Homemade Sausage

True to the name of this blog, Saturday was a real Family Food Adventure. We made sausage from scratch at Sean & Lucy's house. Sean helped carry in all the supplies from my car, Connor was the official photographer, Renee was the supervisor and Dad, Lucy, Hannah, Hannah's friend Kate and myself were the sausage makers. Three generations participated. Having the kids involved made it a very special day. Many of my fondest memories growing up took place in the kitchen. Helping Dad with Sunday roast beef dinner, watching Chris make hot dogs and brownies from a box and often with Mrs. Doiron baking a cake. Hannah, Kate and Connor were all quite fascinated with the whole process of making the sausage. Kate was so enthralled that when Hannah left for hockey practice she asked if she could stay and continue helping. I hope we created some timeless memories for them.




Sausage making isn't as pleasant as baking a cake. There is raw meat involved and even worse are the hog casings. They are preserved in salt and have an unpleasant odour. The first order of business is untangling them and putting aside what you will need for the amount of meat you have. We had approx 30lbs. Second you rinse the salt off the casings and run water through them to rinse them out leaving the beginning of each casing hanging over the side of a bowl so you don't lose it. Third you slide the casing on to the tube which will then be attached to the sausage stuffer. Once all the casings are prepared it is time to prepare the meat.




We made 3 flavours. Breakfast sausage, white wine and shallot and a hot paprika style sausage. The meat is placed in a large mixing bowl and the spices and other ingredients are added to it. It then needs to be mixed vigorously so that the meat and its fat break down some. The mixture is then loaded into to the sausage stuffer and packed in firmly so as to eliminate as much air as possible. Now you are ready to stuff. At this point Hannah and Kate took turns turning the crank. As the very first sausage began to appear Kate exclaimed "this is not as disturbing as I thought it would be". Needless to say she had us all laughing. Our first round of sausage were too large and we lost 4 of them when their casings burst open. We then switched to a small tube and we were on a roll soon enough. We managed to make approx 105 sausage. The breakfast and the white wine & shallot were flavourful but the paprika one was bland. We were too conservative with both the paprika, chilies and the salt. We will have to work on improving this one next time. I think we are all hooked on homemade sausage and are looking forward to the next round which we will plan for the spring.




Here is the ingredient list for the Breakfast sausage which was in the cook book I received at Christmas.

5 lbs of ground pork shoulder with extra fat
1/2 cup of maple syrup
2 t salt
1/2 t dried sage leaves
1/2 t dried thyme
1/2 t ground black pepper
1/4 t ground allspice
4 feet small hog casings

Keep in mind you can always make these sausage and form them into patties rather than stuff them into casings.