Confessions of a NOOB

[Oceantoad]

I have recently gotten into making sausage at home. It all started with a great deal my wife got on a Kitchen Aid stand mixer just before Christmas. We already owned one , but she found a great deal on the Pro 5 + model. I have use our old one to grind venison in the past, not the best. With this bigger model, I researched and found an all metal grinder which came with some stuffing tubes. Grinder works better then previous one, (Still hoping to get a dedicated grinder), but the stuffing tubes suck. I'm sure there are people out there that use them, but the better way is a stand alone stuffer. Bought a LEM 5 lb. that day. World of difference. Anyway, I digress. I have made numerous batches of sausages since Christmas. I noticed a step while watching YOUTUBE that everyone does a "test patty" for a flavor check. I have always skipped this step because I'm following a recipe. Someone has already made this in the past and I'm ok with not making a test patty. The sausages I have made so far have been great. I figured why bother with a test patty. I recently whipped up a 10 lb. batch of Italian Sausage from a recipe I found on the internet. Ground it, Seasoned it, Mixed it, Stuffed it, Vacuum packed it and froze it. There was a little left in the stuffer chamber and tube so I collected it and froze it for a breakfast patty the next morning. I fried it up for breakfast the next day and was met with the worst tasting sausage I have every had. No flavor at all. I was stunned and greatly disappointed. How did this happen? I copied the recipe from the internet. In transcribing it, I left out the "SALT". I didn't catch it when I mixed the ingredients. I would have caught it during the test patty step and could have corrected it then, had I done that step. LESSON LEARNED!! Now I have to remember when using that Italian sausage, I'll have to salt the heck out of it. Always doing a test patty from now on.

 

[Brokenhandle]

I'm sorry I laughed...but can imagine the expression on your face with that 1st bite! Thanks for sharing and hopefully someone else will learn from your mistake as well.

Ryan

 

[tx smoker]

I'm starting to get the feeling that you're gonna fit right in here and find this to be a very large extended family Right out of the gate you're noting the failures and sharing them. That shows humility and humbleness, traits that are all too rare these days. FWIW, I never make test patties though. All of my sausage recipes are tried and true but I can certainly understand missing an ingredient when transcribing the recipe. I get out all my ingredients and set them on one end of the island in the kitchen. As I add them to the spice mix, I move the container to the other end of the island. I can't tell you how many times I'd stand there wondering "did I add this already???" Doing it this way takes the guess work out of skipping ingredients or doubling up on them.

Robert

 

[indaswamp]

Welcome to the club...

There is not enough space on the entire internet to post all the food failures I have made. But, I learned from them. Checking the sausage with a fry test is important as you found out. When you start filling sausage casings, it is important to check before you stuff them. the heat process will show that you have added the cure. The meat will turn pink.

During our big deer and wild hog processing, I woke up the next morning and realized I had forgotten to add the cure to a big 185# batch of smoke sausage meat paste. I drove to the commercial kitchen where the meat was being stored in a double door freezer and the first thing I did was a fry test. Yep-forgot to add the cure#1. I mixed up the correct dosage for each tube of meat, spread the meat out on a large cutting board 1 tote at a time and mixed in the cure dissolved in some cold water. If I had not caught that mistake-would have had to throw out 185# of smoke sausages after they spent 9-10 hours in the smokehouse in the danger zone between 40-140*F with no cure #1. Had I not suddenly remembered that I did not add the cure-I would have caught it anyway when I did the fry test prior to stuffing....that would have just delayed stuffing by a few hours. Glad I caught it.

 

[boykjo]

The problem is it gets worse the older you get......... Sometimes you forget you put an ingredient in and add it again.... Now you have to double the meat and add the rest of the seasonings again.....

 

[SmokinEdge]

My approach to any sausage recipe or any curing recipe really, is to figure my salt, sugar and cure salt all in percentage to meat weight at the very start, it is the first ingredients that go in. The salt and cure (if using) are probably the most important ingredients in the whole recipe. You forget these and you are screwed or worse maybe sick. If you mess up on herbs or spices it’s just a flavor thing not a health hazard. The fly test is very important step for a sausage maker, but like all things the methodology is even more important, I think. I don’t use recipes off the internet or anywhere anymore for that matter. I look at them and read every recipe I can looking different seasoning combinations. When I formulate a recipe now it starts with the 3 mentioned above meat weight, then 1.5% salt, .5 to .75% sugar and .25% cure #1 that’s first thing measured and applied. If I did nothing else I’d still have a tasty sausage.

 

[thirdeye]

I do the exact calculation as SmokinEdge with respect to salt. Some authors are heavy handed, and others align pretty close to my tastes. Stanley and Adam Marianski for example have a lot of recipes with 1.8% salt (I favor 1.5%). I fry a test patty following mixing, and again the next day after the seasonings have mellowed. Granted I've been making sausage for 40 years, and I have favorite recipes, but like you found out, it's easy to skip something.

On a new recipe (from another source, or one I modify or make up from scratch) I also do a general scope-out of ingredients to make sure an amount is not a typo. It's easy to spot something like cayenne, or red pepper flakes but I check spices I'm not familiar with. Take a look at this SAUSAGE SECRETS page. Toward the bottom are recommended amounts of spices. They are not always perfect for my tastes, but pretty close.

 

[tallbm]

I have recently gotten into making sausage at home. It all started with a great deal my wife got on a Kitchen Aid stand mixer just before Christmas. We already owned one , but she found a great deal on the Pro 5 + model. I have use our old one to grind venison in the past, not the best. With this bigger model, I researched and found an all metal grinder which came with some stuffing tubes. Grinder works better then previous one, (Still hoping to get a dedicated grinder), but the stuffing tubes suck. I'm sure there are people out there that use them, but the better way is a stand alone stuffer. Bought a LEM 5 lb. that day. World of difference. Anyway, I digress. I have made numerous batches of sausages since Christmas. I noticed a step while watching YOUTUBE that everyone does a "test patty" for a flavor check. I have always skipped this step because I'm following a recipe. Someone has already made this in the past and I'm ok with not making a test patty. The sausages I have made so far have been great. I figured why bother with a test patty. I recently whipped up a 10 lb. batch of Italian Sausage from a recipe I found on the internet. Ground it, Seasoned it, Mixed it, Stuffed it, Vacuum packed it and froze it. There was a little left in the stuffer chamber and tube so I collected it and froze it for a breakfast patty the next morning. I fried it up for breakfast the next day and was met with the worst tasting sausage I have every had. No flavor at all. I was stunned and greatly disappointed. How did this happen? I copied the recipe from the internet. In transcribing it, I left out the "SALT". I didn't catch it when I mixed the ingredients. I would have caught it during the test patty step and could have corrected it then, had I done that step. LESSON LEARNED!! Now I have to remember when using that Italian sausage, I'll have to salt the heck out of it. Always doing a test patty from now on.

Hi there and welcome!
Great that you learned the lesson and before it could have been worse lol.

Trust me. You would be WAY more pissed off if you mixed it all up, stuffed it, smoked it, then ate it one day to find out you missed an ingrediant OR that the recipe plain suuuuuuucked! hahaha.

Also with store bought seasoning this is something you must do. All the store bought seasonings tell you to measure with tablespoons, etc. which are not precise and don't exactly scale well when you make bigger batches of sausage!!!!
The best thing to do is to weigh out your measurements for like 1-2 pounds and then fry test it. If it's good then you note those weight numbers down and follow them for any amount of pounds of sausage you are making.
If the meat is bland then you add more and update notes until the flavor tastes good.
If too salty then add more meat and do the math to figure out how much seasoning per pound you really need and note it down.

Pro tip: The flavor will not taste exactly the way it will when fully smoked/cooked/etc. That is fine. The key is to ensure it isn't too bland or too salty AND that it doesn't taste horrible!!!
Once you get the final cooked product you will get the full flavor profile and you will see what I mean about it tasting different vs the fry test.

Keep at it man and learn from these lessons. Measure out that seasoning and note down the real amount in weight (grams per pound) and be sure to apply it to all recipes you read as well as all store bought seasonings :)