My turn, my turn :) Finally made some sausages.

[mr_magicfingers]

I've been wanting to do this for a while now and finally got round to it today. I decided to make some of Oddley's Cumberland sausages, from the recipe thread.

Here's how I got on.

First of all I made up the spice mix, enough for 10Kg of meat, though I'm only making 2Kg of sausages this time. With Cumberland's being my favourite sausage I figured I'll be making more soon enough.



Everything laid out, free-range pork from our fabulous local butcher, breadcrumbs from my home made bread and the spice mix.



My ebay Kenwood Chef that I stripped and renovated, fitted with a mincer, which made short work of mincing the par-frozen meat.



Everything minced and then ice-water, spices, breadcrumbs all mixed in and left to rest.



While that was resting for 10 mins I fried off a little bit to check the seasoning.



Called my girlfriend in to see what she thought. 'Let's cook up some more, right now' she said. I think that's a winner then.

My butcher had given me some ready soaked casings so they were fitted to the nozzle. These were cheap from ebay and didn't fit my machine but half an hour with a Dremel and some sandpaper soon fixed that



Next came the tricky bit, actually filling the tubes. This wasn't as bad as I expected, I kept the motor on low and used the push tube to feed the mix in slowly. First go wasn't quite as even as I'd like but it stayed together and a bit of manhandling made a half decent looking sausage.





I realised that this sausage would be way more than the two of us could eat in one sitting so I split it into two.






Then I carried on with the rest of the mix.





I ended up with a few rings. One is for tomorrow's breakfast, one's going to the freezer for next weekend and the others are going to my mum, girlfriend's mum and my brother.

The bits remaining in the mincer that wouldn't come all the way out were immediately fried up and munched with great pleasure.

All in all, this was great fun and they taste amazing. I'm thinking I might get a manual sausage stuffer for a bit more control and I've learned that different brands of herbs are very different in weights. Bart's dried sage is less dense than Schwartz for example.

Start of a fun hobby here, now to figure out the next few recipes to try. I'm very grateful for all the advice I've gleaned from the forum here.

Cheers,

Justin.

[johnfb]

Well done...they look great

[Damo the butcherman]

Well done they look awesome
Damo

[wheels]

They look great! Welcome to the forum.

Phil

[NCPaul]

When I first made sausage I was struck by how little grease was in the pan after I cooked a test patty compared to cooking a commercial sausage and the photo above shows this clearly. Well done and welcome to the forum. You can use a clean needle to remove the air pockets (hard to avoid when using a grinder as a stuffer). You are about to have a lot of fans when you share what you made.

[jimlard]

Looking good

[Big Guy]

I hate to rain on your parade but to me those sausages look way under stuffed, lots of air pockets , you might be able to pack then tighter once you link them. Too loose of a sausage is an invitation to tough casings. To make quality sausage you really should have a stuffer, stuffing through a grinder is not the best way to go.
Good job on your first attempt.

[mr_magicfingers]

I hate to rain on your parade but to me those sausages look way under stuffed, lots of air pockets , you might be able to pack then tighter once you link them. Too loose of a sausage is an invitation to tough casings. To make quality sausage you really should have a stuffer, stuffing through a grinder is not the best way to go.
Good job on your first attempt.

I think you're right, I noticed that they were a bit understuffed and did some strategic manhandling of the sausage to even it out. As someone else has said and I've discovered for myself, a grinder is not the ideal way to stuff sausages, however it cost $6 for the tubes instead of $100 for a stuffer, so not a bad way to figure out if I want to get more serious about this.

I'm going to get more serious about this hence mentioning I plan to get a better stuffer at some point soon. Hadn't thought of using a syringe to remove the air pockets, I might try that next time.

Cheers.

[HungryTassieExpat]

I'm going to get more serious about this hence mentioning I plan to get a better stuffer at some point soon. Hadn't thought of using a syringe to remove the air pockets, I might try that next time.

Cheers.

I have almost the same gear as you - Kitchenaid mixer with grinder and stuffer attachments - and after only my third batch am considering getting at least a proper stuffer.

The "plunger" that comes with the Kitchenaid attachment does not fit flush to the tube you put the meat in, and so the second grinding of the meat and stuffing does not go smoothly because it's difficult to push down the ground meat.

Stuffing the sausages with the right amount is also tricky for me - I tend to let some meat in and then back the sausage up so the end of the nozzle is inside the meat already in the skin and fill from there. That seems to help fill out the sausage more, but may be compensation for bad equipment.