Henry Rifle Forums

based on how well making our own bacon has turned out, we have decided to give making our own sausage a go .... step one has been to collect info .... to do so, drove over to Lee's Fresh Market -- https://leesfreshmarketnc.com/ -- where we purchase the pork belly for our bacon .... there I talked with one of their butchers about ordering the ground pork that we will use ... to make sure of the texture we purchased some of their mild and hot sausage .... picture below shows the price they charge for their fresh sausage .... that price is less than half the cost of the sausage we have been buying .... got home and fixed some of both and they are very good .... the price per pound of their ground pork should be something less than that of their fully prepared sausage .... so far, so good .... next step research is to determine the spices we want to use

comments/suggestions from those who have experience making their own sausage would be appreciated

Oh how I love all kinds of sausage. I'll be interested in how yours turns out. The bummer is that my doctor recently suggested that I stay away from bacon and sausage. My cholesterol is too high. As I said...Bummer.
Hope yours turns out to your liking.

hate to hear about the cholesterol issue ..... unsure when we will actually move from research to making it .... among other things we still have to figure out what kind of freezer containers we want to use ....as noted I do know that our sausage will have a much lower fat content

No doubt that I'll be cheating some along the way.

markiver54 wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 19, 2024 9:30 pm

Oh how I love all kinds of sausage. I'll be interested in how yours turns out. The bummer is that my doctor recently suggested that I stay away from bacon and sausage. My cholesterol is too high. As I said...Bummer.
Hope yours turns out to your liking.

I try to watch my bad fat intake but I do tend to cheat more than I should. I have improved, used to have bacon just about every morning, now I limit it to once or twice a week. I take Atorvastatin (Lipitor®)for my cholesterol and my last test results were good, good cholesterol was a little low but everything else was in the good range.

I also take fenofibrate to lower my triglycerides, they were very high before cutting down on fats and taking the fenofibrate. Doctor said I would probably develop pancreatitis if I didn't get it down.

I remember the old days when I could eat as much of whatever I wanted and would stay at my high school weight of 150. I couldn't gain weight even if I tried, that stopped when I hit 50.

dave77 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 20, 2024 2:39 am

I remember the old days when I could eat as much of whatever I wanted and would stay at my high school weight of 150. I couldn't gain weight even if I tried, that stopped when I hit 50.

Sounds identical to my past. It used to amaze friends and family how much this skinny guy could put down and never gained an ounce. Those were the days. Age happened.

markiver54 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 20, 2024 9:15 am

Sounds identical to my past.

sounds identical to many of our past

Had my first go at making sausage last year, I just went with a couple of commercial sausage spice mixes to keep it simple.
Used all the trimmings from a couple of lambs that I had butchered which ended up about 12lbs worth. More than enough for a first attempt.
Run through my mincer twice and then a third time as I used the mincer to fill the casings.
You need to keep everything icy cold, I would put everything into the freezer, including the mincer between passes and found the mince actually processes better if it is borderline frozen.
I went with pig gut casings as I wanted a thicker sausage, happy enough with how they turned out. I will have another go and do a larger batch when we get a bit of colder weather.

I've been making my sausage for years, Kielbasa, Italian, brats, venison and breakfast both links and bulk. usually buy pork shoulder @ costco, good quality and price, (I shoot the venison). Don't buy commercial seasoning mixes, I have a book on sausage making that has recipes for about 100 different types of sausage and buy what I need fresh. I will read the different recipes for say brats, then come up with my own.
Things I have learned; use fresh garlic not the stuff in a jar, fresh ground pepper, coarse salt and fresh good quality spices and herbs, keep the meat COLD and have sharp knives when cutting meat for the grinder. I've like to use a sausage stuffer rather than a grinder. Fill the stuffer with 5# of meat and casing on the horn lots o" sausage
Experiment have fun

info appreciated .... at this point we don't anticipate grinding our sausage or stuffing it in casings .... we will purchase the ground pork and add our on seasonings .... we may freeze it in some type of pound container .... we are still working out these and other issues

as an experiment we cooked a large patty (roughly 4" diameter and 1" thick) of the sausage purchased in post 1 .... to us the results shown in the pictures below were impressive .... texture and taste were fine .... virtually NO shrinkage .... the last picture shows a 1TBS measuring spoon with all grease rendered .... yep, less than 1/4 of a TBS rendered from a large patty .... this alone is a strong motivator to make our own

Wow, that looks tasty. Crumble it up into some eggs add some cheese and yum!

Hatchdog wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 21, 2024 10:20 am

Wow, that looks tasty. Crumble it up into some eggs add some cheese and yum!

I pretty much did that this morning .... had fried eggs covered with shredded cheese and that patty of sausage on the side ...

early in our research on making sausage we realized that right now we weren't interested in stuffing sausage into casings to produce links of sausage .... for us forming sausages into patties is a much more attractive option .... realizing that we will be making runs that could involve a considerable number of patties .... we found that there are bunches off options available and as usual, come can be expensive .... we settled on the Burger Master Press & Freezer .... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XHI1AGA?re ... tails&th=1 .... it is capable of turning 2 pounds of ground meat into 8 quarter pound patties .... it will work with pork, beef, chicken, or any other ground meat .... we are considering purchasing 5 which will allow us to process 10 pounds at a setting .... should we choose to do so we could mix up 10 pounds, fill the press, freeze it overnight .... the next day we should be able to empty the molds and repeat that process .... we often purchase bulk packs of hamburger at Sam's and fully intend to turn it into individual patties .... that should come in handy

this morning we purchased enough 93/7 hamburger to test one of our new burger presses .... looking forward to seeing if it lives up to the hype

Maureen bought two 4.5 lb bulk packs of 97/3 hamburger from Walmart .... each pack filled 2 Burger Presses with a pound of hamburger left over ..... washing/drying them was simple .... sealing the lid to the bottom requires a touch that wasn't hard to master ..... we learned that the top shelf in our camper's freezer can accommodate 4 presses ..... we hope they will freeze overnight so that we can work through the next step of vacuum sealing the patties .... so far, so good

Burger Press performs as advertised .... shown below are 32 quarter pound hamburger patties that have been vacuum packed and put into the freezer .....

lessons learned :

preforms pretty much as advertised

it does take some effort to get the burgers out of the forms, with practice it gets much easier

need to wear gloves when handling the frozen patties