Back to the Grind

            Okay my wonderful people, I have resigned myself to the fact that this post is going to be basically a running “that’s what she said” joke but I press on none the less. After giving you all a little love in the vegetarian area of cooking we head back into the realm of the little animals, specifically our friend the pig. Now I am a big fan of all things pork. Bacon has saved my life on more than one occasion and as you have seen by the photo I loves me a good pulled pork sandwich.  So with this love for pork in mind I give to you the awesomeness of making and stuffing your own sausage. Heh Heh. Yes I know I am like a kid but funny is still funny.

            So this kitchen experiment started with gifts. My Mom and my Grandfather went in together and got me a Kitchen aid stand mixer and my friends Toby and Tiffany gave me the grinder and sausage stuffing attachments for said stand mixer. So I must say thank you all. My friend Toby is my partner in all things culinary. He and I often try to take on things that are a little out in left field and see if we can pull them off. So as I gazed at my new toys I knew Toby and I would be trying to figure out how to make sausage from scratch.

            My next stop on this little journey was to my local butcher shop.A good butcher is the best resource that you could possibly have because, surprise, they know a lot about meat and if you are trying something that you have never attempted before they can guide you in regards to what cuts would work best, cooking times, and even proportions of fat to lean meat. I will say here that you should love your butcher, bring them coffee or a snack of some sort, because they are the ones who will let you know what is good and will 9 times out of 10 get a hold of whatever you want. On top of that they have the same manic glee in their eyes that I do when you tell them you want to try something out of the ordinary. What my butcher told me was the sausage that they make in house have about 10% fat in them, any less than that when you cook them they will come out dry and fairly unappetizing. We talked about casings. You can get synthetic, collagen based, or natural (basically intestines). Toby and I got the collagen based and the natural to see which we liked best. Finally we talked about cuts, my butcher extolled the virtue of pork shoulder because of the meat to fat ratio was just about perfect so you wouldn’t have to add any more fat to the grind. I added bacon to the mix anyway but that is just the kind of guy that I am. So away I go back to my tiny kitchen armed with 8ish pounds of pork shoulder, some double smoked bacon and a crazy smile on my face. Let get to it, It is time to make some sausage.

            So Toby and I started out not really knowing what the hell we were doing. We knew the basic principles: grind meat, stuff it into a casing. Here are some things we learned. After tasting go natural with the casings the collagen ones were okay but the pig guts tasted better and their texture was more appealing. For my weak stomached readers I am sorry if it sounds gross but it is the truth. Watch how long you marinate your pig and what you use as a marinade. If you use something like red wine and leave it over night that is all that you will taste in the sausage. We found that just a couple of hours of marinating in the fridge works great. I tend to lean towards a course grind for hot or sweet and a finer grind for your breakfast style but all of that is just preference. Finally prep what you can and be a little patient. We are not talking about industrial equipment here so take your time, have things ready to go and have some tunes going this is supposed to be fun after all. Now for the recipe...

Sausage Italian Style to the tune of Romeo and Juliet by the Dire Straits

4lbs Pork shoulder cut into cubes

4 strips of double smoked bacon cut into chunks

4 cloves of garlic minced

Salt and pepper

Hot

1cup red wine

3tbsp chilli flakes

1tbsp cayenne pepper

Fresh chillies (optional)                                                              

Heat to taste

Sweet

1cup white wine

3tbsp coarsely ground fennel seeds

In a large mixing bowl combine all of the ingredients and either you hot or sweet mix. Cover and let sit in your fridge for a couple of hours

Set up your grinder with the course plate and grind your meat. Watch for clogs and remove them.

Salt and pepper a little more.

Set up your stuffer using the largest tip. Feed your casing over the tip and puncture the end to allow any air to escape. Turn on your machine and feed in your ground meat. Gently guide the newly stuffed sausage away to allow more casing to fill. Once all of your grind is through twist into links alternating the direction that you twist.

There you have it: Homemade Italian sausage. It  is freaking delicious. Enjoy my lovely people