Thought I'd share my sausagefest of the last two days.

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realdocBBQ

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Aug 15, 2014
137
178
Clean up your dirty minds, people.

Went to my buddy's place yesterday, his wife and kids were at the zoo, and we had clearance to use the kitchen for sausage making. I've been waiting months for him to get some time free - last time we did this was Jan 1st. <sigh> Hopefully it won't be this long to do it again. lol

We had some ground meat left over from our last go-round, about 20 lbs sealed up and frozen. I bought 40 lbs of boneless, skinless chikkin thighs, and had 30-35 lbs of boneless pork butts I'd previously bought, and he threw in a Choice grade brisket he'd had frozen for some time.

Started off cubing up the brisket and about 16lbs or so of the pork butt we'd thawed, the other two butts stayed in the freezer. Also pulled out the chikkin thighs and got maybe 20lbs of them spread out on racks and into the freezer to solidify some to facilitate grinding. The rest of the chikkin just got frozen, also for future use.

Collected a number of recipes, decided we were going to do several types of sausage - ended up a lot more work than we expected. Not the grinding, his 1HP MEAT! Your Maker grinder makes short work of just about anything. Here's a pic of him using his kukri to chop up some solid frozen leftover beef fat from a previous brisket trimming session to mix in with the pork. The pork butts, being heavily trimmed from Costco and deboned, looked pretty lean, I'm guessing 90/10 or worse, so we added in a bunch of beef fat to make up the mix.

The fat chopping session:

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The MEAT! Your Maker grinder handled that frozen beef fat like it was nothing. Awesome machine!

The pork mix before adding the fat - looks pretty lean.

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The ground up fat. Yummy!

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We used the coarse die for everything yesterday, it's probably about 3/8" or so. We ran the meat through it twice (except the chikkin), but the fat only once. We've had good luck with that.

This is the full ground packer brisket on the left. It had a much better fat-to-lean ratio than the pork did (before adding the beef fat in with it).

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We ended up just diving it all into batches and mixing seasonings in to make the different types of sausage we planned, and that took a lot of time, going back and forth to the freezers to try to keep everything cold, etc. Here's what we ended up with (approximately):

Chikkin sausage - this is a 'modified' version of the 2 Guys and a Cooler Italian Chicken Basil sausage. I didn't have enough basil, and we wanted more fat in the chikkin, as the boneless, skinless thighs didn't have enough. So I added in some chunks of pork belly I'd saved up that were trimmings from making bacon and were mostly fat. Probably could have used a LITTLE more fat, but it came out pretty good. I didn't have any fresh basil, so used all my dried basil, which wasn't enough, and made up the rest with a generic dried 'Italian' seasoning he had in the cabinet. I need to order some more basil... also not quite enough parm, but we had maybe 2/3 of what their recipe called for. Upped the garlic just a bit. Almost or around 20 lbs of chikkin, threw in maybe a pound and a half of bacon in the grind and close to a pound of pork belly. More on the chikkin sausage in the next post. Total, probably 22 pounds, plus or minus.

Bratwurst - all pork, from the batch we added the beef fat in with. Around... 12 pounds or so in total (5700 grams). I modified a recipe I found in a sausage group on FB and the test patty we fried up was really good. Recipe here for sharing, as well. We didn't use beer or milk powder in this batch - he doesn't like using those things. Also no caraway, but roughly doubled the marjoram amount in the recipe.

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All-beef Texas Hot Links - that entire brisket went into this. So, something like 16-18 lbs, I didn't look at the label, but it was a biggish brisket. Used the 2 Guys and a Cooler recipe found here, we toned down the cayenne and red pepper, though, as last time we made it, it was toned down and still a little hot for most of our respective families. I think I did about 1/3 the cayenne and 1/2 the red pepper this time. Also no beer n this one (I drank it during the process, just to try to honor the recipe as much as I was able).

Pork-only kielbasa - well, pork with beef fat, the remainder of the mix I used for the bratwurst above. I wanted to try a pork-only kielbasa, as that was the first sausage I made and was blown away by it. Subsequent pork/beef 50/50 was still excellent, but to me it wasn't quite as good. About 6lbs of this or so.

50/50 pork/beef kielbasa - my buddy was enamored of this one we made together, and we used all the meat we had previously ground and frozen. I think it was around 8700g, so like 19 lbs. Recipe for both of these kielbasa style sausages here:

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I upped the mustard powder a bit and added in about an equal amount of mustard seed, I think.

I'll get to the chikkin in the next post, as I took most of this home, and spent this morning casing up the chikkin.

So, totals:

~20lbs Italian chikkin bacon parmesan
19lbs pork/beef kielbasa
6lbs pork only kielbasa
12lbs German bratwurst
18lbs all-beef Texas hot links

Overall, I have a lot of casing up to do. I need to order some more hog casings, I'm already running low.

Next post...
 
This morning I decided to try out my new powered Hakka 10L/22lb stuffer with the foot pedal. Holy crap, this thing is a beast!

Working on the chikkin sausage first, since it's the most touchy in terms of 'freshness'.

Casings from The Sausage Maker are very good. Nice and long, high quality. But I do spend an inordinate amount of time unraveling the spaghetti.

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I decided to start with one package of the chikkin mix. A 1-gallon Ziploc, I think around 5lbs. I had 4 of these, you can see 5+ lbs barely fills this up to less than 1/3 I think.

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This took around 90 seconds for me to stuff, on the LOWEST possible speed setting, 1 out of 10! Wow! Already in love with this stuffer!

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Most of my time was spent in unraveling casings, tying knots, dealing with a few blowouts, linking the coils into sausages, refilling the cylinder, going back and forth to the fridge and generally all the other things associated with stuffing - NOT in actually filling the casings, as that goes incredibly fast and easy with this stuffer! And NEVER needed to speed up more than 1 out of 10. Dang.

My final load of cased up Italian-style chikkin bacon parmesan sausages!

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I had almost a pound and a half of sausage mix in the bottom of the stuffer when I got done. I think I can get this down somewhat by unscrewing the top plate a bit to make it travel further into the cylinder. I'll have to play with this a bit. I kinda rolled that bit into 'links' and fried them up like breakfast links. Very tasty!

fetch?id=1747494&d=1751745300.png
fetch?id=1747495&d=1751745320.png

Being that we used only the largest die and only ran the meat through once, this is a very coarse and chunky sausage, which is fine with us. We like a pretty coarse sausage, and while we did run the beef and pork through twice, we were worried about the chikkin coming out mealy or mushy, since it is such a different texture to begin with. I think we will be ok grinding it a second time, as well, in the future, just have to make sure it is fairly frozen-ish beforehand.

So now I have a ton more sausage to case up! I am going to do the brats next - either this evening or tomorrow, again, since it is a 'fresh' sausage with no curing salt in it. But I am already running low on hog casings and will I am sure be using some of the sheep casings I have. This is ok, as I think I might prefer a slightly smaller brat to fit in a bun better. We'll see. I have a whole package of sheep casing, so that will be good, but I WILL need more hog casings for the other stuff. I'll use what I've got until the next order comes in - but last time it did take like 10 days for the order to come from The Sausage Maker, and I don't want to wait that long - so we'll see what I can come up with.

That has been my sausage making adventure of the last 2 days, thus far!
 
Looks all good to me. Nice work. I love my electric stuffer too, you don’t realize how great they actually are until you have one.
 
Very nice
I agree the actual stuffing is the easiest part.
The change over and cleanup ...
...
Most of my time was spent in unraveling casings, tying knots, dealing with a few blowouts, linking the coils into sausages, refilling the cylinder, going back and forth to the fridge and generally all the other things associated with stuffing - NOT in actually filling the casings, as that goes incredibly fast and easy with this stuffer! And NEVER needed to speed up more than 1 out of 10. Dang.
...
I had almost a pound and a half of sausage mix in the bottom of the stuffer when I got done. I think I can get this down somewhat by unscrewing the top plate a bit to make it travel further into the cylinder. I'll have to play with this a bit. I kinda rolled that bit into 'links' and fried them up like breakfast links. Very tasty!
...
Did you try adding a bit of baking soda to the soak water for the casings? It makes them slippery and easier to unravel prior to starting the stuffing ordeal. If I'm doing a big batch, i'll pull a hank onto another horn to make it faster to load the stuffer.

I've debated the leftover.
Your issue may be a limit switch that needs adjustment. Do you have any jackscrew above the gears?
I have an old cast iron stuffer that also leaves a lot of meat due to the bottom horn.
Decided to pick up a jerky gun and give that a try on my next round to squeeze the leftovers into uncased links.
 
Fueling Around Fueling Around I'm not sure about the adjustments, I need to learn more about this Hakka. But it damned sure is built like a tank! If anyone is on the fence, this Hakka is the way to go!. I know on my small 5 lb manual stuffer, I can unscrew the flat piston top (bottom really) a few threads to make it stand off further from the top and hence push down further into the canister. There's always a risk with this, of misalignment or damage, but this thing is super robust, and I think I can move it down at least another half inch pretty easily, which will cut down on some of the leftover in the bottom, which was probably 3/4" or more.

I also know this unit has a really nice feature some powered units don't have - when you let off the pedal (or hit stop if you're doing things manually - I DON'T recommend, BTW), it actually pulls back the piston by a tiny amount, relieving pressure and stopping further 'oozing' of your sausage out the end of the tube while you're removing and tying off a finished casing and sliding another back on. This is a really nice feature.

I do add baking soda to the casings as they're soaking, and they're pretty slippery, and they're not hard to get on the horn, but just takes a couple minutes. It's the untangling that is incredibly time-consuming.

I ordered some pre-tubed hog casings from Walton's. The pre-tubed are more expensive, but to be honest the most time consuming and frustrating part of this process has been sorting through my casings, trying to untangle them and get them straightened out, rinsed and then put on the stuffing horn. Honestly the placing on the horn isn't that big of a deal, but does take a couple of minutes for a long casing. The untangling I have spent 10-20 minutes at times standing there trying to untangle the rat's nest (and that's just to get one or two lengths).

Pretty sure these pretubed casings will literally make all of that effort the work of seconds. So I decided to spring for a little bit more for them.

$61 shipped for 100 yards of 30-32mm pre-tubed hog casings. Comes out to about $0.20 a foot. I can live with that.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I did go ahead and smoke about 1/3 of that batch from this morning over some apple wood chips in one of my propane cabinet smokers. They came out fantastic!

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I untangle the casing the night before a stuffing day. I actually have very little untangling as I purchase the PS Seasonings home pack which come in a salt slurry but the casings are ringed in a hank. I don't case more than about 20# in a year so that works for me.
For your volume getting hanks of wet pack is warranted
 
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This morning I decided to try out my new powered Hakka 10L/22lb stuffer with the foot pedal. Holy crap, this thing is a beast!

Working on the chikkin sausage first, since it's the most touchy in terms of 'freshness'.

Casings from The Sausage Maker are very good. Nice and long, high quality. But I do spend an inordinate amount of time unraveling the spaghetti.

View attachment 720805
I decided to start with one package of the chikkin mix. A 1-gallon Ziploc, I think around 5lbs. I had 4 of these, you can see 5+ lbs barely fills this up to less than 1/3 I think.

View attachment 720806
This took around 90 seconds for me to stuff, on the LOWEST possible speed setting, 1 out of 10! Wow! Already in love with this stuffer!

View attachment 720807View attachment 720808

Most of my time was spent in unraveling casings, tying knots, dealing with a few blowouts, linking the coils into sausages, refilling the cylinder, going back and forth to the fridge and generally all the other things associated with stuffing - NOT in actually filling the casings, as that goes incredibly fast and easy with this stuffer! And NEVER needed to speed up more than 1 out of 10. Dang.

My final load of cased up Italian-style chikkin bacon parmesan sausages!

View attachment 720809View attachment 720810View attachment 720811

I had almost a pound and a half of sausage mix in the bottom of the stuffer when I got done. I think I can get this down somewhat by unscrewing the top plate a bit to make it travel further into the cylinder. I'll have to play with this a bit. I kinda rolled that bit into 'links' and fried them up like breakfast links. Very tasty!

View attachment 720812View attachment 720813
Being that we used only the largest die and only ran the meat through once, this is a very coarse and chunky sausage, which is fine with us. We like a pretty coarse sausage, and while we did run the beef and pork through twice, we were worried about the chikkin coming out mealy or mushy, since it is such a different texture to begin with. I think we will be ok grinding it a second time, as well, in the future, just have to make sure it is fairly frozen-ish beforehand.

So now I have a ton more sausage to case up! I am going to do the brats next - either this evening or tomorrow, again, since it is a 'fresh' sausage with no curing salt in it. But I am already running low on hog casings and will I am sure be using some of the sheep casings I have. This is ok, as I think I might prefer a slightly smaller brat to fit in a bun better. We'll see. I have a whole package of sheep casing, so that will be good, but I WILL need more hog casings for the other stuff. I'll use what I've got until the next order comes in - but last time it did take like 10 days for the order to come from The Sausage Maker, and I don't want to wait that long - so we'll see what I can come up with.

That has been my sausage making adventure of the last 2 days, thus far!

And here I thought I was doing something with my little 2 - 5lb batches...pfftt! :emoji_fearful:
 
Did case up the bratwurst and learned without a doubt - I HATE working with sheep casings. No thanks, no how, no way, not ever again. Not only the tangling, the smell, the difficulty fitting on the horn - THEN the frequent blowouts, screw that. I threw away the rest of my $50 package of sheep casings and ordered some pretubed hog casings from Walton's and some pretubed collagen casings from The Bearded Butchers to do the rest of my sausage mix.

The brats, I wanted something a little thinner to fit a bit better in a hot dog bun - a large 32mm brat always seems to overfill the bun to me, so I was looking for just a LITTLE smaller - these sheep casings from The Sausage Maker were supposed to be 26-28, I don't think they were for the most part. Add in the difficulty in working with them (even soaked) and I was over it pretty quickly. No thanks, no more. But I got them all done, for now.

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My Avid Armor vacuum sealer died during this batch, as well, so another one being delivered today. Prolly spend some time this coming weekend doing more stuffing and smoking, still have... mmm 6lbs of pork kielbasa, 18-19lbs of pork/beef kielbasa and ~20lbs of beef hot links all to be cased up.
 
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Many stores sell brat sized buns.
I hope the rest of your grind has been well chilled. I try to stuff and freeze fresh sausage within 2 days. If cured I will go a few more days.
 
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