Anyone make your own sausage?
Tips or recommendations for a newbie?
I have a KitchenAid stand mixer, so I’m considering picking up a grinder attachment and starting by experimenting with making my own pork breakfast sausage, but I figured if anyone else has gone down this road, perhaps they’d have some do’s and don’t’s.
Grinder attachment is nice, but the best are the old iron counter grinders. Those babies are workhorses. May as well save space with the attachment though.
Biggest thing is to get the fat ratio right. What kind of sausage are you making?
Every sausage has a seasoning that is distinct you might not expect. Italian sausage, which I’ve made for like 20 years, uses fennel seed. That’s the real reason it seldom tastes like anything else. I also use some cinnamon (I add a pinch) and other seasonings. American sausage uses sage a lot.
For italian sausage, the best is honestly pork shoulder butt. If it’s not fatty enough I’ll grind some extra in with it. You can use natural casings or just form it by hand.
Probably going to start with basic sage breakfast sausage, to keep it simple.
Was definitely figuring on checking with a butcher to see if I could get some extra pork fat to grind in, because I know I don’t want lean sausage. 
Thanks for the tips!
I’m going to try this one from the UK for stuffing with the Christmas turkey.
The guy who wrote it is quite well known here as a food writer and also did a great video on deep fried turkey.
The sausage I most want to make is Chiang Mai’s specialty Sai Oua, a high fat, spicy pork sausage. It’s different from the “standard” northern Thai / Isan sausage in that it has no rice filler (there’s a small amount of sugar in the recipe which I imagine can be replaced or simply eliminated).
But, I’ve never made sausage and I’m bit concerned about the amount of specialty equipment that might be required.
The extra fat will keep it moist, for sure!
I was going to post this yesterday and forgot - thanks old lady brain. Anywho, this book is great, and this dude’s advice also: http://www.thekitchn.com/butcher-ryan-farr-on-the-fine-art-and-science-of-making-a-good-sausage-at-home-expert-essentials-203660
@larry, check out this book, too! Basically all you need is: as sharp a grinder as you can possibly find, and also something to stuff the sausage with.
Donna, I’m with you on the old fashioned metal grinder that clamps to the countertop. I have two of them and nearly bought another at the thrift store last week, just because it had a lot of its original shine still on it. I don’t think there exists an electrical appliance that works as well or has the range of coarseness or fineness of the disks of the manual grinder.
I just made my own sausage yesterday using pork butt that I grinded using an attachment to my kitchen aid mixer. I also grinded and mixed in a half pound of bacon. In it I used salt, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, sage, parsley, and thyme as well as some bone broth, maple extract, and a touch of sever glycerite. They turned out good.
I’ve made my own sausage for years, however my butcher grinds it for me. The first time he butchered our hogs, he offered to season the sausage with their normal seasoning pack. I wanted to make my own seasoned sausage, so he just bags it up for me every year, and then I bring it home and season it, then wrap it into small packages for the freezer.
As for seasoning, this is the fun part. Find some recipes on line, then start doing small taste samples till you get the combination of flavors you like. Once you get your seasonings to your liking you can go ahead and mix up the whole batch and get it into packages for your freezer. Have fun tasting!
just wanting to find high quality low carb sausage/brat… even at places like fresh thyme its hard to trust the ingredients… I’d love to make my own sausage, though i do not have any of the equipment to do so…
Been making my own sausage for about 15 years. Its an Italian right of passage.
1 - Go to LEM.com for equip. Kitchen aid equip not very good. Buy a grinder and a stuffer.
Budget wise go to a Wegmans and they grind it at no cost. Nice and course.
A 5 pound canister stuffer is about $79 well woth it.
I do 20 pounds at a time and vac seal 1 pound bags.
