile 4 computers I am fixing and selling, I plan to do a big batch of pepperoni and salami again. Already have all the pork fat and big chunks of beef chuck. At the same time, I wil be making a big batch of breakfast sausages and also some italian with cheese, and pepper and onion, along with a fennel. Then, I mix a bit of each together and make an 'everything' italian sausage also loaded with garlic. Oh yeah, also some polish kielbasa with marjorum and garlic. These get stuffed into long lengths of hog casings, and I coil them up, and freeze for use at Easter and later on on the grill. I cook the kielbasa in a little water (about half way up the sausages) in a covered casserole dish in the oven at about 375. After about an hour, I flip over the sausage that still has a bit of water in there. The result aftre almost 2 hours is a VERY tender sausage that youc an cut with a fork. I like serving it with a spicey hot mustard.

dancinglemons, I just love that book. It IS fantastic, isn't it?

dafygardenut, making a mess is the most fun of all, I do most of the mixing of seasonings, etc., with my hands. I have a grinder very much like that, BTW.

Oh, and thank you for the information on superventricular tachycardia you posted over on Cooking. It helped a lot.

Annie

Alright, Annie. Please explain "superventricular tachycardia". It sounds like a dangerous condition brought on by eating sausage. As one who has two stents implanted and who loves sausage, I need to know.

Jim

SVT is when the upper section of the atria and/or AV node (in the heart) malfunctions and causes the heart to beat way, way too fast. Not as deadly as Vtach (ventricular tachycardia).

Oh man I thought I had retired from all that stuff.

Annie - you're very welcome, glad I could help. Thank you for all the inspiration, I might even get a stuffer...someday.

Dancinglemons - wanna proof some cardiology transcription for me? :-)

DL,

I don't understand what you said, but I get the drift. It's scary, just as I thought.

So, what about sausage in the diet? Obviously not heart healthy, right? I could eat it every day, or more often.

Jim

Jim, my Dad has had some health issues, including his second heart attack last Friday, a quadruple bypass 10 years ago or so, he's diabetic, has a fully occluded carotid artery, you name it, he's got it. Now the docs are saying he has SVT and of course, I didn't have any clue what the heck it was, let alone what we should do for it. Dafygardenut was kind enough to step in and do a bit of explanation for me.

Dad is the reason I grow my own grass fed beef. He won't give up beef, but I grow beef so lean it sticks to the pan, Dad's cardiologist sends me customers to buy my super lean beef. He's also the reason I've been making sausage, my risk factors include those genetics and my own high cholesterol and so I'm really careful about what I put in my mouth.

So, I not only make my own sausage, I grow the beef and pork that goes into the sausage. All super lean, which is why I refuse to add all that fat and such that the recipes say I need to add. I figured while I was at it, I'd make it organic, no growth hormones, antibiotics, etc.

I'm making sausage and it's the leanest, freshest, chemical free and healthiest sausage in the free world today, LOL.

So go ahead and eat that sausage, but be sure you make your own. That way you know what's in it!

Annie

dafygardennut,
Gave up all that cardiac stuff when I retired. Never realized how much stress I became accustomed to. Watching those cardiac telemetry monitors and making absolutely sure the meds were correct (teaching hospital) was very stressful but I never knew how stressful until I retired. Took care of my Mum in her last months and promptly gave up my nursing career when she went to heaven. She was my best patient ever!! I loved being a nurse but now I love being retired !!

annie1992,
I second your motion. I do not grow my own meat but I do try to buy meat that is 'additive free'. Our family has the diabetic gene. Fat or thin does not matter only a few relatives skip it. When I make my own sausage I know exactly what is in it. The first batch did not have added fat as listed in the recipe and it was great. It reminded me of the sausage my cousins made in So. Carolina years ago. They of course had their own hogs. There is a farm not too far from where I live that has grass fed beef. I think I will go out there this weekend and get some. Thanks for the tip about using lean, lean meats.

Pork is very lean by itself, but once the fat is included in a sausage it raises the bad cholestrol. Thats why I make my own Canadian bacon, which is very lean as its the defated boneless loin. Usually sausages require anywhere from 30 to 40 % fat, and any less than that makes for a dry and somewhat blander sausage. Because of this, I add the phosphate to help hold the meat together (as does the fat), as well as soy protien, and a fat replacer. This makes the use of only about 20% fat or slightly less, and will not affect the texture or taste as much. Beef, is used in salami and pepperoni, as well as a few things like hotdogs, and some bratwurst. In most all cases, beef isn't usually used to make common breakfast or Italian sausages. When I do make the pepproni and salami, I use about 40% beef meat with NO beef fat, along with pork meat and pork fat.

Annie, your sausage recipe, which starts out "First raise some beef" sounds like a lot of work to me. :-)

I haven't seen your fish and chips recipe, but I imagine it starts out "First build a boat".

Jim

Well, yes, my fish and chips recipe does kind of start out that way. But here in Michigan right now it's more like "cut a hole in the ice and wait for dinner to swim past". Oh, and I grow the potatoes for the chips too. (grin)

Ken, I know that the sausage doesn't taste like commercial sausage without a certain amount of fat, but I don't like the flavor or texture of fat. I replace some with a bit of white wine and careful seasonings, but it's still so lean it will stick to a hot pan. It probably isn't for everyone, but I've always disliked the commercial sausage so I'm really happy with mine. I think my arteries are too!

The most I add is a bit of bacon if I want a smoky flavor because I don't like the artificial smoke, and I leave the small amount of marbled fat in the beef I use for italian sausage. Sometimes I add cheese, but it's usually a hard, pungunt cheese like Asiago or Parmesan, not the full fat varieties like cheddar or colby so I can get away with just a little bit. I have always detested pepperoni and salami, so that's a help, I don't even try those.

As I said, it's not for everyone, but it suits me and I've never had anyone turn down a second helping.

That pancetta, now, it's bad for me. I have to remember that it's a condiment, not really a meal.

Annie

I generally cut the meat in pieces, roughly hand mix with the spices, then grind and stuff all at once with something similar to the Kitchenaid mixer, but a different brand of appliance.

We add about a cup of beef stock to every 3-4 lbs of the meat / spice mixture before grinding / stuffing. The meat absorbs the moisture and turns out pretty moist sausages without adding any extra fat.

The only drawback is that the sausage can/will take on the flavor of the stock, so its a good idea that its really, really good stock. And it also gives an excuse to add more garlic, ginger, cilantro, and so on.

I don't know of many Italian sausages that are made of all beef. Most all fresh Italian sausages do not usually contain any beef or beef fats. Adding wine might be nice, but because its just mostly water it will evaporate, and any alcohol will dissipate. Beef broth might be interesting if I were making a roast beef for slicing thin and for cold roast beef sandwiches. Here, I haven't the area or the means to grow any livestock of any kind. Adding cilantro (the green leaves) is a fresh and very volitile flavor that will totally dissapear after a short time. Coriander which are the seeds (actually fruits) of the same cilantro plant have a totally different and unique flavor. Most common sausages use a mix of ground pepper, coriander and sage. I suppose if you're only making a couple of pounds of sausages that mixing in spices while grinding might be fine, but even for that, without cooking a small portion before they are stuffed or formed, you may be in for a surprise taste, or no taste at all. I always cook up a spoonful to taste before stuffing the meat. When making the various pork sausges, all the pork gets coursly ground and seperated for all batches, except the breakfast type. These require a smaller holed grinding plate. I do use a high temp cheddar for the cheese type. Asiago cheese, doesn't seem to melt the way a parm or other grated cheese does. For me, it just sits there like a white lump. Asiago is usually meant as a table cheese that you slice off pieces and eat with antipasto. I've tried it sliced thin on pizza and it has not melted there either. Kind of like a feta cheese, only less salty but as smelly as an other aged cheese.

Annie, I guess you dislike hot stuff or spicy stuff like pepperoni and salami. Both of these can have very different tastes depending on the recipes used and the amount of salt, corn sugar, spices, and even the portion ratios of the meats used.

Like anything else we make, everyone has their own way of doing things and also their favorite tastes and methods used. Here, I much prefer to keep it simple, like the commercial sausage makers do, and stay with a method hat works for me. I couldn't imagine trying to make 20 pounds of italian sausages in a my mixers grinder attachment, let alone using the stuffer nozzle on the end once its ground. Thats way I have a big meat mixer, as I can add what I like and 'fine tune' the final taste, with no shock or surprises at eating time. The only sausage I though was a bit off, were chorizo which called for vinegar. Once added, it acted on the meat and tenderized it into mush, but tastes really good when it was first mixed and before it was stuffed info casings. Because its not a very good texture now, it will be removed from the casings and mixed into a big batch of pepproni. I aso have dried beer and make beer brats which are really good.

I forgot to mention that fat is very necessary, unless you use a substitute to help give the meat some binder and texture. Without the proper amount of fat added or a substitute, the sausages will come out dry, mealy and have the texture of wet sawdust. Needless to say, I have tried to reduce the fat needed, and at first, didn't use any fat replacer of any kind. I also made the mistake of trying to use salt pork or salt pork fat back. The end result was so bad, I had to throw it out, all 20 pounds of it!! NEVER again!! I never use beef fat in sausages either, and only use pork fat.

The beef fat is melted down and mixed with hulless bird seeds and formed into cakes for the wild birds outside. Its the favorite of all the neighorhood woodpeckers, as they wait in line near the 3 suet seed cake feeders all day long.

I like asiago, so that's what I use, but I grate it very fine with a microplane and it seems to just blend in, there are no definable chunks of cheese in the sausage at all, just that flavor.

I do like spicy, but for some reason I don't like salami or pepperoni. I especialy dislike pepperoni, the commercial kind always leaves that film of grease in my mouth and I hate that. It's the reason I don't eat beef ribs, no matter how carefully prepared they leave that film of grease, and it's just icky.

My sausage isn't dry, it does stick together and it's not like wet sawdust. I've added some ice cubes (as directed in Charcuterie) to keep the meat cold and add moisture. I approximate my sausage to be about 95% lean and I'm not making them any more fat than that. when I removed the "edible" collagen casings from the Italian sausage, the links kept the linked shape and can be sliced, they don't crumble. They do not, however, leave that slick of grease in my mouth or on my napkin.

David, I like the idea of adding stock, I can quarts of both chicken and beef stock. I'm thinking the chicken might even be better in more delicately flavored sausages.

Ken, my italian sausage recipe was about 4 parts of pork and one part beef. It's an old Sicilian recipe that Elery got from his boss, Mr. Castillicci, when Elery was a teenager working in the Sicilian grocery near Detroit. He made that sausage a couple of hundred pounds at a time, with beef, pork, white Moscato wine, fennel, tarragon, salt and pepper and asiago cheese. That's why we used that particular recipe for sweet italian sausage, it's tried and true, been used for about 100 years or so by the Castilicci family, and because we just like it.

As I said, to each their own. I like it, it's super lean, and I don't really care whether it's "traditional", I only care whether I like it that way. The "mouth feel" of the extra fat is definitely not worth the heart problems it could cause me.

Annie

My pepperoni has a fat replacer as well as a meat binder (phosphate), as once its air cured and dried, it does shrink some. The outside of the non edible casings get a light growth of mold, and salt that exudes out if stored at room temperature for a long time. Because I try to keep my pepperoni as lean as possible, with out it drying to a crumble, I have to use a small amount of beef fat as well as pork fat. Actually pork fat is supposed to have less cholesterol compared to beef fat. Pepperoni and salami both use a mix of beef and pork too. I have even seen a few gresh italian sauages that make use of lamb, and also veal, wlong with pork and beef. The main reason for the pork fat is because lean pork has a very mild taste, unseasoned. Without that little bit of fat, it doesn't have the same mouth feel. When I cook up the sausages on the stove, I use a non stick pan, and add a bit or water first, so the hog casings get more tender. The water boils away and I get a nice browning of the sausages. The fat replacers have no real taste, as ts almost like eating plain tofu. I suppose that a very fine grating of Asiago will melt a bit. It does give a nice creamy taste, like most decent cheeses. Ever try mixing that red 'Ah So' sauce into some pork sausages? I made a batch using some ginger and garlic, as well as some chinese five spice powder. They were really good too. Mouthfeel is very important, and it may be that because salami and pepperoni are both dry cures, their fat content is not lost during a cooking, so they do tend to be a bit more 'waxy' compared to fresh cooked. There used to be a nice web site with hundreds of recipes for virtually every kind of sausage you would ever want to make. Originally, it was a site by G.M Fowler.

All of my family also have high levels of hard to control cholestrol. My mom had levels so high, they couldn't give her an actual number. Currently, I take 4 different meds just to control my high chol too, which was well over 300. Now its down below 200 most of the time.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sausage Recipes

I should have clarified, we generally just make sausage with pork shoulder, and add the homemade beef stock - we've also used home made chicken stock. Meat will absorb around 10% of its weight in water / stock / wine, much like those "flavor enhanced" turkeys at the holidays, which are brined in broth. Wine gives a subtle flavor and moisturizes the meat as well, we prefer a white wine over a red. The better quality wine, the better the end result.

Generally, we only make about 5-10 lbs at a go, and thats the limit for these kinds of Kitchen Aid mixer attachments.

We add wads of fresh cilantro leaves and freshly ground coriander, along with gobs of garlic and grated fresh ginger, and then stuffed into hog casings.

Sausage making around here is all good fun, and I doubt I could duplicate one batch to the next. A genetic inability to stick with a recipe, I just have to try something different, like throwing in chunks of dried tomato.

Me too. I really don't use any recipes even for making things like muffins, bread, or many other foods. Even mixes, get doctored, as I just like more of everyting, especially flavor. Annie mentioned adding ice to the meat, which I also do as it does get the meat colder while its being mixed. My meat mixer is a hand crank stainless steel unit, very heavy duty and was only $100. My electric grinder is a dedicated one, that allows me to choose from many different sized cutting plates. My stuffer will soon be modified to an electric model as it was originally hand crank. I found a decent price on the motor that attaches directly to the crank shaft. It will make quick work out of a full load of meat for any sausage type. I even upgraded my meat slicer to a commerical 10 inch blade. I have two smaller 7" blade types I will be selling as well as my older original 5 pound sausage stuffer with the stuffing nozzles. Upscaling due to the more varieties of meats I work with.

Hi,
I got the sausage book 'Great Sausage
Recipes and Meat Curing' from the place on the link below. I think it is a good book quite extensive in general info and recipes. I don't if it can be found for cheaper, I didn't do a search. There are also many other sausage products on his site. Again, because it is easy to just go there and buy stuff local, I don't know how prices compare to other web sites.
Remy

Here is a link that might be useful: Sausage Maker Book

I have posted the Sausage Maker site in several of my posts and linksinks, As well as Butcher Packer, and Allied Kenco. All these companies have an extensive array of meat curing supplies, sausage making supplies, and many mixes for a lot of different sausages. Where else can you find dried beer, or high melting point cheddar cheese already diced. Counting down to post #5 in this thread, you will see I mention the same companies I mention here. I guess no one seems to read much of my posts.

Well, here are some more ideas. Sausage is not the only thing you can use those machines and stuff the casings with. You can fill them with anything you want.

Suggestions to fill sausage casings:
1. Pizza or lasagna makings, ground
2. Chopped Cooked chicken and grilled peppers, onion, zucchini with zesty Italian dressing
3. Scrambled eggs with grilled onions, mushrooms and bacon bits
4. Creamy chicken in sause with grilled onions and peppers
5. Cheesy broccoli and chicken

hi - lots of good information here! maybe someone can help. i am looking for a recipe to grind my own apple (or apple-kraut) bratwurst ... i had it once - but now it's GONE! anybody???

thanks!

Ksrogers,
Lol, I read all the posts looking for mention of the book I have. I didn't notice you gave the web site address in one of the first posts! I do love to read you posts; you have tons of knowledge on this subject and many others! : )
Remy

runningtrails -

That's interesting. How do you use these sausage fillings then - in recipes - or just use them as storage containers - to freeze??

Bejay

I would expect that an apple brat would use peeled and ground apples as well as cinnamon and maybe some cardamom. Beef and pork are the two meats usually used in most bratwurst. You may want to just try grinding these and then tasting once you are at a point when they are ready to stuff. Just make sure you spoon out a small portion to cook it before you taste it. Adding more apples, or other spices are easy to do, even after you cook up a small sample and find its not as flavored as you like. I would also add a bit of frozen apple juice, as there is always some water or other liquid added to most all sausages. Here, I cannot make a sausage without also adding a little phosphate to bind it together, as I hate dry crumbly sausages.
My meat grinder as a 'chub' insert that stuffs things inside or outside another item. Haven't used that yet, but it does look interesting.

A local, small supermarket near here (Johnnys') has a whole boneless beef tenderloin on sale for just $5.99 a pound. What a bargain! I bought two, will slice into some steaks and a small roast, then pack in Food Saver bags in the freezer. Great on the BBQ grill in the summer.

Does anyone have a recipe for the kind of hotdogs we used to get as kids? You remember them. They were crisp when you bit into them? I have found them in the local market but I hate paying $6-8 a pound for them! BTW...I tried using soy protien for the first time in my sausage last month. I wish I had tried it before. The sausage is very low in fat but the soy protein seems to hold it together and keep it juicy.
Thanks in advance.
Rick

Yes, soy will do that as will a little phosphate. Both act as a moisture retainer and a binder. For the franks, you can either use a sheep casing or the dried edible collegen casings in the diameters for franks. If you add too much soy, the franks will split open when cooked. Here are a few sources:
http://www.butcher-packer.com/pages-productinfo/product-261/21mm-clear-edible-collagen-casing.html
http://www.butcher-packer.com/pages-productinfo/product-308/casing-for-snacks-hot-dogs-22-24mm.html
http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/32_229/products_id/1234
Seasoning mixes:
http://www.alliedkenco.com/catalog/index.php/cPath/49_594_902
http://www.butcher-packer.com/pages-productinfo/product-373/bologna-frankfurter-seasoning.html
http://www.sausagemaker.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=532

Please keep in mind that all of these MUST be cooked after stuffing. When your preparing these for eating, they are just simply heated up or grilled. The texture of the filling has to be ground very fine and run through a heavy duty food processor if you want a smooth paste, as opposed to a chunky texture. If you like a bit of smoke, they could either be smoked naturally, or you add a bit of liquid smoke to the filling.
Imagine making home made turkey sausages, or all beef, or a mix of many meat types. Be sure to cook up a small spoonful and taste it before stuffing.

Thanks for the info ksrogers! I put in an order to butcher-packer since I've ordered from them before and had good service.

All three companies mentioned, I have done business with and they are every good for getting unusual items for making unusual sausage types. My Canadian bacon can't be beat, and is about 1/4 the cost compared to store bought, same with pastrami.

Picked up about 16 pounds of boneless pork shoulder at Costco. Plan to make a big huge batch of Polish Kielbasa tomorrow, loaded with Marjorum and garlic, plus a few other 'secret spices'.

Today, I got some cheap skinless boneless chicken breasts ($1.59/lb.) and pounded them out, spread Dijon mustard on them, and placed a chunk of Jarlsberg cheese and smoked ham. The outsides were coated with seasoned bread crumbs. I used the Foodsaver to seal each as individual meals that cook up in half an hour.

Added about 2 pounds of pork fat to the meat, as well as a LOT of garlic, fresh, jarred, and dried, some liquid hickory smoke, and marjorum, as well as chopped onions, and some ground up yellow mustard seeds. All this, along with a little water, some soy flour, and fat replacer, and the meat batch now weighs nearly 25 pounds. Cooked up a spoonful and it is perfect. I like using salt free sausage seasoning mixes as a base, then add the spices I like as well as the amount of salt I feel is sufficient. Its all mixed, and read to go in the stuffer tomorrow. I plan to use the motor unit I got recently, that attaches to the stuffer. The meat will go into hog casings.

Next come Perogies, onion, cheddar and bacon, and broccoli with cheese, and of course every batch will also have potatoes (red bliss) mashed.

I enjoy all your postings and specially KSrogers' tips. I was wondering if anyone has tried making Spanish chorizo (not like Mexican chorizo which has vinegar). I've tries several internet recipes but they were all duds. Maybe one of you might be willing to share a tried and tested recipe for Spanish chorizo? Thanks!

You may want to try one of the sausage making sources I posted, as they do offer some mixes for them. I seem to recall that one mix had this, but as you say, they do call for vinegar. When I made a batch, I went a bit overboard on the vinegar as it was really tasting very unusual, but pleasant. Only problem was vinegar, being an acid, had tenderized and actually 'cooked' the meat within the casings, which took a day or so to actually complete its cycle. Later, when I actually cooked up a batch, they were very soft and grainy like wet sawdust. Not very appealing! I will probably thaw these out and use them in a larger pepperoni recipe where the vinegar will hardly be noticed. I think that the Spanish ones are the aame, and use a lot of sweet red peppers finely ground. If you want some heat, you can add a bit of hot peppers too. When I do the pepperoni, I use several different hot pepper types. It helps round out the spicy taste.

Just came across a new web site offering yet more variety of sausage and meat curing stuff. They have a mix for Chorizo, but it does mention adding a little vinegar. I suppose you could embellish on the spices, and omit the vinegar. I have not tasted Spanish Chorizo, so I can't say for sure. One of my favorite sites- Weston Supply, is not on the internet anymore. I can't get to their web site or their email. I just bought from them a little over a month ao too. Their products are sold by many retailers who deal in stuffers and meat slicers, etc. Don't know what happened to them..

The other sources I provied also have some choices for the chorizo mixes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chorizo

The Kielbasa went well. Its all in individual FS bags in the freezer. Each bag is almost 2 pounds. The whole batch was over 25 pounds. I like to coil it up in aboutt 18 inch long lengths as its the easiest way to handle it. It contains quite a lot of garlic, marjorum, ground mustard seed, and some lquid smoke flavor. I used a new cutter plate on my grinder. This one chopped up the pork ito pieces about a 3/4 of an inch. I ground up most of the fat in a finer cutter plate, about 3/16 inch. The reason was simple, the fat is mixed better that way throughout the sausages. I hate biting into a chunk of fat. I used some soy protien as well as a little fat replacer. When I cooked up a small sample to taste before stuffing, it had very little fat rendering out, so that was a good sign. It also got a little of the phosphates, as these help to hold the sausage together without crumbling. One of the salt free Kielbasa mixes I used was easy to mix in, as it didn't over salt anything. I bought a 20 pound pail of pure meat curing salt. The elecric motor unit on my stuffer worked like a dream. It was nice to be able to use both hands on the sausages while using a foot pedal for the stuffing. One of my most favorite sources for sausge making gear is Weston Supply. I bought many an item from them so far, and most were factory refurbs that cost les than hafl the original prices. The big 11 pound stuffer and motor unit was under $300 total, where if I bought all new, it would have been well over $500. I need to put my old 5 pound stuffer up in eBay, as well as two 7 inch blade meat slicers. I now use 10 inch one that is close to deli size. Weston Supply was back up and runing again yesterday, I guess their computer was down. It was a scare, to say the least.

Made some perogi filling. Started with red blss cookd potatoes, mashed. Spli the potatoes into three portions. Added lots of dresf and dried onion, as well as some Potato Buds to the filling. The second portion had sharp cheddar cheese and some of teh real bacon bits added, as well as some Potato Buds again. The third batch has some preblanched broccoli and chopped swiss (Jarlsberg) cheese. Tomorrow, these will be used to make many Perogies. The dough is flour, eggs, water and a little oil, similar to a pasta. I even have a Perogi press that I can make 6 at time. I will be using my pasta rolling machine to form the dough sheets. All this for Easter, coming up soon. Next is a big Bubka bread.

Finally got around to posting my 5 pound capcity sausage stuffer on eBay yesterday. It was snapped up very quickly. There, I also have two different brands of electric meat slicers- Rival and Deni, as well as a Mr. Tenderizer device for running meat through. If anyone is interested.

dancing lemons,

great suggestion for a sausage forum !

if i could add on to that forum to include Jerky/Smoking.

that would be synonomous with using veges,fruit and spices grown in our gardens. and to make good use of what is eating our gardens.

wildlifeman

Growing cilantro, allowing it to go to seed as coriander, is a spice used in many sausage types. Other spices you can grow are sage, thyme, rosemary, and marjorum, that are all necessary in sausage making. Yes, I agree a smoking, curing, jerky, and meat forum would be a nice addition.

Note for Annie, on the next batch of wieners you make..

Here is a link from Sausage Maker and a recipe for wieners.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Sausage Maker

You all are so inspirational! I took Annie's advice and it bought the book "Charcuterie". It arrived on Wed. and the next day I made sausage. However, I must say, I think Ksroger should publish his own book- or better a video- on the subject- what a wealth of knowledge! Thank you!

As we are trying to cut back on fat here, we made our sausage with 2:1 ratio of turkey breast to pork loin. One batch with collagen casings (those were a pain- kept coming off the nozzle) was maple. Don't think I got the twisting down so well with the collagen casing and I overstuffed the first 2 ft. or so but after fixing that they look OK. The flavor was great! I will admit, it doesn't taste like store-bought (not 40%+ fat) and you have to make sure it doesn't stick when you cook it.. but I sure don't feel guilty when I reach for another link! Ours didn't crumble and they were quite moist. I appreciate the recipes everyone has posted (gives me a good idea to start from) so I'm posting ours:

"Heart Lovin' Maple Sausage"
3lb turkey breast, ground (we used a KitchenAid mixer)
1.5lb pork loin, ground
5 TBSP maple syrup
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp salt
1 tsp sage, ground

Mix ingredients together. Chill for an hour or more. Stuff into breakfast sausage casings (here I do not recommend the Kitchen Aid stuffer- what a SLOW process with such a small stuffing hole!)

"Heart Lovin' Spicy Italian Sausage"
3lb turkey breast, ground
1.5lb pork loin, ground
3tsp fennel seeds
3 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
3 tsp parsley flakes
1.5 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 TBSP garlic, minced
1.5 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp paprika

We stuffed these into "normal" hog casings and like both the ease of use and taste. Think we have some tweaking still to do with the Italian one but the Maple-- yummy!

I had trouble locating casings locally but picked some up when visiting Orlando at Bass Pro Shop. I'll have to order that curing salt to make bacon. Yum! Yum! Thanks for the websites Ksroger. =)

The web sites listed also sell natural casings. I must say that sheep casings are really easy to work with and I twist 3 turns on one direction, push meat into the casing, then pinch and twist in the opposite direction, then more meat, pinch, and twist in the original direction and repeat. I have a big flat pan that is just below my 11 pound motorized stuffer about 2 inches, so they don't untwist very easily. For Italian, I add lots of garlic, and one TBSP isn't even a hint of taste. For every five pounds of Italian, I add maybe 1/4 cup of minced garlic, either fresh, jarred, or dried, or all three. I find that if I use the soy protein and fat replacer, they come out great and are easy to cook in a non stick pan, or on a grill. The best I have made so far are the ones with the high melting point cheddar cheese. It doesn't ooze out when they are cooked and offers a really rich taste to Italian sausages with peppers, onions, and any other flavors. I don't add a lot of fat, but at some level, if you don't have enough, they can get quite dry and mealy. The brine for Canadian bacon is great too, and I add a bit of maple syrup for a little extra flavor, as well as some hickory smoke flavor for the breakfast sausages and bacon. The natural casings are sold in salted containers, so they keep forever. Never let them dry out. Edible collagen casings are fine, but they are only used for my pepperoni snack sticks. Here, I have not used any turkey or chicken meats, only because they can get really nasty if they are left out for too long. I do advise using the nitrates though, as they affer a lot more food safety. The amount of added nitrate is so small, that you could never taste anything. Its blended with salt, so measuring the small amount is easy and very accurate. Its almost like adding citric acid to your canning of tomatoes. If you see a 'hank' mentioned, its a measurement of about 200 feet of casing. Usually, a hank will be enough casings to about 200 pounds of sausages, but that varies with the sizes. I untangle about 30 feet of csings and place in water to soak for a little while. Fill my stuffer with the mixed meat that has been seasoned and a small test sample is tasted first. Te stuffing tube gets a light coat of vegetabe oil and the natural casings are slid on. If the stuffing tubes are straight sided, youc an usually get about 20 feet of casings on it. My recent kielbasa was really tasty, and I have enough to last another year, which is frozen in Food Saver bags. next, will be breaflast sausages and soem Italian for the summer, then a batch of pepperoni again. Costco has a great deal on two boneless pork butts or shoulders, but you have to ask them, as they don't usually put these out on display. Sometimes, I also ask for some pork fat, wherever I see pork being cut up. This pork fat is needed for the lean beef pepperoni snack sticks.

Hi,

I'm sorry if this has already been addressed and is a repeat. Since first coming across this thread and since skimming through the book "Charcuterie," I began re-reading this thread today. I got as far as one of ksrogers (Ken??)'s post where he says:

"While reading over the info on the latest link I posted above, Texas Tastes, they mentioned doing dry cures in a frost free refrigerator. In this way the temps are kept low, and the 'auto defrost' cycle will also remove moisture from inside the refrigerator, which will effectivly dry the sauasges stored in there too"

I read the section in "Charcuterie" yesterday regarding salamis, etc. and they emphasised that it was extremely important to keep the humidity high so that the outside wouldn't dry too fast, forming a crust or skin that would prevent the center of the sausage from drying out sufficiently. They even talked about keeping pans of water in the sausage curing area to keep the moisture level up.

I'm just a VERY rank beginner at this - just doing my preliminary studying up before jumping into it all - but what's said in "Charcuterie" seems to contradict the Texas Tastes information and I think I'd trust the former. OTOH, if the sausage is in an enclosed area like a fridge - where does the dried moisture go as the sausage dries out if it's not something like a frost free fridge? Is there some sort of happy medium?

Anne

My strategy in a case like this is to do a lot of Googling until I feel I have found either a consensus or a solid rationale for one way or the other.

Without further information, I also would have more confidence in "Charcuterie". Is "Charcuterie" talking about a refrigerator sized area or something more like a small room?

Jim

Hi Jim,

I'll have to re-read it in the mornining to be sure, but I think they (in "Charcuterie") were talking about a curing room or just any place where you happened to be hanging your dry cure sausages, etc. As I recall it had to be at least 60% humidity to cure meats properly and if the curing area didn't have that much you needed to put in pans of brined water (brine to keep down the growth of mold) to maintain the humidity level. The book was quite adament about the necessity of adequate humidity.

Anne

To answer the question about the moisture and where does it go in a frost free fridge. Most every frost free refrigerator/freezer has a drip pan at the bottom. The designers have this down to a science in that when the cooling elements inside ice up during the chilling cycle, they pull in moisture from the items in the fridge. When the fridge is in the defrost cycle, that ice buildup quickly melts and runs out through a small trough or other means, and the liquid collects in the shallow tray at the bottom outside the fridge. It quickly evaporates due to the heat of the compressor and its plumbing coils. These cycles usually occur at least once in 24 hours and the melting cycle is quite short, like maybe a half hour or so. In my frost free freezer, I sometimes see sweat on the walls, and looking again an hour later that sweat is gone. With constant air moving about inside, the moisture is quickly removed. If your a beginner, I suggest you start at the beginning and go with the basics for a while, to learn about the ncessary amounts of fat to meat, seasonings, spices, additives, binders, and curing in general. Starting at a Charcuterie would be like a beginner student pilot learning on a Boeing 747 jet. My first air cured meats were pepperoni and salami. Both still had a short baking time before being hung up in a room off my kitchen. I used non edible casings, and they were soaked in a salt brine prior to stuffing. After about 2 weeks the sausages were quite firm, and so they went into the fridge for several months before I cut into them. I also used the proper slow curing nitate.

Hi,

I reread the section in "Charcuterie" about dry curing salamis, etc. and they said that the humidity had to be over 60% and 70% would be ideal. They suggested using an unplugged refigerator (with a pan of salted water in the bottom for humidity) as a dry curing box.

Ksrogers, good advice about mastering the basics before getting into more advanced things like smoking and dry curing. I'm not a total novice, though. I used to be in the restaurant business and although my specialty was pastries and breads, I have done some of the more basic aspects of charcuterie - fresh sausages (seafood, boudin blanc, Swedish Potato Sausage, etc.), Swedish hams (1-3 days dry rub of sugar, salt, and pink salt followed by 10 days of brining), gravlax, pickled herring, Japanese cured Mackeral, jerky (unsmoked), pates, galantines, confits, etc. I haven't tried dry curing or smoking yet. Once all my supplies come in, I plan to start out with the fresh sausage recipes and pancetta in "Charcuterie" and gradually progress to more complex stuff.

FWIW,
Anne

Here, my meat mixer, sausage stuffer, meat grinder, and meat slicers are all made for a small scale sausage business. When I make a batch of sausages, its usually at least 20 pounds at a time. When boneless pork loin is on sale, I brine that and use a vacuum chamber to pull in the brine, as wll as injecting it into the loin. The end result is a really great tasting Canadian bacon, at less than half of what they charge in stores. For me, dry curing only applies to salami and pepproni, as thats only ones I do that way. I make a mean pastrami too, as well as Italian cheese sausges, or my favorite, the 'everything' Itaiian sausage with cheesem peppers, onins, garlic, fennel, and of course oregano. I posted elsewhere many souurces for sausge amdn meat curing supplies. For dry cure, you need a fermentation agent to create lactic acid, as well as using the longer, slower releasing nitrate, as opposed to the fast acting nitrites used for fresh sausages. I prefer to use these as you can't always be sure that your meat is not contaminated even just slightly. The added nitrites or nitrates make these cured meats last longer and remain safer longer too. I also use the phosphats to help keep moisture in the meats, as well as an aid to help bind them so the sausages don't cumble when cut into.

Anne,

That's a pretty impressive background. "...not a total novice..." You can say that again! I have done only a few of the items on your list and am in the process of doing a few more now. I could learn a lot from you.

Jim

Hi Jim,

I just said I've made all of these things and am comfortable doing them, but I'm not really any sort of expert. I'm not sure that I know anything more than what one could find in a good (specialized) cookbook, but I'd be happy share what I've learned if anyone's interested - particularly if we had a dedicated forum ;).

Anne

Hi Again,

Thinking about smoking meats and just a little anecdote... Growing up, my Dad used to like making saurkraut, wines, etc. and liked to try his hand at smoking meats. I never paid too much attention to it, but I do well remember that before my Mom finally allowed him to get a Little Chief Smoker, he managed to improvise his own smoker. He'd build a fire in our fireplace, then climb up on the roof, put a few shisk kebob skewers across the chimney opening and hang meat on hooks from the skewers! I recall him doing the usual meats plus things like whole wild ducks and fish. Don't remember how they tasted, but at least he didn't kill us all (he was a doctor so probably had some sense about the dangers of food poisoning - although he certainly pushed the envelope in some of his endeavors LOL!). I just remember how much fun it was being up on the roof with him "cooking food."

Anyway, just thought I'd "share" :)

Anne

I can see it now, smoking from my chimney. Odd taste though, as I have oil heat... Ugh! I made a version of Alton Browns smoker with two very large clay flower pots placed open face to open face, an electic hotplate and a covered cast iron kettle with wood chips inside. Used a round wire grill used as a replacement type, and sold at Home Depot. Total cost was about $45. I smoked some nice turkey breasts in there using mesquite, oak, or applewood. Even had some oak that was from scotch barrels one time.

Hi,

I'm finally getting ready to make my first batch of Italian Sausage and have a question. The recipe calls for pork shoulder butt, but I just have a fresh picnic ham. Any recommendations on how much extra fresh back fat I should add to the recipe to compensate for the leaner cut of pork I'm using?

Thanks!
Anne

The word 'ham' indicates that the pork has been cooked. Pork shoulder are the front portion of a pig, the butt, is obviosuly the bake legs and hip joint. Some sauaage makes prefer the fresh shoulder, wile others prefer the fresh butt. Because it comes fully boned, I buy a two pack at Costco, where extraction of the bone as already been done. If you attempt to make sausages from 'ham', they will not have the proper texture. A fresh picnic 'ham' is the front end of the pig, and usually has a single long bone in the middle, and is salt brine cured and slowly cooked or smoked. Pork butt usually has a flat shoulder blade type bone in there, or two joints. If you use fresh pork fat, it cannot be the cured type. Most that you see in supermarkets is called 'fresh pork fat back', but they seem to sell it as called that, but its actually salt pork, which is cured and not advisable to use in sausage recipes. Because todays pork is very lean to begin with, I have to visit the butcher shop departments and ask if they can save the excess pork fat trimmings from fresh pork. Many supermarkets also buy the pork pre-trimmed, so there isn't much left to save for you. One of the local markest here will actually feature pork fat as a packaged product, especially in the summer months. One nice thing about fresh pork fat (not fat back), is it can be refrozen withing any harm. I like to stock up on several pounds and freeze it. Usually an italian sausage or breakfast type is 60-70% lean fresh pork, to 30-40% fat by weight. I like it a little more lean, so I go with about 20% fat, and add fat replacers like phosphate, soy protein, and some fat replacer. All of these help to improve moistness and texture after cooking. Not sure if your area actually describes a pink color 'ham' as being 'fresh'. Here, any pork cut that is called ham is a cured and cooked pork. Even for that, some 'picnic' hams are pieces of pork that has added gelatin pressed in molds, and then cooked. For italian sausges, you have several choices, by adding fennel seed, italian spices, garlic, peppers, onions, hot peppers, and even cheese.

Hi ksrogers,

Thanks for the response. I guess I need to find out the approx fat % in the shoulder vs the picnic - then aim for the 30-40% fat overall in the recipe as you mentioned.

In describing pork cuts, "Charcuterie" says: "The shoulder butt (e) is the muscular fatty cut from which sausage is made. Below it is what is called the picnic ham (f)." I went by their terminology. What I have is an UNCURED picnic ham.

I also have about 30 lbs of fresh, UNCURED, pork back fat (which I've also seen called fat back). I got it from a wholesale swine butchering and selling place nearby. It was in the form of various sized trimmings that I first froze individually on cookie sheets then combined in several big zip lock bags in the freezer.

I also got a fresh, uncured, pork belly that I cut up into various size pieces and froze. Later I'll use these to try out small batches of various bacons, pancetta, salt pork, etc.

The wholesaler has about all the pork products you could imagine although they don't have everything all the time. I lucked out on the fat back as I called the same day they'd just butchered a pig for someone who didn't want the back fat and had just put the 30 lbs in the freezer. I paid 60 cents/lb.

Interestingly, they also sell fresh pork blood. "Charcuterie" said that it was illegal to sell the fresh blood in the US, but maybe the laws have changed since that was written??? Once I have some experience under my belt, I MAY try my hand at Boudin Noir.

Anne

The term "butt" cam be misleading because it doesn't follow that "obvious" meaning. It doesn't mean the butt of the hog. It means the butt portion of the shoulder. That's the big end. The small end is the picnic ham. You can buy either a whole shoulder or either portion.

Ham, not butt, refers to the rump and thigh of the hog (unless it is a picnic ham). In this case, confusingly enough, the term rump carries the obvious anatomical meaning. Ham is often cured, but fresh hams are not. They are plain, uncured pork.

To make it worse, various synonyms are used. And "portion" has a specialized, non-obvious meaning which I won't go into here. Oh, all right, I will.

A butt half is just what you would expect. The whole shoulder is cut in half, resulting in a butt end, or butt half and a pork shoulder picnic. If some slices are removed from the butt half, if becomes a butt portion, very clever and subtle labeling with tells you that some center slices have gone missing.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Ham 101

Looks like my definitions have been shot down. I have never heard of a raw ham when its referred to a raw pork meat cut. In any event, if you did, in fact, use cured pork fat back, it will melt and run off at a lower temp, leaving a dry sawdust like texture in sausages. Costco's prepackaged pork butt packages are deboned as such, that the meat is almost at the correct ratio of meat to fat.

does anyone have recipes for chicken sausage Italian style and beef sausage? Dr told my husband to watch what is in his foods he eats, and my neighbor wants a beef sausage recipe ty.

Beef sausages need a bit of pork fat. Beef fat will not cook the same as pork. Another option is to use a grain based fat replacer. The sources I posted here are, Allied Kenco, Butcher Packer, and The Sausage Maker. They offer these replacers as a dry powder you mix with water. Also, fats help to hold the ground meats together, so a phosphate would be needed to help retain moisture and enhance the protein in meat to set up and gel. For chicken or turkey sausages, you also need fat or a replacer. Skin and fat from poultry is used in commercial sausages, but for the lean meats likle breast and thigh of poulry, the same fat replacers and phosphate can be used. I also add a bit of soy protien to also help give them more subsance. For Italian, you can add things like dried onion, peppers, garlic, oregano, rosemary, thyme, sage, coriander, pepper. I made beef and tomato sausages a long while back, but didn't use any fat replacer, only lean beef and dried tomatoes. It was a bit mealy like wet sawdust, but was ok when mixed into a sauce. Salami is made of beef meat and pork fat, as is Pepperoni. Both are great, but cant work well with the fat replacers as they are both usually dry cured as opposed to being cooked. Any kind of meats and spices you use are easily adjusted before they get stuffed. For pork or beef, both types need a fine grind unless its a country style like Kielbasa, which uses a 1/2 inch plate. The type you want would work with a 1/4 inch plate or smaller holed one. Mix a small amount of the meat you wish to use with some of the spices I mentioned, cook in a microwave a minute, or in a small frying pan, cool, and taste. If its needing more flavor, you can easily add that. Don't forget the salt, and some can also use a little sugar. The suppliers (above) also sell many sausage making kits that can use venison, or most any other kind of meats.

Breakfast sausages can be ground turkey with fresh ground pepper, sage, and coriander as the base spices. If you like spicy hot, add red pepper flakes.

IMO, a craving for sausage can't be satisfied by any dry, lean meat. Sausage needs a certain amount of fat, particularly pork fat, to be tasty. The only healthful way to satisfy that craving is to eat nice, fatty sausage, but not too often.

Jim

The fat replacers do help to give the meats more texture that is very close to an added fat. Most sausages require 30-40% fat, but I add only about 15-20% and add the fat replacer too. Eating in moderation is helpful too. Beef fat should be removed and not used in sany sausages, only pork fat or the substitutes. Then there is 'Morning Star Farms' all vegetable meatless items. Or a tasteless soy.

Got an email about some sausage making supplies and casings. Instead of private, I chose to post the members question and my reply here:

[This message originated at GardenWeb]

Did you happen to catch the show I think it's called "Good Eats" with Alton Brown. He did a show about making sausages etc...I was just wondering if you saw it and your opinion on it. He use d collagen casings on his Italian sausages.
Al

My reply:

Hello,

No, I missed that show, but recall that he made a sausage show a while back. He used the meat grinder with attached stuffing nozzle to stuff the sausages as opposed to a separate stuffer. I use my meat grinder just for the meat grind, and then have a separate meat mixer where the spices are added as well as some water and liquid smoke (optional). Then. my stuffer is now motorized and allows me to fill 11 pounds of sausages per filling. The stuffer is vertical uses a big round piston and drive screw. http://www.texastastes.com/p39.htm Its a red frame with green color motor that takes the place of the hand crank. I bought it from a distributor called Weston Supply. They used to have these as well as professional meat slicers and when I was searching for them, Weston bad clearance sales that allowed me to get these for less than half the price. The method Alton used to stuff was to cut the pork into 1 inch pieces and then mix in the spices at that time. The stuffing was then done using a course cutter plate of about 1/2 inch. There are two types of collagen casings. The larger fibrous ones are inedible and are used for cured luncheon meats like salami, pepperoni, etc. The edible collagen casings are quite thin and are dry, and shrunken up (like an accordion) into a short tube length. I use a very small 1/2 inch diameter one for making pepperoni snack sticks, and my sausage stuffer labors greatly as its a lot of force to push meat into a 10 inch long 1/2 inch diameter tube. In any case the edible collagen comes in two colors, clear and brown (mahogany). Clear would be for things like breakfast and italian sausages. The mahogany color is for darker sausages like pepperoni and chorizo. I use mostly fresh (natural) sheep casings for my breakfast sausages as the cost for a hank of casings is a bit cheaper than the molded and edible collagen ones. Sheep and hog casings are not as consistent in their sizes or diameters. The natural casings also need to be rehydrated by soaking in water about 10 or more minutes. They last forever and are packed in course salt and refrigerated. Years ago, a whole hank of sheep casings (enough for about 150 pounds) cost only about $9. But today, they are way up there in price. At first, when I was making italian sausages years ago, I used supermarket type hog casings under the Hormel brand. These tended to be short pieces and had holes and were not sized very well, so you could get 1 inch to almost 2 inches in diameter in the same container. The holes in the casings were a real pain, but you found this out when they were rinsed and filled with water prior to the soaking. I used to see 2-5 foot lengths too, and that's not easy to deal with either when you stuffing 11 pounds of meat at one time. In any case, you can use either natural casings or the edible collagen ones for making italian sausages. I have some natural hog casings I bought which are slightly larger and properly sized for use in making Kielbasa. The sheep casings are used only for my breakfast sausages. Breakfast sausages use sage, ground black pepper, and coriander for its spices. For italian, I like adding lots of garlic, peppers, onions, and also fennel and even oregano, summer savory, or even hot red peppers.. For some, I mix in high melting point cheddar cheese. I also make brats with beer added (dried beer). The Kielbasa use lots of garlic, marjoram and also some whole mustard seeds. My grinder plates vary from smaller than 1/8 inch diameter holes to almost 3/4 inch holes. The pork fat is ground separate form the pork meat. I use a smaller plate for the pork fat, as it distributes better in a mix, than large chunks the same size as the pork meat. The sausage making suppliers sell dried beer, high temp cheddar cheese, dried peppers, and dried onions which are easier to deal with as they do not have extra water.

The bottom line though, is to know exactly how much salt, herbs, and spices to add to the coarsely cut meat, as well as how much pork fat to use. Once its ground to the proper size, and salt and spices mixed in, I cook up a small piece to taste and see if it needs more or less salt or more herbs. You could end up with a bland sausage or an overly salty one if the recipe was not followed exactly. You don't have much control over the way the meat mixes with spices and salt while in the grinder and while its stuffing the sausage casings. That's the main reason I chose a separate stuffer and separate meat mixer device. Like every other recipe, it all goes back to your own taste preferences too. Beef fat should never be used in sausages. Pork fat can be refrozen without any concern about quality. Never use salt pork or pork fat back as these are cured and will melt away giving a wet sawdust texture.

Ken

Thanks to this section, I'm going to try my hand at some Italian Sausage. Have a large old commercial grinder, Vertical stuffer, lots of venison, farmer friend with fresh pork. As I have several plates for the grinder, I would like to ask what size to use ? The size that I use for burger I would think would be too small. Plan on using a 50/50 pork -venison mix, unless Someone suggests different. Also if anyone has good recipes for the same, it would be welcome. And thanks.

Annie....why don't you share your Italian Sausage Recipe too. I have copied them all but would like to see yours too...

A 50:50 is OK, but what percentage of that is pork fat?? A 40% pork meat, 20% pork fat and 40% venison would do OK, or if you just want venison, use pork fat only, and no pork meat. Italian sausages are usually all made from pork meat and pork fat. Salami, summer sausages, and pepperoni can use pork and beef, or pork and venison. To make Italian, use the grinding plate thats for hamburg to grind just the pork fat ONLY. The hole size is usually about 1/8 inch holes. For the Italian pork meat, use a 1/4" to 1/2 " holed plate. I use a 3/4" plate for my Kielbasa pork meat. The fat being ground finer seems to mix better in the sausages. I like the pork fat to be in a tiny size as it mixes and melts better than big pieces. Italian sausages can have all kinds of spices added. It all depends on what you like as flavor combinations. Here, I use plenty of garlic and fresh ground pepper, and fresh ground coriander. To add a bit of different taste, fennel seeds whole and some ground, as well as some anise seeds whole and ground. Also, as mentioned before, some dried sweet red and green peppers, as well as onion. I have also made some 'everything' Italian, with added oregano, dried tomatoes, and high melting point cheddar cheese, along with all the other stuff mentioned. For a hot italian, simply use some red pepper flakes. The reason I use dried peppers and onions is they do not add excess water to a sausage meat. Too much added water will cause them to shrink a lot and will carry out natural flavor too. I do use a little of the phosphates as they help to keep the juices in the meat. Canning salt is the type used for sausage making. Its your choice to use either fresh hog casings or the edible and dried collagen casings. The latter are more expensive, but their (diameter) is consistant throughout the whole length. The fresh hog casings can sometimes vary in size from a litle under an inch in diameter to almost 2 inches. Usually they are sized and are packed in salt to last forever. Here, I have no recipes per se, buyut add what I want, and then spoon out a small amount and fry it in a pan a few minutes and taste. If it needs more of something, its easy to add, mix, and then cook another sample. I used a lot of vinegar in one sausage I made Chorizo, and it was too much. The vinegar 'cooked' the meat and after it was actually cooked, it had the texture of wet sauwdist. Not nice, and isn't something that a taste sample would have shown. The added vinegar and some sweet red pepper types had a nice taste aft first cooking of a sample, but after the meat sits a few hours its being cooked by that vinegar. The next time I make a big batch of pepperoni, I plan to add just a little of this failure to it.

Ken, Thanks for the comeback, I will print this and keep it handy. As to the amount of pork fat, I didn't even think about this, never having made it before. A friend told me years ago that he bought fresh pork shoulder, and used that ground with equal amounts of venison, but then I never tried any of his sausage either. From some of the other readings, it looks like pork fat is a little hard to come by.

Yes, pork fat is sometimes hard to find. The nice thing it can be frozen, thawed and refrozen again, without any quality losses. Avoid salt pork or pork fat back or even cured bacon. These have been cured and once heated the fats really melt away very fast. I would ask the local supermarket meat department to give you all their pork fat. Some day the pork comes in pretrimmed, so try another store. The best time is when they have pork products on sale, where some cuts are trimmed. Some of the local stores around here sell the pork fat a about 50 cents a pound, but you need to ask for it. Because todays pork is much leaner than years ago, there is usually less fat. A whole bone-in pork shoulder untrimmed will give just about 30% pork fat. I use the tan color skin too, as it cooks down just like the fat. Here, I get two boneless pork butts from Costco, and use these for my sausages. They don't usually put these out on the display, but they do have them in cryovac packages. I like it when there is no bones to deal with, just meat.

Right now, I have about 10 pounds of pork fat in my freezer, just waiting for the next big batch of breakfast sausages. Recently, I made two big whole pork loins into Canadian bacon. Boneless pork loins were only $1.59 to $1.79 a pound These were brine soaked (injected and vacuum) cured (baked at 25 degrees) then are sliced and frozen in FS bags.

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