Homemade Breakfast Sausage

10 pounds of homemade pork breakfast sausage, ground and stuffed by yours truly and his Sweet Lady Wife. I used my new VacMaster Pro305 to vacuum bag these up in pairs for freezing.

One of the great things about making your own sausage (aside from the significant money savings) is that you can tailor the flavor to your liking.  For example, I put in less pepper than you would normally find in breakfast sausage.

The Tools

I have an LEM #8 Meat Grinder.  Among the sausage-making cognoscenti this is considered a small grinder but to me it's big.  It's overkill for this job but I have the 'Tool Time Tim' gene. I have successfully ground pork using just one of those hand-crank grinders that clamps to the counter.

I have this sausage stuffer purchased from SausageMaker.com. It is the smallest sausage stuffer they offer. My 'Tool TIme Tim' gene keeps wanting me to get one of the big ones but in reality this one is perfect.  It holds five pounds of ground pork.

When I make sausage my Sweet Lady Wife and I work together.  She turns the cranks and I feed the sausage into the casings.

Casings

I order casings from the Syracuse Casing Company. I prefer nice big fat sausage (about the size of bratwurst or Italian sausage so I get the 32/23mm North American Hog Casings, Dry Salt Pack Tubed.  

Seasonings

SausageMania.com has a great spreadsheet you can download. It contains recipes for several sausage varieties and it will do the calculations for you.  

One of the great things about making your own sausage is that you can adjust the seasonings to fit your own personal tastes.  Call it 'Designer Sausage'.  Here is my seasoning mix for 10 pounds of pork:

5 Tablespoons sale
6 Teaspoons Sage powder
4 Teaspoons Summer Savory
1-3/4 Teaspoons ground Nutmeg
6-3/4 Teaspoons Marjoram
2 Teaspoons ground pepper

I place all the above in a small bowl and mix well.

If you don't know about the Spice Barn you should. You can buy spices from them for a fraction of what you pay in the supermarket.

The Pork

Almost all the varieties of sausage I make is pork shoulder. I get it in the bulk pack (15-20 pounds) at COstco but I have also seen it as Safeway. One important thing about sausage: You want the pork for have a high fat content, around 25%.  Skip over the trimmed lean pork shoulder and head for the cheap fatty stuff. 

I cut the pork shoulder up into hunks about 2 inches across because that feeds nicely into the grinder. Once all the pork has been ground I dump the bowl if spices in and mix thoroughly using my hands. Mix. Mix. Mix.  You don't want any pockets of spices in there.

Then I pack 5 pounds into the stuffer, my wife turns the crank, and I feed out the casings.  It's actually very easy. Some people twist the sausage into links as it's coming out of the stuffer but I find it easier to let the sausage fill the casing in one long continuous tube, then go back and twist it into links.  I make each link about 4-5 inches long, about the width of my fist. It;s pretty simple: pick the spot. PInch where you want the ends of the link to be, and then twist the link 4-5 times.

When I've made all the links I then go back and cut them apart with a pair of scissors. I bag them up in pairs and freeze them.