I did a thing.
I decided I'd get one of those little $8 packs of casing ends and pieces and just see if making a smoked sausage would be something I enjoyed. My grinder came with stuffer stuff, and I figured I'd be good to go on a 5lb practice run.
Saturday the bits and pieces showed up. I ground, seasoned, and vac sealed the sausage mixture. I started the rinse and soak process Saturday also. Today, I had a few hours before work and decided to stuff so the links could start to dry. The test patty was amazing. So was the second one......
So now I've got 5lbs all ready to go. I assemble the stuffing stuff on my grinder, get a longer end and piece on the horn, and I figure the rest of the process will just be me trying to control blowouts and tears.
So the hopper has about 2 lbs of this sticky meat goo on it and I start to plunge it down. This is where the fun ended. I was putting like 900lbs of torque on the plunger trying to get the mix to feed. It finally starts to come out of the tube. I go to pull my plunger up and it's basically locked into this sticky meat goo. I gotta be doing something wrong, but I soldier on. I get a nice rope about a foot long but it's taken me 15 minutes to get that much meat through the tube. So I says to myself, maybe this tube is too small. I was using the smallest one, but these casings seemed quite small. I clean ALL this crap up, put a larger tube on, reload the machine, same problem. Now I'm just ticked off. Another 20 minutes for approximately 10" of sausage.
Ok, I'll try a larger tube. Same result. This time I tapped out on a 6" link. F it - this will be enough for me to smoke and taste at least.
So I take all that sausage making attachment BS and throw it in the garbage. I was almost mad enough to chunk everything, but i put some expensive cuts into this 5lb batch. 75% pork (loin for lean, and enough belly fat to make it about 75/25) and a nice thick fatty ribeye for the beef element. And the patties were excellent.
I also took the time to dice up 7 oz of some Tillamook farmers reserve super extra sharp cheddar and some TM extra sharp white cheddar Sat to dry in the fridge. Thank God I had the foresight to not mix that in until I was sure I could get some to stuff.
Moral of the story, grinders are not stuffers. I saw that on here a few times during my research phase but I thought that surely I could muddle through this small batch.
So now I need something to stuff casings. I don't know enough yet to know if I want to pursue this (because what a pain in my everloving butt this has been so far) so I don't want to drop half a G note for some fancy electric job, or even know if I want to spend $175 for a fairly run of the mill vertical jobber on Amazon. I notice a few horizontal stuffers in the 3lb range for around $40-50 on Big Daddy Bezos' Online Flea Market and my question is this. Do they work well enough for me to decide if I want to actually pursue this? If they don't, I'll bite the bullet and get a vertical, but if they do, I'd rather go that route. Normally I'd just order one and if I hate it I'd send it back to Big Daddy Bezos, but WTH, why not dip into the collective knowledge here?
My end goal is that if I like it, I might do a 10-15 lb run every couple/3 months.
All is not lost as I do have roughly 2 lbs cased to smoke. I put a bit into a loaf pan (with cheese) and will cook that like meatloaf and I froze a lb for patties.
Appreciate all the help in advance!
I decided I'd get one of those little $8 packs of casing ends and pieces and just see if making a smoked sausage would be something I enjoyed. My grinder came with stuffer stuff, and I figured I'd be good to go on a 5lb practice run.
Saturday the bits and pieces showed up. I ground, seasoned, and vac sealed the sausage mixture. I started the rinse and soak process Saturday also. Today, I had a few hours before work and decided to stuff so the links could start to dry. The test patty was amazing. So was the second one......
So now I've got 5lbs all ready to go. I assemble the stuffing stuff on my grinder, get a longer end and piece on the horn, and I figure the rest of the process will just be me trying to control blowouts and tears.
So the hopper has about 2 lbs of this sticky meat goo on it and I start to plunge it down. This is where the fun ended. I was putting like 900lbs of torque on the plunger trying to get the mix to feed. It finally starts to come out of the tube. I go to pull my plunger up and it's basically locked into this sticky meat goo. I gotta be doing something wrong, but I soldier on. I get a nice rope about a foot long but it's taken me 15 minutes to get that much meat through the tube. So I says to myself, maybe this tube is too small. I was using the smallest one, but these casings seemed quite small. I clean ALL this crap up, put a larger tube on, reload the machine, same problem. Now I'm just ticked off. Another 20 minutes for approximately 10" of sausage.
Ok, I'll try a larger tube. Same result. This time I tapped out on a 6" link. F it - this will be enough for me to smoke and taste at least.
So I take all that sausage making attachment BS and throw it in the garbage. I was almost mad enough to chunk everything, but i put some expensive cuts into this 5lb batch. 75% pork (loin for lean, and enough belly fat to make it about 75/25) and a nice thick fatty ribeye for the beef element. And the patties were excellent.
I also took the time to dice up 7 oz of some Tillamook farmers reserve super extra sharp cheddar and some TM extra sharp white cheddar Sat to dry in the fridge. Thank God I had the foresight to not mix that in until I was sure I could get some to stuff.
Moral of the story, grinders are not stuffers. I saw that on here a few times during my research phase but I thought that surely I could muddle through this small batch.
So now I need something to stuff casings. I don't know enough yet to know if I want to pursue this (because what a pain in my everloving butt this has been so far) so I don't want to drop half a G note for some fancy electric job, or even know if I want to spend $175 for a fairly run of the mill vertical jobber on Amazon. I notice a few horizontal stuffers in the 3lb range for around $40-50 on Big Daddy Bezos' Online Flea Market and my question is this. Do they work well enough for me to decide if I want to actually pursue this? If they don't, I'll bite the bullet and get a vertical, but if they do, I'd rather go that route. Normally I'd just order one and if I hate it I'd send it back to Big Daddy Bezos, but WTH, why not dip into the collective knowledge here?
My end goal is that if I like it, I might do a 10-15 lb run every couple/3 months.
All is not lost as I do have roughly 2 lbs cased to smoke. I put a bit into a loaf pan (with cheese) and will cook that like meatloaf and I froze a lb for patties.
Appreciate all the help in advance!
