Sausage Advice

lcbateman3

lcbateman3

is Blowin Smoke!
Joined
Feb 24, 2010
Location
Durham, NC
So i got one of these for Christmas. So thinking about making some of my own sausage and ground meat.

Any advice for a new guy? I am sure there are some tricks I do not know of!

Thanks!
 
First off congrats. Secondly, I recommend you buy a dedicated stuffer. Using the grinder to stuff is a CHORE! I almost got turned off to making links ever again after the first time cause I used the grinder to stuff.
After I got the stuffer, it was smooth sailing. Hopefully someone else had the other link the sausage man, or something like that. Lots of great info there as well.

Good luck to you and enjoy.

Bob
 
you need one of these makes life so much easyer I picked up a book called the best of the wurst at my local processing supply it has a lot of good info in it
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most of all enjoy it and take your time, keep the meat cold when grinding, almost frozen and when you get down to the last of the meat run ice through the grinder it will clean out the last bits of meat. If you make sausage with cheese you can cut the cheese into slices and run them through the grinder as well we experimented with that this year and it worked awsome. its alot of fun and alot of work but well worth it
 
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I'd start off grinding some chuck for burger. maybe also do a 4lb to 1lb bacon mix for "baco-burgers". As others have mentioned the key is to keep everything ice cold. I put the whole grinding "head" (auger/plate etc) in freezer for an hour before i start. Put bowl that meat goes into over another bowl with ice in it. Also, I cut my meat into strips and partially freeze before I grind as well.
nuttin' better then your own fresh ground burger! You can grind up a butt as well. I often package 1lb packs of ground pork and freeze to mix with beef later for meatloaf. I also think seasoned "pork burgers' rock.
 
lcbateman3 said:
Yea I have already started looking at a dedicated stuffer. Looks like it would make it much easier.
Click to expand...

look at the Dakotah stuffer, its water powered, holds 9lbs of ground meat works on as little as 10psi of water and they can be had for under $150 after I used one for the first time it was the only stuffer I would ever buy easy setup and easy to clean and it can be a 1 person machine if need to be
 
I'm pretty new to this too, but here is another great website that I have found really useful, http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/index.htm. I would agree about the stuffer too. I don't have one yet, and stuffing with the grinder is not fun, and takes forever. My biggest problem so far is not finding the right fat to meat ratio. It seems like it really takes a lot of fat to get them right.
 
Thanks for all the info ya'll! I am looking forward to making some. Really want to make some Chorizo since I cannot find any around here!
 
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Here's a PDF of recipes from Stuffers that I like a lot... hope this helps
Also get this book.... Its a sausage makers bible "Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing" by Rytek Kutas..... This is a very very good book ....:-D
 
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Here is the stuffer I use- http://www.lemproducts.com/product/496/lem-stuffers It is from LEM, same as your grinder. I love it!! Like BobBrisket, I was almost turned off to stuffing trying to use the grinder stuffing attachment. I order all of my spices and casings from LEM (or pick them up at Bass Pro, they carry LEM products) I tried a few "from scratch" recipes, but I usually wind up buying the prepakaged seasoning for whatever it is I am going to make. It's easier that way (lazy mod!!) and usually taste better than the stuff I mix up. That's my 2 cents worth.
 
I got a book called "Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing" which has several different sausage recipes of different types as well as other things like how to make corned beef, pastrami, cure hams etc. Every sausage recipe I've made from this book has been great and it has good info on how to get started.

I've been getting casings from sausagemaker.com - there may be other/better places, I just haven't looked around that much. They have a "home pack" of casings, which is short parts of casings with sizes that aren't really uniform but just fine if you're making your own sausage - the price is better for these.

If you really want to get deep, there's a book called "Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design" which has sausage recipes and a lot of great plans for different types of smokehouses - my idea of a good read!
 
Sausage making is a blast. I still say that getting to know your local butcher is one of the best ways to go. Mine sells me everything from Unique spices to casings. From him I can get Hog, Sheep and collagen. Hi temp cheeses in small qty. and any add-in cuts I need. This weekend I will try to reproduce the Pineapple Brats they sell at Hy-Vee. If you have never tried it, You gotta. I cut it out of the casisngs sometimes to make Fatties. Its one of the best i have had.
 
Yea I've trying to find a good butcher in the area I live in. Not to many to choose from I am sad to say. Looking forward to making my own though! I have a lot of reading to do. I am sure there will be some failures, but hey, thats part of the fun!!
 
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