Home Made Sausages

Making home made sausage is fun and can be frustrating at the same time.  Luckily we have this sausage maker attachment to our kitchen aide mixer, which does made life a little bit easier.  At first it was tricky but then we figure out some cheats to do it a little bit faster.  It should be fun to make it with the family as doing it alone isn't really that fun with all the mess you have to deal with, but at the end of the day you realize its is really worth it.  You can control the seasonings, amount of fat that goes in that sausage, and best of all,  no preservatives and the relief that you know what is in that sausage you are having on the table.

Here is a quick video of what we've done.

We are often frustrated with store-bought sausage, most of the times, there is so much fat in it. You can see as it you cook further, the amount of fat you that goes to the sides of your pan, which i usually spoon out to the drain. Aside from that amount of fat, sometimes it just have a nasty smell of "not so good" meat then you start to wonder, what is in this sausage?

Collagen Casing

For our homemade sausage, we used pork loin and shoulders (less fat).  For the casing we used the collagen casing  which is ready made and it is available in barbecue aisle of most shops, we bought ours from Academy Sports + Outdoors.

sausage making kit attachment

Kitchenaide mixer with attachment

finished product: homemade sausages

So, there won't be any recipe for this post as everything weren't measured, but bare in mind that when you make sausages, you better make a lot as it is a lot of work.  Freezing them makes it convenient. I hope to update this post with specific measurements, but for the time being we didn't bother to measure. All ingredients were estimated as per proportion of the meat.  We certainly used lean meat, cut it in cubes, seasoned it with salt and pepper, a little bit of paprika, cayenne pepper,  garlic powder, and onion powder.  Then comes mine and daughter's favorite part being the critic plays the crucial part. Tasting!  Hubby did a mini burger and cooked it over a heated pan subject to our criticisms.  Hubby then adjusts what is needed and if agreed with satisfaction, the fun begins with stuffing the casing.  I haven't took the video during stuffing as we were all got busy hands.

We usually serve sausage with salads and vegetables, or with egg for breakfast.  L loves it with a hotdog bun for school.  Sometimes pasta, or it is also good just as it is.

Thanks to hubby, who did most all of the job.  We were just helpers on the side waiting for his command. We really enjoyed making it for the 2nd time now, and i guess it won't be the last.  Rest assured, we won't be buying sausage from stores anymore.