Are you interested in making your own sausage?

[grumpyoldman]

1st don't be intimidated ,
sausage making can be simple or complicated,
hard or easy , cheap or expensive it all depends on what kind of sausage you want to make and in what quantities
if you want to make your own breakfast sausage , you only need 2 things (1) a small meat grinder and (2) spices thats it nothing more !!! (plus the meat of course)
if you want to make sausage that are stuffed into casings .....well your cost just went up along with the meat grinder your going to need something to stuff it with plus the casings
here is where the road forks !!!! one road is simple smoked sausage , the other road is dry cured sausage ......we have been making smoked sausage for 10+ years and i won't even attempt dry cured sausage but if thats what your interested in by all means learn as much as you can and go for it , even the masters at it at some point started right where you are now
if you have decided to make smoked sausage and patty sausage
in batches larger than say 5 lbs the equipment your going to need is as follows : a good meat grinder $100.00-$500.00 , a good sausage stuffer $ 150.00-$250.00 , a meat mixer $100.00-$ 200.00 , and a smoker $100.00-1000.00
if you decide on making dry cured sausage some of the other folks here will have to fill you in on those costs
is it worth doing ? ooooh yea
it can be fun and rewarding and i can promise you that you will make a lot of new friends doing it

 

[taxlady]

I dabble in making small amounts of sausage that I don't stuff into casings. I like having control of the ingredients. I will be doing this more often now, since I have discovered that my blood pressure needs careful watching, so I am lowering the amount of salt I eat. I do not want to give up sausage, which usually has a lot of salt in store bought versions.

 

[Kathleen]

Knowing what is in the sausage is exactly why I like making our own. Also, I don't like too much salt.

 

[taxlady]

It's not just about knowing what's in the sausage It's also that you can tweak the recipe to make it exactly the way you like it.

There's a saying that if you love sausage, don't ask what's in it. You don't have to ask, when you make it yourself.

 

[FrankZ]

It's not just about knowing what's in the sausage It's also that you can tweak the recipe to make it exactly the way you like it.

There's a saying that if you love sausage, don't ask what's in it. You don't have to ask, when you make it yourself.

I make sausage with my eyes closed so I can still ask...

 

[Badjak]

My sausage making is a bit on hold, due to a couple of reasons, one of those being temperature.
Mixing the meat at the temperature I had means the fat tends to smear.

There are a couple of very good online resources

Meats and Sausages

Meats and sausages provides information on how to make sausages, methods for smoking meats and plans for smokehouses.

www.meatsandsausages.com

Making Homemade Sausage Len Poli's Formulations and Recipes

A collection of proven recipes for making sausage. Recipes and formulations are in both U.S. and Metric measurements with instruction on grinding, mixing, stuffing, coorking or curing sausages

lpoli.50webs.com

 

[grumpyoldman]

a lot of folks are intimated at the thought of making sausage ( i still am when it comes to the dry cured sausage ) they think its to hard to do , they have no idea the costs involved , afraid they will screw up a good chunk of meat , i like to tell friends that have expressed an interest that a lot of great sausage have been made with nothing more than a Boston butt , meat grinder and a few spices , simply grind it , mix it by hand and enjoy it, then decide if you want to spend more money and make other kinds
after we had been doing it a while ( and being older ) we started looking for ways to take the work out of making it , we didn't spend a lot of money we bought a better stuffer , bought a hand meat mixer that i figured out how to connect my cordless drill to and now have an electric mixer , those two things really took all the hard work out of it
i would like to see more people making their own sausage , we all might learn something from the next generation of sausage makers ..who knows ?

 

[caseydog]

I would like to see more people making their own sausage. We all might learn something from the next generation of sausage makers ..who knows ?

I'm not intimidated by it, I just don't want to do it. Same as baking, I don't want to do it. I go down to my hometown on the Gulf coast a few times a year, and stock up on fresh sausage that I vacuum seal and freeze to use till the next time I go to visit my friends back home. There are a bunch of places down there that make fresh sausage that is way better than I can make, considering they have multiple generations head start on me.

Would I enjoy making some fresh sausage? Sure, in your kitchen with your equipment. It would be fun to try. Can't say whether or not I'd like to do it again -- in your kitchen, with your equipment.

CD

 

[grumpyoldman]

i agree its not for everyone, but i do know a couple of guys that would be great at it if it weren't for the fact they are afraid to try

 

[caseydog]

i agree its not for everyone, but i do know a couple of guys that would be great at it if it weren't for the fact they are afraid to try

I completely agree that nobody should be afraid to try something new.

I just don't want to make sausage.

CD

 

[grumpyoldman]

caseydog: i reread what you said
" I go down to my hometown on the Gulf coast a few times a year, and stock up on fresh sausage that I vacuum seal and freeze to use till the next time I go to visit my friends back home."
this is the exact same reason that got us started making sausage . we simply could not buy our kind of sausage here in Colorado so we started making it
just saying thats all

 

[pictonguy]

Been making sausage most of my life. I do buy it once in a while from my butcher, he love making it and sometimes he'll make something I just have to try, that kind of thing. Made some venison sausage just a while back from a friend who tagged 2.

 

[dragnlaw]

It's like cheese making. Took a quick day course with a friend once and we had fun. But don't want to get into that seriously. I still occasionally make a soft cream cheese, but no equipment or extra ingredients are necessary for that. Unfortunately they don't have a very long shelf life.

I would love to make sausages, at least once.
Dry sausages as well (Salami, etc.), at least once.

Sourdough and I have a love hate relationship. At the moment we are in our hate stage. She went all purple on me - both jars. Her demise was very sad.

 

[grumpyoldman]

i just read your thread about "sour dough" it was quite interesting , that i can remember, i have never tasted sour dough bread, but i have made quite a bit of yeast rolls but this sounds very different , interesting but different
best of luck with it

 

[dragnlaw]

@grumpyoldman what's in your sausage mix? Doesn't mean it has to be in cases, eh? Could just make patties, like in breakfast sausage patties. If they are dinner sausages, then patties in buns.
Any special ingredients?

 

[grumpyoldman]

to be honest i don't really know all the spices that are in it , as i said i could not buy the sausage we like here in Colorado and when i went back to visit family would stop and fill and ice chest with sausage from my favorite sausage maker back there
then one day i started playing with the idea of trying to make it at home , i had nothing to lose so i called the guy and asked him that since i lived 1200 miles away would he be willing to send me some of the spices he used to make it , and what he did was send me enough to make 50 lbs in the original unopened package , from there i just started buying it from them in bags that makes 50lbs THEN they changed their policy and will now only sell it in bulk ( enough to make 1000 lbs ) i get it from a place called "Rebel Butcher suppy"
i know it has sage ,red and black pepper but i'm not sure what else is in it
by the way we go through it roughly every 3 years haha

 

[dragnlaw]

Well, I guess your going to have to experiment with recipes you find til you find and create your own preferred mix.
For sure there will be garlic, paprika, fennel maybe cumin and or coriander, but you would definitely have to find your own quantities.

 

[grumpyoldman]

we use 3.8 oz per 10 lbs and everyone we make it for loves it , we do however add more red pepper for the those that like it hot

 

[Badjak]

Each to their own, but I always wonder why you would make your own sausages and then use a generic spice mix.
My joy is very much in the spice option, creativity, own taste etc

 

[grumpyoldman]

simple, because it was exactly what we like to eat