Clean up your dirty minds, people.
Went to my buddy's place yesterday, his wife and kids were at the zoo, and we had clearance to use the kitchen for sausage making. I've been waiting months for him to get some time free - last time we did this was Jan 1st. <sigh> Hopefully it won't be this long to do it again. lol
We had some ground meat left over from our last go-round, about 20 lbs sealed up and frozen. I bought 40 lbs of boneless, skinless chikkin thighs, and had 30-35 lbs of boneless pork butts I'd previously bought, and he threw in a Choice grade brisket he'd had frozen for some time.
Started off cubing up the brisket and about 16lbs or so of the pork butt we'd thawed, the other two butts stayed in the freezer. Also pulled out the chikkin thighs and got maybe 20lbs of them spread out on racks and into the freezer to solidify some to facilitate grinding. The rest of the chikkin just got frozen, also for future use.
Collected a number of recipes, decided we were going to do several types of sausage - ended up a lot more work than we expected. Not the grinding, his 1HP MEAT! Your Maker grinder makes short work of just about anything. Here's a pic of him using his kukri to chop up some solid frozen leftover beef fat from a previous brisket trimming session to mix in with the pork. The pork butts, being heavily trimmed from Costco and deboned, looked pretty lean, I'm guessing 90/10 or worse, so we added in a bunch of beef fat to make up the mix.
The fat chopping session:
The MEAT! Your Maker grinder handled that frozen beef fat like it was nothing. Awesome machine!
The pork mix before adding the fat - looks pretty lean.
The ground up fat. Yummy!
We used the coarse die for everything yesterday, it's probably about 3/8" or so. We ran the meat through it twice (except the chikkin), but the fat only once. We've had good luck with that.
This is the full ground packer brisket on the left. It had a much better fat-to-lean ratio than the pork did (before adding the beef fat in with it).
We ended up just diving it all into batches and mixing seasonings in to make the different types of sausage we planned, and that took a lot of time, going back and forth to the freezers to try to keep everything cold, etc. Here's what we ended up with (approximately):
Chikkin sausage - this is a 'modified' version of the 2 Guys and a Cooler Italian Chicken Basil sausage. I didn't have enough basil, and we wanted more fat in the chikkin, as the boneless, skinless thighs didn't have enough. So I added in some chunks of pork belly I'd saved up that were trimmings from making bacon and were mostly fat. Probably could have used a LITTLE more fat, but it came out pretty good. I didn't have any fresh basil, so used all my dried basil, which wasn't enough, and made up the rest with a generic dried 'Italian' seasoning he had in the cabinet. I need to order some more basil... also not quite enough parm, but we had maybe 2/3 of what their recipe called for. Upped the garlic just a bit. Almost or around 20 lbs of chikkin, threw in maybe a pound and a half of bacon in the grind and close to a pound of pork belly. More on the chikkin sausage in the next post. Total, probably 22 pounds, plus or minus.
Bratwurst - all pork, from the batch we added the beef fat in with. Around... 12 pounds or so in total (5700 grams). I modified a recipe I found in a sausage group on FB and the test patty we fried up was really good. Details here in my post on the thread looking for a bratwurst recipe. Recipe here for sharing, as well. We didn't use beer or milk powder in this batch - he doesn't like using those things. Also no caraway, but roughly doubled the marjoram amount in the recipe.
All-beef Texas Hot Links - that entire brisket went into this. So, something like 16-18 lbs, I didn't look at the label, but it was a biggish brisket. Used the 2 Guys and a Cooler recipe found here, we toned down the cayenne and red pepper, though, as last time we made it, it was toned down and still a little hot for most of our respective families. I think I did about 1/3 the cayenne and 1/2 the red pepper this time. Also no beer n this one (I drank it during the process, just to try to honor the recipe as much as I was able).
Pork-only kielbasa - well, pork with beef fat, the remainder of the mix I used for the bratwurst above. I wanted to try a pork-only kielbasa, as that was the first sausage I made and was blown away by it. Subsequent pork/beef 50/50 was still excellent, but to me it wasn't quite as good. About 6lbs of this or so.
50/50 pork/beef kielbasa - my buddy was enamored of this one we made together, and we used all the meat we had previously ground and frozen. I think it was around 8700g, so like 19 lbs. Recipe for both of these kielbasa style sausages here:
I upped the mustard powder a bit and added in about an equal amount of mustard seed, I think.
I'll get to the chikkin in the next post, as I took most of this home, and spent this morning casing up the chikkin.
So, totals:
~20lbs Italian chikkin bacon parmesan
19lbs pork/beef kielbasa
6lbs pork only kielbasa
12lbs German bratwurst
18lbs all-beef Texas hot links
Overall, I have a lot of casing up to do. I need to order some more hog casings, I'm already running low.
Next post...
Went to my buddy's place yesterday, his wife and kids were at the zoo, and we had clearance to use the kitchen for sausage making. I've been waiting months for him to get some time free - last time we did this was Jan 1st. <sigh> Hopefully it won't be this long to do it again. lol
We had some ground meat left over from our last go-round, about 20 lbs sealed up and frozen. I bought 40 lbs of boneless, skinless chikkin thighs, and had 30-35 lbs of boneless pork butts I'd previously bought, and he threw in a Choice grade brisket he'd had frozen for some time.
Started off cubing up the brisket and about 16lbs or so of the pork butt we'd thawed, the other two butts stayed in the freezer. Also pulled out the chikkin thighs and got maybe 20lbs of them spread out on racks and into the freezer to solidify some to facilitate grinding. The rest of the chikkin just got frozen, also for future use.
Collected a number of recipes, decided we were going to do several types of sausage - ended up a lot more work than we expected. Not the grinding, his 1HP MEAT! Your Maker grinder makes short work of just about anything. Here's a pic of him using his kukri to chop up some solid frozen leftover beef fat from a previous brisket trimming session to mix in with the pork. The pork butts, being heavily trimmed from Costco and deboned, looked pretty lean, I'm guessing 90/10 or worse, so we added in a bunch of beef fat to make up the mix.
The fat chopping session:
The MEAT! Your Maker grinder handled that frozen beef fat like it was nothing. Awesome machine!
The pork mix before adding the fat - looks pretty lean.
The ground up fat. Yummy!
We used the coarse die for everything yesterday, it's probably about 3/8" or so. We ran the meat through it twice (except the chikkin), but the fat only once. We've had good luck with that.
This is the full ground packer brisket on the left. It had a much better fat-to-lean ratio than the pork did (before adding the beef fat in with it).
We ended up just diving it all into batches and mixing seasonings in to make the different types of sausage we planned, and that took a lot of time, going back and forth to the freezers to try to keep everything cold, etc. Here's what we ended up with (approximately):
Chikkin sausage - this is a 'modified' version of the 2 Guys and a Cooler Italian Chicken Basil sausage. I didn't have enough basil, and we wanted more fat in the chikkin, as the boneless, skinless thighs didn't have enough. So I added in some chunks of pork belly I'd saved up that were trimmings from making bacon and were mostly fat. Probably could have used a LITTLE more fat, but it came out pretty good. I didn't have any fresh basil, so used all my dried basil, which wasn't enough, and made up the rest with a generic dried 'Italian' seasoning he had in the cabinet. I need to order some more basil... also not quite enough parm, but we had maybe 2/3 of what their recipe called for. Upped the garlic just a bit. Almost or around 20 lbs of chikkin, threw in maybe a pound and a half of bacon in the grind and close to a pound of pork belly. More on the chikkin sausage in the next post. Total, probably 22 pounds, plus or minus.
Bratwurst - all pork, from the batch we added the beef fat in with. Around... 12 pounds or so in total (5700 grams). I modified a recipe I found in a sausage group on FB and the test patty we fried up was really good. Details here in my post on the thread looking for a bratwurst recipe. Recipe here for sharing, as well. We didn't use beer or milk powder in this batch - he doesn't like using those things. Also no caraway, but roughly doubled the marjoram amount in the recipe.
All-beef Texas Hot Links - that entire brisket went into this. So, something like 16-18 lbs, I didn't look at the label, but it was a biggish brisket. Used the 2 Guys and a Cooler recipe found here, we toned down the cayenne and red pepper, though, as last time we made it, it was toned down and still a little hot for most of our respective families. I think I did about 1/3 the cayenne and 1/2 the red pepper this time. Also no beer n this one (I drank it during the process, just to try to honor the recipe as much as I was able).
Pork-only kielbasa - well, pork with beef fat, the remainder of the mix I used for the bratwurst above. I wanted to try a pork-only kielbasa, as that was the first sausage I made and was blown away by it. Subsequent pork/beef 50/50 was still excellent, but to me it wasn't quite as good. About 6lbs of this or so.
50/50 pork/beef kielbasa - my buddy was enamored of this one we made together, and we used all the meat we had previously ground and frozen. I think it was around 8700g, so like 19 lbs. Recipe for both of these kielbasa style sausages here:
I upped the mustard powder a bit and added in about an equal amount of mustard seed, I think.
I'll get to the chikkin in the next post, as I took most of this home, and spent this morning casing up the chikkin.
So, totals:
~20lbs Italian chikkin bacon parmesan
19lbs pork/beef kielbasa
6lbs pork only kielbasa
12lbs German bratwurst
18lbs all-beef Texas hot links
Overall, I have a lot of casing up to do. I need to order some more hog casings, I'm already running low.
Next post...
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