Greetings everybody,
It is a rainy day here in eastern Ontario so we could not get out to work in the garden so we decided instead to make sausages.
We had a bag of venison in the freezer that needed to be used up so we combined that with the last of the bacon from the pig we had ordered last year.
Frank put all the meat through the grinder attachment on my KitchenAid stand mixer. It occurred to me after we had begun this process that perhaps this would make a good blog post so we ran to get the camera and started taking photos.
After the meat is all ground we added the herbs and spices and mixed it in really well.
Then we have to deal with the sausage casings. We do not like the "fake" casings. We like to use real hog or sheep casings. If you are the squeamish type you may not like to know that basically they are the animals intestines. They are thoroughly clean and I pick them up at the butcher shop in my nearest town.
When you get them home you soak them in some warm water with a wee bit of vinegar added. It makes them nice and soft and pliable.
The next step is to wash them. This is a little bit like filling a water balloon.
First of all you have to find the end and then get it open.
I fit the end over a funnel so I can run the water through the funnel and give the insides a thorough washing out. It is a little bit like making water sausages. :)
After that we fit the casings on the sausage stuffer attachment on the mixer. They generally slide on pretty easily.
At this point Frank begins to put the meat into the hopper and push it through the mixer with a plunger. I handle the casings and gently move them along the funnel as the sausage meat begins to fill them. It does not take all that long to get the hang of it. When you have filled the length of casing (we never make it more than 4 feet long), then you twist them into individual sausages links.
We managed to make quite a nice pile of sausages. Some we gave away to friends as they all need to be cooked as the meat was previously frozen. There is still far too much for us to eat in one sitting but we will cook all of it tonight and then we can freeze the cooked sausages for later use.
That is it for me for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I would love to know if you have had a chance to try sausage making for yourself. Leave me a comment. Cheers.
~ Melanie ~
It is a rainy day here in eastern Ontario so we could not get out to work in the garden so we decided instead to make sausages.
We had a bag of venison in the freezer that needed to be used up so we combined that with the last of the bacon from the pig we had ordered last year.
Frank put all the meat through the grinder attachment on my KitchenAid stand mixer. It occurred to me after we had begun this process that perhaps this would make a good blog post so we ran to get the camera and started taking photos.
After the meat is all ground we added the herbs and spices and mixed it in really well.
Then we have to deal with the sausage casings. We do not like the "fake" casings. We like to use real hog or sheep casings. If you are the squeamish type you may not like to know that basically they are the animals intestines. They are thoroughly clean and I pick them up at the butcher shop in my nearest town.
When you get them home you soak them in some warm water with a wee bit of vinegar added. It makes them nice and soft and pliable.
The next step is to wash them. This is a little bit like filling a water balloon.
First of all you have to find the end and then get it open.
After that we fit the casings on the sausage stuffer attachment on the mixer. They generally slide on pretty easily.
At this point Frank begins to put the meat into the hopper and push it through the mixer with a plunger. I handle the casings and gently move them along the funnel as the sausage meat begins to fill them. It does not take all that long to get the hang of it. When you have filled the length of casing (we never make it more than 4 feet long), then you twist them into individual sausages links.
We managed to make quite a nice pile of sausages. Some we gave away to friends as they all need to be cooked as the meat was previously frozen. There is still far too much for us to eat in one sitting but we will cook all of it tonight and then we can freeze the cooked sausages for later use.
That is it for me for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I would love to know if you have had a chance to try sausage making for yourself. Leave me a comment. Cheers.
~ Melanie ~
Great post Melanie! Robin and I hope to try our hand at sausages as well.
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