Sausage making discussions

[TwinStick]

Exactly as the title implies.

In the near future, I am going to be making some Buffalo Chicken sausage and some Maple Breakfast sausage with carmelized onions.

I have never made my own sausage before but am so looking forward to it. I have my own grinder and stuffer. I'm going to be using clear edible collagen casing, 32mm. I know to keep the meat very cold/partially frozen.

Experienced advice welcome.

 

[Correus]

Hmm... never heard you had to keep the meat "very cold/partially frozen".

 

[TwinStick]

When grinding meat, it gets heated up as it forced through the holes. As meat heats up the fat gets more soft, as does any sinew & can get wrapped around the auger. It usually only happens when doing large batches. I've made a lot of ground meat, just never put it into casings with a stuffer. I would just put it in ziplock bags, get all the air out & freeze it.

Some companies actually make wraps with velcro that have the liquid freezy stuff inside. You freeze it and wrap it around the auger housing, to prevent the meat from warming up.

 

[Correus]

Huh... have never had an issue like that, but then again I don't make large batches. Mine are usually really small batches, enough for a single recipe or two.

Your Buffalo Chicken one sounds good.

Do you get into atypical types of meat? Things like wild boar, duck, goose, fish/seafood? I'm looking atrying some elk.

 

[TwinStick]

I'm pushing 60 now & gave up hunting. I used to grind some of my venison. One good season, I made a very large batch of sausage. I bought 40 lbs of bone in pork shoulder/butt. Cut it up in big chunks, ground it with about 20 jumbo onions, mixed my own spices in along with the venison. I ended up with 100 lbs or so of sausage. Kids & me loved it. Wife don't eat venison or wild game.

Funny story: A friend gave me a pound of elk meat. I made some homemade spaghetti sauce. I cooked the elk low & slow in butter and EV olive oil. Added meat to sauce. Everyone knew except wife. Wife said she thought it was my best batch of sauce ever. Daughter started giggling. She told her it was elk & not ground beef. She went from saying it was the best sauce yet, to puking in the toilet in less than 30 seconds ! It is obviously a psychological thing with some people.

Kids are grown & gone. We thought we were doing the right thing by sending them to college. We still see them, still love them, but they think we & people like us are the problem with this country ! Have pretty much zero in common with them. Sad story that probably many parents face nowadays.

I have a HD meat grinder I bought 25 years ago from Gander Mountain (like a Cabelas). Weighs about 70 lbs. Still works like a champ & no matter how much partially frozen meat or how fast I feed it, the motor never even bogs down or changes pitch. You don't EVER want to get a finger in it !!! Stuffer is a 5 lb LEM with the poly tubes. I have a meat tub to grind into. And have gotten triple duty out of our 50 qt & 82 qt ARB fridge/freezers. We use them for camping, as overflow fridge or freezer when needed & for making sausage. I bought 2,18 qt clear square food service tubs, with lids, from a Restaurant Supply store, that fits perfectly in the 2 ARB's ( have to take the basket out of the 50 qt though). I set them to 0°F & use them to chill the ground meat before the 2nd (smaller) grind, if I do one. Or just set to 32°F, to keep it cold until I stuff sausage. That way, I don't have to clear a shelf in our big freezer in the basement, which is usually almost at capacity.

Once done, I vacuum seal them & freeze them. Prices have gone up so much on things, it is starting to make more sense to do what you can to save money. Especially now that we are retired.

 

[frans]

Good info thx! In Germany we used to get this meatloaf, and the local butcher would keep the meat very very cold even to the point of adding ice to the outside of the bowl Leberkäse. Delicious!

 

[TwinStick]

Hi Fran's, I actually served in the Army in Kaiserslautern Germany, Kleber Kaserne, 1981 - 1984.


Yes, adding ice is actually a technique I used when making a big batch. It works great for keeping things cold. Doing it outside is also a great technique, if you can stand it, (high of 19°F here in Buffalo Ny today.)

 

[TwinStick]

So, sausage is done but I had what I would say is an EPIC fail.

Using my logic, I figured that I should make the Buffalo Chicken Sausage first, because there was less of it and I wasn't sure if I had enough casings. I used what was available by me, which was a name brand fresh edible collagen casing.

So I made the chicken sausage and froze it overnight. I then boiled it to a internal temp of 165. Water was not a rolling boil. The casings all split & came off & some of the sausage came apart. I did 8 at a time. Not happy at all.

So then I tried grilling them. Casings also split. They were definitely not overfilled. So I salvaged about 95% of them and ended up boiling the rest but casings mostly came off & about 30% broke. I will not be using them again.

As for the pork breakfast sausage, I just put it into 1 gallon ziploc freezer bags, flattened them out, got out all the air and sealed them. Both came out awesome tasting. Can really taste the hot sauce and blue cheese in the Buffalo chicken. Can really taste the caramelized onions and maple syrup in the breakfast sausage.

Next time I will try the natural sheep casings. But I think that they both taste better than the stuff you buy at the store.

 

[Ragman]

I am a bit late to the scene here and will link my video on sausage making. I have made quite a bit but would not say I am an expert, perhaps decent amateur is the right word. Bottom line is that the sausages split due to internal pressure so I normally prick my sausages before cooking them (don't worry, you won't lose all the good stuff) so that there is a "pressure relief" already there. I have never used collagen casings, only natural but I assume it is the same. Also I find that cooking them gently works just as well and you get less splitting. I normally do my sausages on the grill, under the broiler, or cut up and put into stews and soups.

Where did you get your recipes as they both sound really tasty?

Here is my video-

 

[TwinStick]

I did prick the casings. All of them.

My recipes are just like all my others, no recipe, just use what I like.

For the breakfast sausage I bought a big bag of sweet onions, cooked them down and carmelized them, put to the side. I bought 2 packets, enough for 5 lbs each, of Backwoods maple breakfast sausage seasoning. But I had 20 lbs of pork. So I added stuff I like, 7 bulbs of fresh garlic, 1 12.5 oz. bottle of pure maple syrup, liberal amount of salt, pepper and garlic powder. (we love garlic) And add the carmelized onion. That's it.

For the Buffalo chicken sausage: 3 jumbo family packs of chicken breasts, trimmed. 1 bottle of chunky blue cheese dressing, 2 containers of blue cheese, salt, pepper, garlic powder, 1 bottles of Frank's regular hot sauce, 1 bottle of Frank's Buffalo Wing sauce, 1 stick of melted butter.

I ground both with the large hole grinder plate for 1st grind. Ground it, put it back in freezer (set at 0°F) for about an hour, mixed in all seasonings and onions. Reground using small hole grinder plate. Then stuffed using my LEM 5 lb sausage stuffer.

It sure is a PITA not having the choices we had pre-pandemic. They only had what I bought & it was the last on the shelves. No more breakfast sausage seasoning and no more casings. I guess we are slowly turning into a 3rd world country. Never seen it like this in my life. LGB !