Making your own sausage is easy with the right equipment. We used our Kitchen Aid 5 quart mixer with the meat grinder attachment and a sausage stuffer accessory. I make a lot of on the spot chicken breakfast sausage now days without the casing. You can do the same with any of these recipes. Just buy some fresh ground meat, season it, shape it and cook it. That simple. And it taste better than anything that’s been setting in the meat counter for who knows how long.
Natural pork sausage casing is available anywhere they make sausage. I only buy casing that’s preserved in liquid. Dry salted casing has a tough texture once it’s reconstituted. I never know how much to buy because it’s hard to meassure the length of each casing. Tell the butcher how many pounds of meat you have and he’ll know how much to sell you. The casing we used for 15 combined pounds of meat cost us 4.00.
We are going to give you recipes for three different kinds of sausage. Italian made with pork shoulder, spicy breakfast made with chicken thighs and pheasant made from a hunting trip that Kellies boyfriend Josh went on.
Note: All sausage recipes have 1 tablespoon of kosher salt per pound of ground meat. If you are using table salt use 2 teaspoons per pound of ground meat. I know that some of you will want to adjust the spices to personalize these sausages. If you do, cook a little patty of the sausage mixture in a frying pan and taste it before stuffing the casing or serving it un-cased. You can always add more seasoning but you can’t take it out.
Italian Sausage
I love the fennel flavor in these Italian sausages. It reminds me of the sausages you can get from City Meats in San Francisco. The best part of making your own is that they are made from one fresh piece of meat. The pork sausage you get from your local sausage monger comes from pork scraps that were processed weeks ago. There are two way’s that butchers can get those scraps. They can buy them from a processing plant already bagged and rated for fat content. Or, they can save their own scraps until they have enough to make sausage with. Ether way, the scraps have too much time on them to taste good.
Mix these ingredients.
3 lbs of ground pork shoulder
½ cup of ice water
Mix these ingredients.
Note: Pre-measure the spices before pulling the ground meat out of the fridge. This will help to keep the sausage mixture cold. Once you have blended in the spices, place bowl back in the refrigerator until your ready to stuff the casings.
3 tablespoon of kosher salt
3 teaspoons whole fennel seed
3 teaspoons of ground fennel seed
3 teaspoons finley chopped rosemary
1 teaspoon of fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of chipolata red pepper powder.
Note: I used one that’s 35.000 on the
scoville heat scale
Spicy Chicken Breakfast Sausage
What makes these “breakfast sausages”? It’s the brown sugar and low heat smoking. Smoke these at 180 degrees for about 6 hours or until they have an internal temperature of 160 degrees. They still taste great with out the smoking process because of the smoked paprika. I slice them in ½” thick pieces and fry them like bacon. They brown beautifully and have a smoky flavor with one-third the fat. That reminds me, I need to take one out of the freezer for tomorrows breakfast.
Mix these ingredients.
3 Lbs of ground chicken thighs
½ cup of ice water
Mix these ingredients.
Note: Pre-measure the spices before pulling the ground meat out of the fridge. This will help to keep the sausage mixture cold. Once you have blended in the spices, place bowl back in the refrigerator until your ready to stuff the casings.
3 tablespoons of kosher salt
3 tablespoons of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of smoked paprika
3 teaspoons ground sage
2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
2 teaspoon of chipolata red pepper powder.
Note: I use one that’s 35.000 on the scoville
heat scale
Pheasant Sausage
Pheasant is a very lean meat and needs added fat when making sausage out of it. We are going to use bacon but pancetta or pork fat will work. It cooks very fast so I recommend pulling it off the grill at an internal temperature of 140 degrees.
3 lbs of ground Pheasant
2 pounds of bacon ground into the Pheasant
1/2 cup of ice water
Mix these ingredients
Note: Pre-measure the spices before pulling the ground meat out of the fridge. This will help to keep the sausage mixture cold. Once you have blended in the spices, place bowl back in the refrigerator until your ready to stuff the casings.
4 teaspoons of kosher salt
3 teaspoons of finely chopped thyme
4 tablespoons of finely chopped jalapeno peppers
6 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots
4 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley
2 teaspoons of fresh ground pepper
Soft Rolls
We are making our own soft rolls this time but there are great soft rolls out there. It’s not something we normally do but it’s a lot of fun. This recipe is very basic if you have one that works for you, go for it. What we’re after is a soft roll and the best way to assure that is to make wet dough using milk instead of water. You can replace the Olive Oil with butter if you like but I like the taste of OO in bread.
Mix these ingredients
2 cups of warm 2% fat milk
2-packs of dry active yeast
3 tablespoons Olive Oil
Note: You want the milk to be at 115 degrees or just warm to the touch.
Mix these ingredients
4 cups of flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
You know you have wet dough when it sticks to the sides of the mixing bowl. Keep in mind that kneading and shaping the dough adds more flour so keep it sticky.
Place dough in a large oiled bowl and let it double then punch it down and then let it double again and punch it down again before moving onto shaping
Size the rolls into 5oz portions then kneed into rolls and place on lightly oiled baking sheets.
Let the dough rise until it doubles in size then bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until they are as brown as the ones in the picture.
Making the Sausage and Pepper Sandwiches
Well, we got rained out. It was suppose to be a nice day but they were wrong…again. We cooked the sausages in our wood stove over some hardwood lump coal. This is a close second to cooking them with an unprocessed hard wood. I have plenty in the freezer so we can make more outside on the pit when the weather turns.
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