My first attempt at making sausage - PR0N

I have been wanting to make sausage for a year now and finally bought the stuff to do it. Bass Pro Shop had their LEM 550 watt meat grinder on sale last week for $79 so I picked one up. Even though it can stuff sausage, I decided to order a Grizzly 5 lb stuffer. They were on sale last weekend for $65.

I had intended on making 5 lbs of fresh creole hot sausage and 5 lbs of smoked andouille, but it is raining today so I decided to make 10 lbs of the fresh creole.

We went to Costco to get boneless butts, but we saw large packs of boneless country ribs (sliced up butt) and decided to get some. Our reasoning was that the meat was more than likely already trimmed of hard fat, grizzle, veins, gland, etc. Turned out the meat was beautiful.

Sorry, my laptop crashed and I had to move to the desktop.

The LEM grinder made short work of 10 lbs of pork. It worked flawlessly.



I mixed up the spices with ice water and mixed into the meat by hand. We fried up a test patty and ended up adding more cayenne, paprika, and black pepper. We like our sausage HOT!



I had ordered 32mm hog casing from Sausage Maker. This was the home pack which contains "shorts". The average length was about three feet. I soaked them overnight and flushed with water. These were very easy to untangle.



I want to mention that the meat was always put in the fridge whenever possible. This kept it nice and firm for the stuffing process. I loaded the "can" up on the stuffer and left about an inch of room at the top for the plunger. If you don't meat will squeeze out the top and make a mess (yep, learned the hard way). I threaded on a casing, cranked the handle to get meat to the end of the tube, tied off the casing with a knot, and proceded to stuff sausage. I must have watched every YouTube video on stuffing, and I must say it paid off. I found the process to be easier than I thought.




Had a blowout when twisting the links.



Here is a coiled up batch.



Here is the final results of 10 lbs of sausage. I have them in the freezer now firming up so I can vacuum pack them later.



I can't wait to make some andouille and breakfast sausage!