The information I am about to share was gleaned in part from a lot of reading and in larger part from the good folks here in the forum. I posted a thread not too long ago similar to this one but it was not complete. It kinda started in the middle. Being that I am seeing a lot of new people joining up, I thought it may be advantageous to post it again but in full this time and with a new batch of sausage. There may be somebody out there who finds this advantageous and informative. I'm actually working on stuff for three different batches so I only have to clean the grinder once but by the end, you'll see all that you may need to know. All three of the things I'm working on are pork based, so let's start with the meat. I got a two pack of shoulder butts from Costco, total weight was about 17#. When making sausage, regardless of what kind, fresh, smoked, or cured and dry aged, there are three required components: lean meat, fat, and liquid. Those three things must be used to attain a good quality product.
One of the shoulder butts. You're best off to start with a very sharp knife
Take your time and cut the meat into 1/2" to 3/4" chunks. This way it fill feed through the grinder much easier
Get out a bowl large enough to hold the amount of meat you will be cutting and tare the scale
Cut the desired amount of meat. If doing a large batch, you can fill the bowl as many times as necessary to get your total weight
Put the meat into a shallow pan and place in the freezer. I use roasting pans. Don't rush this part. Leave the meat in the freezer until it is just starting to crust up. The colder the meat, the cleaner it will grind. Place all of the metal components of your grinder and stuffer into the fridge at this time to get cold. This is also the perfect time to mix up your spices.
Once the meat is starting to freeze, time to start grinding. Notice how clean the tendrils of meat are
I add the spices about 1/3 at a time while the meat is grinding. This helps to incorporate the spices into the meat and will require less mixing
The batch of meat is ground and the spices added. Time to mix
Start by adding about 1/4 cup of water and begin mixing on low speed. You don't want to run high speed or it will warm the meat faster. Take your time to ensure the spices are well mixed into the meat. Add water until you reach desired consistency, noted in a moment. Stop every little bit and mix with a spatula to remove the meat from the sides of the bowl and to check consistency of the farce. What we have made here is actually a breakfast sausage.
We will be finishing this with a smoked Cajun sausage. Same sized batch. The spice mix for the Cajun I make pre mixed and weigh for each batch. This requires 10 grams of spice per pound of meat. Weigh out the spice mix
Add Cure #1 at an amount of 1 teaspoon per 5# of meat
I'm not going to go through the mixing process again. It is exactly as it was with the breakfast sausage. We will move along to the meat after it's finished being mixed. The lean and fat should be just starting to break down and bind together, but not be totally broken (emulsified) as you would with bologna or hot dogs. There should be enough moisture that the meat is sticky but not too thin. You should be able to take a golf ball sized portion of the meat, stick it to the palm of your hand, turn your hand over palm down, and the meat will remain stuck. Here is a perfectly mixed batch of sausage
Ready to get started setting up to stuff into links. Meat into the hopper of the stuffer
Putting the casing onto the stuffing horn. I like using the pre-tubed casings. They are a bit more expensive but for the convenience, they are well worth it to me. Just rinse off the salt, soak in water for 10 minutes to get the a bit more pliant, and you're ready to go. These are already sanitized so that takes a lot of time out of the prep work. Slide the tube onto the stiffing horn
Gently slide the casing onto the horn being careful not to get it overlapped or bunched up.
Crank the handle on the stuffer until the meat is right at the end of the horn. This will purge the air so your casings don't blow up like a balloon
Tie off the end of the casing leaving yourself an inch or so tail. The knot will slide when the pressure of the meat being stuffed hits it. If you don't leave that tail the knot will slide right off opening up the end of the casing and you'll have meat blowing all over the place. Leave most of the casing toward the dispensing end of the stuffing horn. This will reduce resistance as the casing is filling and sliding off, thus minimizing the chance of a blow out.
I run these in 12" lengths. Crank the handle slowly making sure the casing is firm but not over filled and you get a blow out. Stuffing slowly and allowing the casing to fill will also greatly reduce air bubbles in the sausage. When at desired length, slide enough casing off the end of the horn so you can leave yourself a few inches to tie off the link. Trust me on this, if you don't leave enough casing to work with you're gonna be hating life!!
Tie the casing off in a basic overhand knot, then slide the knot down snug to the meat.
Continue process till you run out of meat. Here we go!! 9 beautiful links of sausage. If you get to the end of the meat and have enough casing left on the stuffing horn to justify saving, just slide it back onto the tube, cover with salt, and put it back in the bag for next time. At this point I take a pair of scissors and cut the long tails off. Not necessary, I just do it because I'm anal retentive about things being neat and clean
Now I tie loops with butcher's twine to hang them in the fridge overnight
Hang overnight to form a pellicle. Out of the fridge the next day to smoke. Notice the color difference from yesterday when they were just stuffed.
Onto the smoker running low temp, extreme smoke. You want to be somewhere around 170 smoker temp. Do not let the temp go over 180 for any length of time or you'll get what's known as a "fat out". That's when the fat starts to render. Your sausage will get really greasy and possibly start blowing up. I put the sausages on then turn on the heat. This will allow the sausage to slowly heat up as the smoker is coming up to temp
About 2 hours in. These are looking real good so far. Beautiful color!!
Smoke to an IT of 150 to 155. This can take several hours so be patient. It's not worth trying to raise the smoker temp and rush it. Once they hit temp, immediately put into an ice bath to stop the cooking process
Out of the ice bath, strings and knots snipped off. I am happy. This is a gorgeous batch of sausage.
Cross section cut-away view. Perfect texture
Cut links in half, vac seal, and into the freezer
Well there ya have it. I'm sure I missed a few little details but tried to hit on all the high points that will make your life easier AND help you make some great sausage. If you only pick up on two things from this, those two things are the biggest keys to making great sausage:
1) Patience: Take your time. Getting in a hurry is only going to cause mistakes, which will in turn cause frustration, and at the end of the day, you'll spend more time dealing with the mistakes than you would have just taking your time. This is a hobby. We do it for fun so slow down and enjoy it.
2) Cold: Everything needs to be kept cold throughout the process. If the meat starts to get warm the fat will start to get soft and melt on you. Things get messy at that point. The meat will not grind cleanly and you'll get large globby strings of meat coming from the grinder instead of those clean tendrils. You'll also get a textural change if the meat gets warm which is not pleasant...it'd kinda greasy.
Feel free to fire off any question you may have if I missed anything and thanks for putting up with this very lengthy thread
Robert
One of the shoulder butts. You're best off to start with a very sharp knife
Take your time and cut the meat into 1/2" to 3/4" chunks. This way it fill feed through the grinder much easier
Get out a bowl large enough to hold the amount of meat you will be cutting and tare the scale
Cut the desired amount of meat. If doing a large batch, you can fill the bowl as many times as necessary to get your total weight
Put the meat into a shallow pan and place in the freezer. I use roasting pans. Don't rush this part. Leave the meat in the freezer until it is just starting to crust up. The colder the meat, the cleaner it will grind. Place all of the metal components of your grinder and stuffer into the fridge at this time to get cold. This is also the perfect time to mix up your spices.
Once the meat is starting to freeze, time to start grinding. Notice how clean the tendrils of meat are
I add the spices about 1/3 at a time while the meat is grinding. This helps to incorporate the spices into the meat and will require less mixing
The batch of meat is ground and the spices added. Time to mix
Start by adding about 1/4 cup of water and begin mixing on low speed. You don't want to run high speed or it will warm the meat faster. Take your time to ensure the spices are well mixed into the meat. Add water until you reach desired consistency, noted in a moment. Stop every little bit and mix with a spatula to remove the meat from the sides of the bowl and to check consistency of the farce. What we have made here is actually a breakfast sausage.
We will be finishing this with a smoked Cajun sausage. Same sized batch. The spice mix for the Cajun I make pre mixed and weigh for each batch. This requires 10 grams of spice per pound of meat. Weigh out the spice mix
Add Cure #1 at an amount of 1 teaspoon per 5# of meat
I'm not going to go through the mixing process again. It is exactly as it was with the breakfast sausage. We will move along to the meat after it's finished being mixed. The lean and fat should be just starting to break down and bind together, but not be totally broken (emulsified) as you would with bologna or hot dogs. There should be enough moisture that the meat is sticky but not too thin. You should be able to take a golf ball sized portion of the meat, stick it to the palm of your hand, turn your hand over palm down, and the meat will remain stuck. Here is a perfectly mixed batch of sausage
Ready to get started setting up to stuff into links. Meat into the hopper of the stuffer
Putting the casing onto the stuffing horn. I like using the pre-tubed casings. They are a bit more expensive but for the convenience, they are well worth it to me. Just rinse off the salt, soak in water for 10 minutes to get the a bit more pliant, and you're ready to go. These are already sanitized so that takes a lot of time out of the prep work. Slide the tube onto the stiffing horn
Gently slide the casing onto the horn being careful not to get it overlapped or bunched up.
Crank the handle on the stuffer until the meat is right at the end of the horn. This will purge the air so your casings don't blow up like a balloon
Tie off the end of the casing leaving yourself an inch or so tail. The knot will slide when the pressure of the meat being stuffed hits it. If you don't leave that tail the knot will slide right off opening up the end of the casing and you'll have meat blowing all over the place. Leave most of the casing toward the dispensing end of the stuffing horn. This will reduce resistance as the casing is filling and sliding off, thus minimizing the chance of a blow out.
I run these in 12" lengths. Crank the handle slowly making sure the casing is firm but not over filled and you get a blow out. Stuffing slowly and allowing the casing to fill will also greatly reduce air bubbles in the sausage. When at desired length, slide enough casing off the end of the horn so you can leave yourself a few inches to tie off the link. Trust me on this, if you don't leave enough casing to work with you're gonna be hating life!!
Tie the casing off in a basic overhand knot, then slide the knot down snug to the meat.
Continue process till you run out of meat. Here we go!! 9 beautiful links of sausage. If you get to the end of the meat and have enough casing left on the stuffing horn to justify saving, just slide it back onto the tube, cover with salt, and put it back in the bag for next time. At this point I take a pair of scissors and cut the long tails off. Not necessary, I just do it because I'm anal retentive about things being neat and clean
Now I tie loops with butcher's twine to hang them in the fridge overnight
Hang overnight to form a pellicle. Out of the fridge the next day to smoke. Notice the color difference from yesterday when they were just stuffed.
Onto the smoker running low temp, extreme smoke. You want to be somewhere around 170 smoker temp. Do not let the temp go over 180 for any length of time or you'll get what's known as a "fat out". That's when the fat starts to render. Your sausage will get really greasy and possibly start blowing up. I put the sausages on then turn on the heat. This will allow the sausage to slowly heat up as the smoker is coming up to temp
About 2 hours in. These are looking real good so far. Beautiful color!!
Smoke to an IT of 150 to 155. This can take several hours so be patient. It's not worth trying to raise the smoker temp and rush it. Once they hit temp, immediately put into an ice bath to stop the cooking process
Out of the ice bath, strings and knots snipped off. I am happy. This is a gorgeous batch of sausage.
Cross section cut-away view. Perfect texture
Cut links in half, vac seal, and into the freezer
Well there ya have it. I'm sure I missed a few little details but tried to hit on all the high points that will make your life easier AND help you make some great sausage. If you only pick up on two things from this, those two things are the biggest keys to making great sausage:
1) Patience: Take your time. Getting in a hurry is only going to cause mistakes, which will in turn cause frustration, and at the end of the day, you'll spend more time dealing with the mistakes than you would have just taking your time. This is a hobby. We do it for fun so slow down and enjoy it.
2) Cold: Everything needs to be kept cold throughout the process. If the meat starts to get warm the fat will start to get soft and melt on you. Things get messy at that point. The meat will not grind cleanly and you'll get large globby strings of meat coming from the grinder instead of those clean tendrils. You'll also get a textural change if the meat gets warm which is not pleasant...it'd kinda greasy.
Feel free to fire off any question you may have if I missed anything and thanks for putting up with this very lengthy thread
Robert
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