Home Cookin' - You know the saying..."Sausage and laws. You don't want to see how they're made."

I've got a strong stomach, but there is no way I can stomach watching legislators, so I figured I'd stick to making sausage!

My neighbors Dave and Shawn decided that it would be a good idea, so I thought I'd lend a hand.  Who doesn't like spicy Italian sausage anyhow?

Shawn and I went up to one of my favorite butcher shops, The Laurel Meat Market, and had them grind us up 60 pounds of pork shoulder.

We brought it back to Dave's house and got to work.

 This is Dave's 5 lb. Sausage Stuffer.

 First we did a one pound batch to make sure we had the spices right.  Luckily, we did.  Dave had the following recipe from a cookbook of his:

60# pork shoulder coarsely ground

10 T coriander

10 T black pepper

20 cloves garlic

10 T salt

12 T fennel, cracked

1.5 T crushed red pepper

This was obviously multiplied out for our purpose.

I mixed in the spices...we did two 30 lb. batches based on the restrictions of our mixing bowl and the fact that we wanted to keep the meat refrigerated as much as possible during the production. There hasn't been a case of trichinosis in a long time, and I didn't want to be the first.

 Here's Dave spooning in the salt while I mix.

Here is Dave handling the casing while Shawn cranks the stuffer.

 Et Voila!  Yards of tasty sausage ready to be cooked.  In our case, we are freezing and vacuum packing most of it.

 Yes, that's me making a dick joke.  The room was full of them. How could you pass it up?

It was a very nice experience, and the sausage was great. Remember to keep it as cold as possible for as long as possible, and if you're handling the casing task keep your hands wet!

Until next time....