Equipment
All equipment you need to make
good sausage is a
meat grinder with a sausage filling nozzle. If
you do not have a grinder, you can purchase ground
meat from your local butcher, but then you'd need a
sausage filler to
stuff the casings.
Ingredients
- Fresh meat with proper lean-to-fat ratio.
Look for at least 20% fat content for juicy and
tasty sausages
- Spices
- Cure, such as sodium nitrite, Freeze Em
Pickle, Tender Quick or saltpeter. Check gourmet
food stores. Many of these will sell prepackaged
mixes that also have appropriate spices to make
preserved meat tasty
- Casings can be purchased from local butcher.
The natural
sausage casings are made from sheep (lamb),
beef or pig intestines and come in different
lengths. Lamb casings tend to be slightly
thinner and break more easily. You can purchase
thick or thin casings. Artificial casings are
also available
- Liquid smoke can be added to give the smoky
flavor desired, or you may add some cooked,
smoked product like bacon to produce the smoky
flavor
- Meat mince. When making sausages, you can either make
your own mince or buy it. If you decide to buy
ready-made mince, look for a regular grade with
some fat. Lean mince does not contain enough fat
for sausages.
Making your own mince gives
you full control over the amount of fat the sausages
contain.
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Making
sausages
Grinding and Mixing
Keep meat and mixture temperature as low as
possible
- Grind the meat coarsely.
Using spices salt and water make
a slurry and add the rest of the
ingredients. Mix thoroughly
- Grind it again with finer
cutting plate. Second grinding improves the uniformity of the
product by distributing the ingredients
evenly
Stuffing sausages
- Soak required amount of natural casing in cold water for 30-45
minutes and run water inside the casing to flush out salt. Drain before stuffing
- Attach the appropriate size
sausage nozzle to the appliance
-
meat mincer or a
sausage stuffer
- Slide the entire casing over
the sausage funnel, and leave a
little bit sticking over the
end/hole of the funnel
- Start filling. The trick
is to slide the casing off of
the funnel, at the exact time the
meat comes out.
- It is important to let the
air out of the end of the
casing, or through the
air-exhaust valve in the
sausage filler piston
- After determining the length
of sausage that you want, simply
twist the casing, and this will
give you your separate links
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