When first gave it thought you’re probably thinking the same thing as me – “I’ve never given it a thought but how can I make sausages from scratch?” Well, fear no more cause we’re here to lead you to your perfect sausage-making recipes.
Normally, sausages are made into links, and we love the way it feels. But novices can buy ground pork and make them into patties. After a few trials and errors, you’ll get to the point when you are ready to invest in the types of equipment necessary for beautiful sausage links.
So you already had a brief intro to the sausage stuffer. So why not have a look at the advantages?
Interesting Read:
- Want to know about different types of sausages in different continents? Click here.
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Equipment Needed for Homemade Sausages
- Grinder/Stuffer
- Weigh Scales
- Large bowls
- Latex gloves
- Logbook
- Sharp Knives
- Large trays
- Parchment paper
Sanitizing
Cleaning all the equipment, from stuffer to countertop, is a crucial part of the process. Be careful and keep your kitchen space separate into two sections – clear and contaminated. Rearrange your kitchen in such a manner that you’d have to touch as less of the kitchen as possible. Don’t hesitate to ask someone else for help – better safe than sorry, right?
Meat
The juiciest part of sausage making is meat. Now, different meat leads to a different taste. Also, different meat from a different part of animals will lead to different sausages as well. We’ll talk about these later. Pork is the most popular choice, but beef and lamb are good as well. Decide beforehand if you want fine grind or coarse grind. And in the matter of fat up to 50% is allowed as optimal.
To get the meat, use a boning knife to separate fat from the skin and a chopping knife to get a grinder friendly chunk-sized meat. Do not use loose fat – they will jam your stuffer. The hard fat, on the other hand, you can take as much as you want.
Grinder
Standalone meat grinders are usable. You can go as far as old hand-cranked grinder. We’ll need two dies – fine and coarse. This will help us to keep the width of a strand of ground meat to our liking.
Divide the meat up by weight as your recipe demands and grind them using a coarse blade.
Seasoning
Prepare seasonings as per your recipe and ready an amount your sausage needs. Use gloves and mix the meat and the seasonings in a preferably large bowl. Take a sample of this mix and cook them into a frying pan to get the idea of your raw materials. Adjust seasoning if needed and repeat till you’re satisfied with the seasoning.
Stuffing
You can always try stuffing sausages at home. How to stuff sausage at home is not as hard as one would think. To stuff them without any equipment is viable but not efficient at all. If the sausage gets too hot, you’ll get a sub-par texture. If you’re thinking of making sausages into your regular thing, please consider getting yourself electric, manual, or even a homemade sausage stuffer. A good investment in this section will yield results beyond your expectations.
While stuffing, use vegetable oil to lubricate the stuffer horn for better press and release. This makes putting on and taking off much easier.
This next step would be easier with two persons. One would pass the meat through stuffer into the casing while another one would look for air pocket and prick the casing to release air. After reaching the desired sausage length, to make a complete link twirl the casing a couple of times. The direction of the twirling would be the reverse of the previous one so that un-twirling doesn’t start on its own. To maximize the benefits, first, fill up the whole sausage casing then link. Use string to make sure.
Freezing
To go to this part, at first place the coil on a large paper-lined tray. After a day the links can be separated and frozen in a freezer bag.
Now, your sausages are ready to roll. For an overall FAQ read the following section –
- Meat
Meat selections are very important for sausages. Usually, for the best result, you can use pork shoulder butt or NY style picnic shoulder.
- Grinding
Use coarse grind for regular sausages like Italian. Use fine grind only in cases like the sausage.
- Estimation
A pork shoulder weighing 16-20 lbs gives us 14-18 lbs of raw meat (without bones and skin). This is enough for 35-48 8” links.
- Fat
“What amount of fat” is one of the most dreaded questions. All fat found on the shoulder can be used. The amount will depend upon the hungry audiences mostly, but lean sausages will end up dry. As I’ve mentioned before, if the fat-less sausage is what you’re looking for then make a meatloaf and use bread instead of the fat!
- Stuffer:
In case you are not in possession of a sausage stuffer, you can always use the meat for pizza toppings, patties, or hamburger core meat. Loose sausage and casserole are a great duo too. But with all said and done, there’s no good replacement for stuffed sausages that can be easily made with an electric sausage stuffer or a manual sausage stuffer or, better yet, a homemade sausage stuffer. There are just so many ways how you can stuff sausage at home that this is not even noteworthy.
- Casings: natural vs. man-made
I’ve always preferred natural casing and you should too, because why not? It’s been used for generations, it turns out well, and, to be frank, why mess with a good thing?
For ratio, 60` of the casing is enough for two shoulders. This will ultimately yield 30lbs of juicy sausages. In any case of leftover casing consider storing them in this manner – squeeze the casing and remove as much water for them as possible. Drown the casings in salt (not excessively though, cover the surface) and refrigerate in an airtight environment. This will give you a lot of time to save the casings.
- Saving the goods:
In the case leftovers, uncooked meat remains usable before cooking or freezing 3 to 4 days. This is applicable to freshly home-cooked variations.
These days, electrical stuffers are gaining popularity due to their convenient, safe, and better design to handle a greater amount of meat. As it happens, I personally prefer the STX International stuffer among our top 10 best sausage stuffers in the 2020 review. It comes with plenty of features to provide a huge amount of sausage for home or commercial applications. Without having any major flaws, this is the perfect thing to deal with meat processing. Though the price is higher, the power consumption is higher, this particular one is worth its price.
Along with it’s buying guides, it’s important you skim through these instructions to keep your stuffer safe.
Also Read: FAQs on the sausage stuffer
