first attempt at pork sausage with hog casings
Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2017 4:51 pm
I made some turkey sausage about 6 months ago using a Dakota stuffer with mixed results, so:
I just bought a grinder/stuffer attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer and found a couple recipes for pork sausage (2 pounds). I had a couple problems and I was wondering about a few things too:
Problems:
1) The Kitchen Aid grinder attachment really struggled (almost bogging down), with the pork butt. I thought there was some hide or skin that it was binding up on. I know from using my old cast iron hand crank grinder that you can't grind skins (turkey). So that's what I used and it seemed to work.
2) I went back to the Kichen Aid attachment to stuff the sausage and the sliding on of the natural hog casing to the horn was really a chore. It would not slide on very easy like it does in the YT videos I watched. I think maybe I didn't rinse out the insides of the casings enough. They soaked for over an hour. I even tried taking the horn off, putting some water into it with the casing still attached, then reattaching the horn, let the water go back into the horn while holding up the other end of the casing. As a result the sausage was packed really tight. I couldn't make any links out of it. (only made about 2 feet).
Questions:
1) Can I just put the unused casings back in the bag and store them in the fridge? I only soaked 2 strands. I used about 1/2 of the first one since I only did 2 pounds.
2) The book I was reading (Rytek Kutas) said not to use iodized salt to store the casings. I used some pink sea salt, since that's all I have.
3) I have about 10 pounds of venison in the freezer someone gave me over a year ago. I hope it's still good. I was thinking about just sawing it in about 4 pieces so it would thaw out faster.
I just bought a grinder/stuffer attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer and found a couple recipes for pork sausage (2 pounds). I had a couple problems and I was wondering about a few things too:
Problems:
1) The Kitchen Aid grinder attachment really struggled (almost bogging down), with the pork butt. I thought there was some hide or skin that it was binding up on. I know from using my old cast iron hand crank grinder that you can't grind skins (turkey). So that's what I used and it seemed to work.
2) I went back to the Kichen Aid attachment to stuff the sausage and the sliding on of the natural hog casing to the horn was really a chore. It would not slide on very easy like it does in the YT videos I watched. I think maybe I didn't rinse out the insides of the casings enough. They soaked for over an hour. I even tried taking the horn off, putting some water into it with the casing still attached, then reattaching the horn, let the water go back into the horn while holding up the other end of the casing. As a result the sausage was packed really tight. I couldn't make any links out of it. (only made about 2 feet).
Questions:
1) Can I just put the unused casings back in the bag and store them in the fridge? I only soaked 2 strands. I used about 1/2 of the first one since I only did 2 pounds.
2) The book I was reading (Rytek Kutas) said not to use iodized salt to store the casings. I used some pink sea salt, since that's all I have.
3) I have about 10 pounds of venison in the freezer someone gave me over a year ago. I hope it's still good. I was thinking about just sawing it in about 4 pieces so it would thaw out faster.