fav13andac1)c said:
HTownAg98 said:
Family is getting together to make sausage this weekend. So there likely won't be a lot of cooking going on.
Share your recipe!
Sure thing. I used to say that I'd never share our recipe, but after having enough bad homemade sausage, I've decided to share it to whoever asks for it, primarily so people can make better sausage. I'm doing this from memory, and I'll edit it later tonight once I get to my parent's house. The only thing I'm not sure about is the cayenne pepper.
For 100# of sausage (approximate):
57.5# boneless pork picnic shoulders, skin off
7.5# pork backfat
35# venison
1# 12 oz kosher salt or pickling salt
4 oz Insta-Cure #1 (aka Prague Powder #1 or pink salt. If you're not going to cold smoke the sausage or dry some, you can leave it out, and just replace with the same amount of kosher or pickling salt)
9 oz black pepper (#16 or #32 mesh is fine)
4 large garlic cloves
3/4 oz cayenne pepper
Slice the pork, venison, and backfat into pieces suitable for your grinder. Take about a cup of the salt, and grind it with the garlic in a food processor until no visible pieces of garlic remain. Combine the garlic salt with the rest of the seasoning. Sprinkle seasoning over meat, and mix thoroughly. Grind the meat through a 3/8" die. Mix to combine the lean and fat so there aren't any large pockets of lean or fat. Regrind the meat through a 3/16" die. Check the bind by taking a piece the size of a golf ball, and make a patty of it in your hand. If you can turn your hand over and the patty sticks without falling, the bind is right. If you want to add cheese, use a high-melt cheese at a rate of 1 pound of cheese to 10 pounds of meat. Stuff into casings of your choice (the ones we get aren't sized, but they are roughly a 32mm-38mm hog casing. If you're using a natural casing, flush them first, even though it's a royal pain to do so). Hang the sausage in the smokehouse, and cold smoke for 2-4 hours. Remove the smoke source, and air out the smokehouse (the smokehouse we use has a bathroom exhaust fan in it, so we get it cooled down quickly). Allow the sausage to hang and bloom overnight between 32-45 degrees. The next day, vacuum pack the sausage, label it, and freeze.
Edit: we use green pecan wood to smoke, and mesquite coals for the fire. You only need enough coals to get the pecan wood smoking. We used to use green hickory, but grandpa neglected to tell us where the hickory tree was on his brother's property before he died, and my dad and I could never find it. So we switched to pecan.
Edit 2: checked the recipe, and it's 3/4 oz red pepper.
