Sausage Making

[btcg]

Inspired by various brothers here, my sausage making gear arrived today:







Lucky day... my plowboys rubs arrived today, too. No casings yet, though. Maybe tomorrow.

Great day! Now to hone those sausage making skills.

[deguerre]

You, Sir, are venturing into territory unknown to me. I wish you much luck, and success!

[GldnKniteofBBQ]

i too have yet to make my own sausages and im sure i will eventually splash into it. Keep us posted on how it goes!

[btcg]

Originally Posted by GldnKniteofBBQ

i too have yet to make my own sausages and im sure i will eventually splash into it. Keep us posted on how it goes!

I ordered the book "Home Sausage Making", good thing. Sausage making is brand new to me, too. Some of the recent examples posted were amazing. I can only hope to do half as well. You wonder how long it took to get the kind of results we've seen here, of late.

Guess we'll see how I do.

[bander7003]

I recently tried my hand at sausage making. It was harder than I expected it to be. I'm going to try again soon and hopefully will have worked out some of the kinks. I have to ask (and perhaps this is one indication that I don't know what I'm doing), but how does the pressure cooker factor into sausage making.

[btcg]

Originally Posted by bander7003

I recently tried my hand at sausage making. It was harder than I expected it to be. I'm going to try again soon and hopefully will have worked out some of the kinks. I have to ask (and perhaps this is one indication that I don't know what I'm doing), but how does the pressure cooker factor into sausage making.

It figures in because my brisket has been soaking for 13 days now, and tomorrow, I'm turning it into corned beef. I want to be able to steam heat the corned beef.

Also bought another flat brisket (stores are loaded with leftover brisket from St. Paddy's Day), and plan on starting another pastrami tomorrow. Did the foil steam last time. This time, I'm doin it properly.

Went to Bed Bath & Beyond, and they didn't have a single pressure cooker in the store. So as long as I was ordering the meat grinder & stuff, I ordered the pressure cooker.

[Smoothsmoke]

Good looking gear. You're going to get hooked! I did 6lbs of german/italian sausage today. Best investment ever.

[bander7003]

Good to know that you can still find pressure cookers. I've looked at stores before with no luck.

[btcg]

Originally Posted by bander7003

Good to know that you can still find pressure cookers. I've looked at stores before with no luck.

Only on Amazon.

[btcg]

Originally Posted by Smoothsmoke

Good looking gear. You're going to get hooked! I did 6lbs of german/italian sausage today. Best investment ever.

Cool! It's the tieing off part that especially worries me. In the videos I saw, they saw, "reverse twist" every other casing as you're doing it. But if you reverse twist, how do you stop the previous one from unwinding?

[boatnut]

Originally Posted by btcg

Cool! It's the tieing off part that especially worries me. In the videos I saw, they saw, "reverse twist" every other casing as you're doing it. But if you reverse twist, how do you stop the previous one from unwinding?

btcg,
welcome to the wonderful world of sausage making. your library can be your friend. I've found lots of good books there on sausage making. I ended up buying a few but wanted to check them out first.

the twisting thing takes some practice. what i do is "pinch" each sausage as its coming off the stuffer tube at the appropriate length, say 6 to 8 inches. I pinch between thumb and forefinger and hold it till the next sausage has about inch or 2 of sausage in it, then let go. After the whole casing is filled , then I twist every other one the opposite direction while holding the ones on either side to keep from twisting. hope this makes sense.

[btcg]

Originally Posted by boatnut

btcg,
welcome to the wonderful world of sausage making. your library can be your friend. I've found lots of good books there on sausage making. I ended up buying a few but wanted to check them out first.

the twisting thing takes some practice. what i do is "pinch" each sausage as its coming off the stuffer tube at the appropriate length, say 6 to 8 inches. I pinch between thumb and forefinger and hold it till the next sausage has about inch or 2 of sausage in it, then let go. After the whole casing is filled , then I twist every other one the opposite direction while holding the ones on either side to keep from twisting. hope this makes sense.

Yeah, it does make sense. Thanks Mike, great tips.

[Smoothsmoke]

Originally Posted by boatnut

btcg,
welcome to the wonderful world of sausage making. your library can be your friend. I've found lots of good books there on sausage making. I ended up buying a few but wanted to check them out first.

the twisting thing takes some practice. what i do is "pinch" each sausage as its coming off the stuffer tube at the appropriate length, say 6 to 8 inches. I pinch between thumb and forefinger and hold it till the next sausage has about inch or 2 of sausage in it, then let go. After the whole casing is filled , then I twist every other one the opposite direction while holding the ones on either side to keep from twisting. hope this makes sense.

What he said!

BTW, collagen casings suck. Natural are waaaaaay better.

[btcg]

Originally Posted by Smoothsmoke

What he said!

BTW, collagen casings suck. Natural are waaaaaay better.

Yeah, I think it was Mike that I asked about that on another thread, the one that had his chicken sausages. I ordered the hog casings. Haven't gottem em yet, so if they take a while, I may have to do my first batch as patties.

[Smoothsmoke]

I have a big pdf file on sausage recipes. I just dont know where to host it so people can upload it. Any help?