www.sausagemaking.org

Following on from my first post about the Lidl mincer/sausage maker, I am now researching manual stuffers.

What started out as a budget exercise suddenly looks expensive.
Advice here says vertical stuffer, not horizontal.

£100 for a vertical stuffer?
http://www.sausagemaking.org/acatalog/Fully_Stainless_Hobby_Stuffer.html
This is for a "Hobby" stuffer - I suppose a fair description of what I am getting into but quite big money.

Amazon lists several verticals which are around the £120 mark.

Alternatively there is the Lakeland horizontal stuffer
http://www.lakeland.co.uk/71278/Home-Made-Sausage-Maker
or similar (very similar) from Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Craft-KCHMSAUSAGE-Sausage-Maker/dp/B00BJ47AI6/

These are under £25.

So can you get acceptable results from a horizontal stuffer when doing small batches (say under 5 kg mix), or would this be money wasted?
Is the Lakeland (or similar) a step up from a sausage attachment for a mincer?

Finally, are sausage filling funnels of a standard design?
The one from the Lidl mincer is tapered and so not good for collagen casings.
The Lidl tube is 58.66mm external diameter (according to my digital callipers) so presumably this is "size 5" as shown in
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Size-Sausage-Stuffing-Attachment-Making/dp/B00BM5H1F4
which does look as though it might fit.

So my options seem to be:

(1) Spend around £100 (or more) on a vertical stuffer.

(2) Spend around £25 (or less) on a horizontal stuffer.

(3) Buy some extra tubes for my mincer/stuffer to make using collagen casings easier.

What does the team think?

I would vote for option 1. This hobby is like many others in that there is an initial expense to get suitable equipment. The stuffer should last for years and years and will make sausage making a world easier. Sometimes stuffers pop up used on ebay, craigslist or freecycle type sites.

I'd go for this one:

http://www.sausagemaking.org/acatalog/P ... uffer.html

...and get a 10mm tube for it as well.

Phil

Thanks guys/gals.

I was hoping to make a few runs of budget sausages to confirm that this was a long term hobby and not just a rash moment.

£120 does feel like a very rash moment.

I understand the logic of "buy quality - it will last for years" but I keep thinking that if I give up after making 120 sausages then that has been £1 a sausage (plus filling and casing).

That's perfectly reasonable. Here's a few sausages that you could make and leave in bulk form - Italian, such as you would use on pizza or in lasagna, Mexican chorizo for tacos, Irish white pudding can be wrapped in cling film, poached and later sliced, a related sausage would be Lorne which in cooked in a pan, cevapi are formed into the shape of a small sausage by hand and are made with beef and lamb. You could also make breakfast sausage and form it into patties, I use something like this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/KitchenArt-Adj ... atty+press
This would also get you started in making your own hamburgers just in time for Summer.

For a vey cheap sausage filler/stuffer and a handy thing to use for small amounts of sausage making is this little contraption, usually sold every year in Lidl.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11317&hilit=+lidl

It holds about 350g of sausage meat and is easy to fill. Mine cost less the £4.00 and it will take normal size sausage nozzles to make filling easier. Although I have a full size stuffer, I still use this when trying out recipes. I also use it every time I make black puddings as its a lot easier than using a funnel.

Argh!

Just missed it - offer finished on the 8th.

Will have a quick look in case they have any left.

A dedicated stuffer makes the world of difference. I used to use my mincer/stuffer when starting out, but more often than not the sausages were rather loose when you cut in to them. The vertical stuffer I bought, although massively overkill with a 7L capacity, has made a huge difference.

Horizontal stuffers are fine, but vertical stuffers are recommended if you ever branch out into things like black pudding.

kil2k wrote:Horizontal stuffers are fine, but vertical stuffers are recommended if you ever branch out into things like black pudding.

Oh yes indeed - and I have 200 onions growing in the garden for a megabatch of Morcilla de Cebolla so without the right kit it can get very messy...

I need to give it another go at some point, but I'm still scarred after my last attempt.

Kil2k - An onion based morcilla mix is much less runny than a traditional UK BP - it's actually quite possible to stuff them by hand, so much less 'risky' perhaps than some. Certainly worth trying again.

The sausage filler that Wheels referred to is for sale in Australia as well. On Ebay here usually for sale between AUD $ 120.00 to $ 133.50.including free freight from some dealers. These fillers are all Chinese made. Our dollar used to be 51p. a bit more now, but you do your sums, a big difference in margins.
Jan.

I bought this stuffer on ebay and while it isn't perfect it isn't bad. Under £40.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Manual-Stainl ... 465368874a

The downsides are as follows:-
The tightening nut is plastic and I couldn't tighten the clamp properly without using a set of pliers (though that worked fine).

The sausage tended to "back-flow" very slightly when stuffing - in as much that the meat would ooze up above the plunger (I had about 75% filled the reservoir)

The tube fitting to the unit is a bayonet type fixing and although it didn't look or feel very secure it did actually function quite well.

Cleaning is a bit tricky as the plunger doesn't completely come out of the tube.

I have pointed out the bad points - the good thing about it is that first time of using I produced a batch of 5lb of sausage that people were asking me for some to take home! I had previously only used a stuffing tube on my mincer and they just weren't great.

I will probably upgrade to a better stuffer down the line - but for a relatively inexpensive stuffer I am quite happy!

Cheers

John

I am not sure what's all out there, but just wanted to chirp in with one thing:
Try and get stainless steel stuffer tubes. They are so much easier to work with than the plastic ones (at least I think so )

badjak wrote:I am not sure what's all out there, but just wanted to chirp in with one thing:
Try and get stainless steel stuffer tubes. They are so much easier to work with than the plastic ones (at least I think so )

True, they're so much easier.

Phil