How to make pork sausage from scratch. Oh, and Happy New Year!

We raised four pigs this year.  Raised on whey from cheese making, lush pasture, and organic grain.  Raised with my kids as playmates.  (Check out our video if you haven't yet seen what they do together). It doesn't get better than that.  
In the Marblemount Homestead household, New Year's Day seems to be reserved for sausage making.  I don't know why... it's not about resolutions of any kind.  We just do it then.

The day before I made 3 quarts of lard. I have a tutorial on how to render lard here. Have you ever made pie crust with lard? You should. It's the best.

This year, we made Maple Breakfast, Caraway, and Kielbasa sausage from a total of 26 pounds of ground pork. Some of it was already ground by the butcher (yes, we do hire out the job of butchering and cutting up our pigs), and some of it was still in large chunks that we had to cut off in pieces.

You need a meat grinder.  We have a meat grinder like this, and it has served us very well.  It helps to have the meat partially frozen when you feed it into the grinder.  It works better that way, and you don't want the fat to melt while grinding.
Here is Steve assembling the grinder.

Now comes grinding.  Steve cut chunks of meat, and I stuffed them in the grinder.

Then it's time to mix your spices.  I will give you the recipes for our three kinds of sausage at the end of this post.

Now comes the fun part.  Throw the spices into the ground meat, and mix with your hands.  It's a very... interesting feeling.

Instead of stuffing the meat into casings to make your typical sausage, we just froze it in individual one-pound packages.  However, if you want to make sausage with casings, you need a grinder with a stuffing attachment and just follow the directions in the manual.

If you freeze the sausage as patties, it's great to use a vacuum sealer to suck all the air out of the packages.  

We fry up some sausage patties for lunch, together with my very own Sauerkraut I had made a few months ago.

I sautee and onion and an apple in coconut oil, add a splash of white wine after they are soft, and then throw in the Sauerkraut.  Add a bay leaf and caraway seeds.  Next, fry up your sausages.  Lunch was a hit.

Here are the recipes I used:

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE:

10 pounds of ground pork

5 Tablespoons salt

1 Tablespoon ground pepper

2 Tablespoons rubbed sage (I didn't have sage, so I left it out)

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon thyme

1 pint of water

If I make this again, I would triple the amount of spices (except salt, pepper and water).

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CARAWAY SAUSAGE:

5 pounds ground pork

3/4 cup cold white wine

3 Tablespoons caraway seeds

1 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 cup minced onions

4 Tablespoons maple syrup

4 Tablespoons salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons allspice

I put everything except the meat in my Cuisinart to chop the onions and mix the spices in.

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KIELBASA SAUSAGE:

5 pounds ground pork

1/2 cup water

8 cloves fresh garlic (run it through a garlic press)

2 teaspoons black pepper

4 teaspoons salt

3 teaspoons majoram

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I will leave you with images from Luke.  This ten year old son of mine is turning into a fine, male specimen.  The other night, he made us all baked apples for dessert.  Today, he asked if he could bicycle to the river to go fishing by himself.  He has never done this before, but we let him.  A kid who shows that much initiative and enthusiasm deserves to have some freedom, don't you think?

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