Staycation....what to do? Make sausage, of course!

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bladeguy

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Nov 23, 2016
202
65
Central Wisconsin
So I'm on vacation this week with no plans to go anywhere, so I figure it is a perfect time to make sausage. I have a bunch of Jr, High School boys coming to my house from a group I work with at our church, and I promised them homemade pizza, so I thought, "Why not have the sausage be homemade too?". I bought 20 lb. of boneless pork butt for $1.29/lb. last week, cubed it up, threw it in the freezer, and then ground it all up. I didn't want all 20 lb. in Italian sausage, so I chose to make bratwurst as well.

For the Italian, I chose a recipe on here by alelover. My fry test told me I wanted more salt, so I added some, remixed, and thought it was excellent!

Italian sausage mixed up



Love the fry test!



Bagged it all up in about 1 lb. bags for later use.....well, all except one bag, but we will get to that in a minute.

Next, I mixed up another recipe I found on here for bratwurst. I like a Wisconsin style brats being a Wisconsin born and bred boy, so I found a recipe on here from DiggingDogFarm. I used it exactly as specified, but since I had 9.2 lb. or so, I made a spreadsheet to let me know the correct ratio for each ingredient if I change the weight of the meat. Fry test on the brats......magnifico! Oh wait, is that Italian? Oh well, can't say it in German.

Mmmmm, ground pork butt


Spices and salt.


Learned how to link sausage this time.



Bag 'em up for the freezer.



Well, at this point, since I made the sausage, I might as well test drive it in pizza, so I had one crust fermenting in the fridge, and I made another one up this morning while I was freezing the cubes. A NY style and a thin crust. So our family had a very good supper.

NY style



Thin crust



Yeah, I'm very full and very tired. Thanks for looking, and thanks to alelover and DiggingDogFarm for their recipes. Couldn't have done it without them. I suggest you try them.

(Edited to embed pictures instead of files)
 
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Well everything looks fantastic!

Nice job on the linking!

Both pizzas look delicious!

Point!

Al
 
 
Well everything looks fantastic!

Nice job on the linking!

Both pizzas look delicious!

Point!

Al
I'm a lurker to the forums, but a noob to posting. I see "Point" said frequently in replies to people's posts. Might I ask what that indicates? Is it just a way to say "great job"? Thanks for the comments.....they were delicious. Lot of work, but a whole lot of fun, and will be fun eating as well!!
 
Looks great, nice sausage and delicious pizza.

I usually make sausage on vacation too if I am at the house.
Thanks for the comments. Yeah, it takes enough time.....sometimes I wish I could do it for a living, but then I realize it would take the fun out of it...lol.
 
So someone PM'd me for the spreadsheet. We are here to help each other out, so I don't mind sharing it with everyone if it will be helpful. Tab one was "borrowed" from alelover, I just adjusted how much salt I wanted in the Italian sausage from his recipe. Some may want to back it down (if so, his recipe was about 1/3 less salt. Also, I used no extra pork fat, so I just adjusted the pork butt amount to make the total weight amount equal what I wanted. I may change the sheet to reflect the difference down the road. The brat recipe, again, is DiggingDogFarm's recipe. I didn't change a thing and it turned out excellent. The jerky tabs were pulled from another user's post (sorry, I don't have the name), but I modified them a little and put in onion powder, garlic powder, and ceyenne powder. They are a work in progress, so use them at your own risk. I plan to continue to add recipes as I go along, for summer sausage, snack sticks, etc....as well as add notes when I make them to make modifications. For example, on the Italian sausage tab, I noted I increased the salt. That way I can track better what I'm doing and continuously improve. Hope this helps some.
 
Looks great! I could use a staycation ,but the snow disagrees.

Lol, snowed the day I started my staycation, but I'm guessing the snow causes work for you? Thanks for the response.

Sausage and pizza look fantastic!

Thanks Jay, people don't believe I learned most of what I know about sausage and pizza making online. Anyone can do this with study, time, patience, and a willingness to try,

Super sausage, sir!

Disco

Thank you Disco! I appreciate it.
 
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