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I’ve decided to stick my toe into the waters of making my own sausage. I got the LEM #10 hand meat grinder from Bass Pro Shops along with a kit to make Bratwurst. The kit contained the spices and the casings, and the LEM was not only a grinder but a stuffer, so basically I’m out the door for not much over $50 or so without the meat. The next step will be to bring back the manual and swap if for an electric!
Here it is clamped to a cutting board and then clamped to my counter. It worked better than I thought it actually would.
Here's what the seasoning from the kit looked like - enough to do 15 lbs. My butt was a bit over 5 lbs with the bone in still.
The butt that had been so patiently waiting for me in the freezer! Looks pretty fatty and at least 20% fat, so didn't add any more.
The casings rinsed and now soaking. I didn't know to run water through them to rinse the insides too and might be why the finished skin was a bit tough. Could use some help here if anyone knows for sure.
After I cut the butt up (need to cut it smaller next time, more like one inch cubes instead of just happy chunks), I just had to stop and say "Cool!" when it first started coming through.
After putting in all the chunked meat, here is the pile of course ground meat.
After that I put it through the finer grinder for about half of it before I realized that duh! I needed to add the spices. Lots of cranking for nothing. So I measured out the seasonings and mixed it up in water, then mixed it into the meat. Then back to the grinding. I didn't get a picture of it but it looked pretty good coming out with well-defined strands.
After that I took the plate and blade off and swapped over the the stuffing attachments and started turning that handle again. This is where you need three hands. One to hold the casings coming off, one to crank the handle and one to stuff more meat in and push it down. My wife helped out, but during all of this she gave me the a-ok for the electric!
Here's what it looked like after it was stuffed, twisting it as I went. Guess I could have saved that for the end for a more consistent size. I'm guessing again that the wrinkles meant that I could have stuffed it more. Which might have made the skin thinner and therefore more tender?
Started the smoker out low and kept raising the temperature every hour until it reached 154 degrees. Forgot about the part about letting them air-dry first so I got some spots but not too bad. The low starting temperature must have helped. Here they are coming out. I didn't have a way to hang them (yet) in the MES so they've got the lines on them from the shelves.
Now under a cold water bath to get them down to less than 100.
Overall they had a very good taste. We ate one right after the bath and they were nice and tender but a bit dense. The next day after refrigerating them the skin was more like a beef jerky skin. Tasty but tough.
It was a lot of fun even though I made a lot of mistakes, and I'll definitely be trying it again. Hope you enjoyed seeing my first attempt!
ETA: temp was set at 100 for the first hour, then up to 150 and up 10 more every hour until at the end it was at 190 and the internal temp of the sausage was 154. I wasn't very clear about that.
Here it is clamped to a cutting board and then clamped to my counter. It worked better than I thought it actually would.
Here's what the seasoning from the kit looked like - enough to do 15 lbs. My butt was a bit over 5 lbs with the bone in still.
The butt that had been so patiently waiting for me in the freezer! Looks pretty fatty and at least 20% fat, so didn't add any more.
The casings rinsed and now soaking. I didn't know to run water through them to rinse the insides too and might be why the finished skin was a bit tough. Could use some help here if anyone knows for sure.
After I cut the butt up (need to cut it smaller next time, more like one inch cubes instead of just happy chunks), I just had to stop and say "Cool!" when it first started coming through.
After putting in all the chunked meat, here is the pile of course ground meat.
After that I put it through the finer grinder for about half of it before I realized that duh! I needed to add the spices. Lots of cranking for nothing. So I measured out the seasonings and mixed it up in water, then mixed it into the meat. Then back to the grinding. I didn't get a picture of it but it looked pretty good coming out with well-defined strands.
After that I took the plate and blade off and swapped over the the stuffing attachments and started turning that handle again. This is where you need three hands. One to hold the casings coming off, one to crank the handle and one to stuff more meat in and push it down. My wife helped out, but during all of this she gave me the a-ok for the electric!
Here's what it looked like after it was stuffed, twisting it as I went. Guess I could have saved that for the end for a more consistent size. I'm guessing again that the wrinkles meant that I could have stuffed it more. Which might have made the skin thinner and therefore more tender?
Started the smoker out low and kept raising the temperature every hour until it reached 154 degrees. Forgot about the part about letting them air-dry first so I got some spots but not too bad. The low starting temperature must have helped. Here they are coming out. I didn't have a way to hang them (yet) in the MES so they've got the lines on them from the shelves.
Now under a cold water bath to get them down to less than 100.
Overall they had a very good taste. We ate one right after the bath and they were nice and tender but a bit dense. The next day after refrigerating them the skin was more like a beef jerky skin. Tasty but tough.
It was a lot of fun even though I made a lot of mistakes, and I'll definitely be trying it again. Hope you enjoyed seeing my first attempt!
ETA: temp was set at 100 for the first hour, then up to 150 and up 10 more every hour until at the end it was at 190 and the internal temp of the sausage was 154. I wasn't very clear about that.
I thought I could source some of my supplies around where I live, but it looks like I'm going to have to order them online instead.
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