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Friday, April 15, 2011

Homemade Reuben Sausage

When I was making my first stuffed sausage, Chez John, over at Fat Johnny’s Front Porch, asked if I’d ever had Reuben sausage, told me the ingredients, and said it was outstanding as a grilled fresh sausage. I said I hadn’t but it sounded too good not to give it a try.

I’d been buying corned beef, but decided to try a recipe provided by Andrew over at Gastro Fun With Andrew, so I corned two chuck roasts for the sausage along with the top round I was doing for pastrami.

To get the salt level down, I ended up soaking the chuck in water for three 4 hour stints, with the roasts cut into pieces for the last one.

Chez didn’t give me a recipe, just the ingredients, so there was some trial and err involved. I figured 5oz of corned beef for a sandwich then portioned out a sandwich worth of kraut (2oz) and cheese (1oz) and weighed them. They were close enough to the package amount to just go with that. I mixed it up to those proportions and cooked a test sample while the mix was cooling. I thought it was good as it was and made no adjustments, so my recipe ended up being:

-6# corned beef chuck, cut into 1” chunks
-32 oz Vlasic kraut, drained and chopped
-16 oz high melting temperature Swiss cheese in ¼” dice from Butcher and Packer
-2 tbsp my Pastrami rub
No additional liquid was added as the kraut and meat both had plenty

First, I cut the roasts into 1” cubes, mixed with the rub, and stuck in the freezer on a cookie sheet for a half hour (to be sure the fat was hard), along with my grinder attachment.

In the meantime, I drained and chopped the kraut into smaller pieces.

I decided to make it kind of chunky, so I ran it just one time thru the larger blade of the grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer.

After grinding, I mixed in the kraut and cheese and put it back in the freezer while I cooked the test sample - still made no adjustments.

Then stuffed it into rinsed and pre-soaked hog casings.  Just like my first attempt at stuffing, I stuffed the first casing too full and had difficulty making links (you can see the blow out lower left of the second picture) so I just tied off the links with butcher twine. I made the next ones smaller and the linking went fine – I believe I now know the right size to make them.

The first time I stuffed sausage, I used an attachment for our Kitchen Aid mixer and while it got the job done, it took two people and was really a pain so I bought a 5# stuffer from Northern Equipment and put it into service for this project. While the mixer grinding attachment will continue to serve my needs well, the new stuffer was infinitely better than using the mixer and I easily did it by myself.

Of course I fried one link up as a test and I thought it was delicious. I’m looking forward to eating the rest of it starting today for lunch. I’ll freeze some of it on a cookie sheet then bag it so I’ll be able to just cut off a link or two when I want some.

Many thanks to Andrew for my new go-to corned beef recipe and to Chez for putting me on to this sausage.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little sausage adventure and I think chorizo will be up next.

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago: Bev's Mom

Larry

12 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh Larry! I'm totally impressed! Great job!! They look fantastic!!

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  2. Wow! Now that is something I would love to eat any day of the week. I have my grandfathers old grinder and stuffer and it would take two people to do it. I ground meat in it once and it made too many squishy sounds and I got kind of grossed out. I'm even a nurse! I am enjoying all the posts on your meat creations, great ideas and inventiveness!

    My thoughts go out to Bev as it is the anniversary of her mom's passing, that has to be hard.

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  3. what a fun flavoring for sausage! Part of the fun of making your own must be to experiment and it looks like you've got that down!

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  4. That sausage sounds wonderful. You're really tempting me to get my grinder out. My mom used to grind meat all the time with it and made it seem easy. I've seen a similar sausage stuffer and can't for the life of me remember where. Great mouth watering post Larry. and sigh...hugs to Bev while remembering this day one year ago.

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  5. Very interesting.. I've never had ruben sausage before..sounds wonderful!!
    Yes...do chorizo next, oh please oh please oh please!!!

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  6. Way to go Larry! I've never even heard of rueben sausage but it sounds delicious! It would be great to try as we love different types of homemade sausage. My regards to you and Bev with her mother's passing.

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  7. That looks simply incredible! Thank you for sharing!
    -Andrew

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  8. What a great idea! Nice stuffer. I have a ten pounder and I wouldn't trade it for my wife.

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  9. I love Reubens, and this sausage sounds wonderful! I admire you for making your own.

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  10. Larry, We had a few bites of this Reuben Sausage the other night. I'm not really a Reuben fan...but it's all about the 1000 Island Dressing. The taste grew on my...so around lunch time today, I had a craving for your Rueben sausage on a bun with spicy stone-ground mustard! Instead is was leftover lamb chop and cheese eggs on English Muffins. Take Care, Big Daddy Dave

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  11. That sausage sounds delicious, Larry! What a fun adventure. Be sure to hug Bev on this one year anniversary.

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  12. Crazy! The sauer kraut mixed right in, I wouldn't have imagined that one. The new stuffer looks impressive. After the news reports about antibiotic resistant staph in meat this week, I will be grinding more and more of my own meat to help minimize this.

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