Sausage Filled Weekend

and no, its not what you think... keep your mind out of the gutter! We tried out first batch of sausage on Saturday, and tonight we made our second batch! I decided to document our second attempt. The first thing we did was to use the meat grinder attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer. I have used this before, but never in this amount!



We coarsely ground roughly 7-8 pounds of pork. Then we loaded it up with spices like crushed garlic, basil, salt, pepper and a few secret spices! Then I hand mixed everything! Man was that cold!

By far, my favorite part was rinsing the natural casing! We had to soak them first, but then you rinse them out on the inside too... which means you can blow up the intestines with water! OMG was that fun! I swear, that is the best part of making sausage other than eating them!

After all the meat is mixed up and the casing are ready to go, we have to switch the attachment on the meat grinding attachment to the sausage stuffing attachment. Sounds like a bad joke, right? Well, it gets better... the sausage stuffing attachment has to be "lubed" up with shorting before you thread all the casings onto the chute!

It takes a bit of practice to get the right amount of meat in the casing so that they are tightly stuffed, and we are still working out our technique. Not a bad job for my husbands first shot at stuffing. Our first night he mixed up the meat, while I controlled the chute end of the stuffing process. Now we just have to broil them and they are ready to be eaten, frozen or given to family members!