My First Attempt At Stuffed Sausage

I’ve made sausage a fewl times but always as bulk and never stuffed into casings. Several folks on the forums and blogs I read are real sausage makers and I drool every time I see it. Awhile back, I bought a grinder attachment for the Kitchen Aid mixer that allows me to grind small meat batches myself. I’d still been debating about buying a good stuffer but was reluctant to buy one until I knew I wanted to do this, then I saw Mister Meatball using a stuffer attachment for his mixer to do it.

So I decided for the $15 cost of the stuffer attachment, I could take the plunge and give it a try knowing it would be more difficult as the auger feed must be kept full to avoid air pockets. I figured this would allow me to give it a try, see if I enjoy doing it and see if I like the product, knowing I can get better equipment later.

I like the Czech sausage I’ve made in the past, and the folks I get the spices from, stuff theirs and I assume since they add curing salt, they also smoke it. So for this batch, I used 4½ # each of venison and ground pork – since the venison was already ground, I just bought some ground pork from the local market. It’s the meat they make their breakfast sausage from and is fattier than just a ground pork butt. I’m not a meat expert but I believe I can tell the venison from the pork.

I mixed the meat then added half the spices, curing salt, and cold water.

Mixed again, added the remaining ingredients and mixed once more.

I then covered it and stuck in the fridge overnight to chill and have the flavors marry up well.

For the breakfast sausage, I had 3 ½ # of meat left and used the same spices as they use where I bought the meat.

I bought my natural hog casings from Your Sausage Source , put them in water and soaked overnight in the fridge. When ready to stuff, I flushed in cold water. Mister Meatball has a good pictorial step-by-step on his blog but here's my set up ready to go.

The first casing went well, except note the first few inches on the inside weren't full - I squeezed it to fix.

And the third and fourth casings went well, but we managed to let air get in during the second casing and that’s it on the right – it was breakfast the next day.

We decided to put a little of the breakfast sausage in the casing and that's it lower right.

Then it was time to link it and I made them big after discovering I had the casings stuffed full and they could blow out easily.

This is the full batch.
 

This was a real learning process and I found that it’s not difficult, but the kitchen aid stuffer makes it a slow two person process. I learned that if you get them too full, it’s hard to make the links without a blowout, and I learned the cooler the meat the better with this stuffer. Finally I learned that the clean up is the same, so make a big batch.  A positive - sausage making is like BBQing, you can eat the mistakes.  Tune back in for my first attempt at the smoking process.
 
Thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.
 
Larry