Sausage making began five thousand years ago perhaps by the Sumerians, who lived in what is modern day Iraq, when mankind discovered that salt was an effective preservative, an important fact before the advent of refrigeration.  The result of resourceful butchery, sausage and charcuterie in general makes use of edible and nutritious but unsavory parts of the animal. Intestines, organs, lips, ears and bungs all got used up and nothing went to waste. 

The modern word sausage comes from the latin word ‘salsus’ which means salted. Also interesting, the word botulism comes from the latin word for sausage; ‘botulus’. Them romans must have been getting mighty sick, mighty often. The eating of sausage was even outlawed at one time or another although this had more to do with religion than sanitation.

Sausage types are as diverse as the people and climates in which they developed. The northern climes were cool enough for the fresh and semi-cured sausages, but in the southern regions dry sausages were developed that would last indefinitely without refrigeration.

To put it very simply, sausage is ground meat and fat stuffed in a casing of intestine.

Sticky brat=the emulsified uncooked sausage mass

CASINGS: Hog and lamb casings come in a bound bundle of 100 yards called a ‘hank’

Beef casings come in bundles of 9,18 or 30 meters. Each size has its historic uses.

Casings come in one of three forms; dry salt packed, pre-flushed in solution, or pre-tubed. All casings must be prepared for stuffing.

STUFFERS: a small selection. It is sketchy to use your grinder as your stuffer.....the fat might 'smear' and you loose your colloidal suspension=dry sausage. tip try to buy a stuffer with a release valve in the piston. here's a way cheap stuffer I found but am not endorsing. we use the tre spade 10# horizontal stuffer, and it works well.

Additional SAUSAGE MAKING REFERENCE MATERIAL(books and sites)

Now let us discuss some of the finer physical realities of sausage making. In order to have juicy(good) sausage we need to have free(extracted from muscle fibers) protein. Extracted protein is hydrophobic on one end and hydrophilic on the other end. That means one end grabs fat and the other end grabs water and holds on till you put it in your mouth. Without the help of the extracted protein to bind the sausage together, cooked sausage looses all it’s water and fat, it becomes dry and crumbly(bad). Firm succulent, juicy texture is everything so how do we free up(extract) the protein?

Proteins            extract best at near freezing temperatures

                        extract with the addition of salts

                        extract with the agitation of mixing or “massaging

Different cuts and types of meat have varying amounts of protein(SSHCP) available for extraction. Lean muscle has high binding potential(lots of SSHCP), fatty cuts have a medium binding potential and the variety meats(organs, lips, snouts,hearts) have a low binding potential.

We’ll  keep these factors in mind as we make our sausages. We will categorize our sausage making demonstrations as either a coarse grind or fine grind also known as emulsified. Its a very simplistic structure and a good starting point.

COARSE GRIND From the coarse grind branch come basic sausages like the Toulouse, fermented sausages like Salami, rustic pates like Pate de Campagne, smoked and semi dried like summer sausage, and fresh smoked kielbasa.

FINE GRIND From the emulsified branch come the smooth frankfurter type sausages, some of them smoked some of them not, mortadella, liver mousses or flans, and fish sausages.

Basic recipe=it is this simple

3 parts(~75%)lean meat

1 part(~25%)fat

Seasonings

From this most basic of sausage recipes you can expand to a huge number of sausage flavorings, variations and traditions.

For example Italian Sausage: quite a generic term but also one that gives us license to use nearly anything we want. Usually includes aniseed or fennel seed.

3#pork butt trimmed

3/4#fatback

1 ½ Tablespoons salt

1 ½ teaspoons crushed black pepper

1 ½ Tablespoons crushed fennel seed

1 ½ teaspoons red pepper flakes

1 ½ Tablespoons minced garlic

½ cup cold white wine

Dry sage

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

30-40mm pork casings in salt solution

1. To begin clean your pork butt of all sinew and glands. Leave the fat. I know that messes with our 3-1 meat to fat ratio but they’re more like guidelines than actual rules.

A boned out porkbutt will usually contain one gland. Remove anything that looks like this.

2. cut the pork and porkfat into strips that will fit into your grinder. Mix with the salt, pepper, garlic, herbs and spices. Leave the wine out for later.

3. chill the fat and meat.

4. grind the meat and fat through the ¼  inch disk/die

5. chill the fat and meat

6. prepare for stuffing the casings. Place your hank of casings in a container of water so that the strands separate, the casings tend to knot up as you pull them out. The casings are all connected at one end, tied to a ring or clipped or whatever. This enables you to find the end of one of the casings. Pick one strand and cut at the ring. Pull it out of the pile of casings in the container of water into another container of water. When you come to the end of the casing leave it hanging over the edge of the container so you can once again find the end. Next the casings must be flushed. Run water through the entire length of the casing. Next load the casing onto the stuffing tube. You can load more than one casing on the tube at a time. Better to have too much casing on the tube than too little. The left over casings can be liberally sprinkled with salt and refrigerated for further use.

7. In a large bowl mix the fat and the meat and the cold white wine. Use a stiff spatula or latex gloved hands and a folding motion. The mixture will grow firm and compact, will become “sticky”, and a white film will form on the surface of the bowl. This is the extracted proteins grabbing the water and the fat. When this procedure is done correctly, the result is juicy sausages. It takes about four minutes of mixing. The video shows the visual signs for a colloidally suspended sticky brat.

8. Load your stuffer. Tamping the sausage mixture down to get rid of all the air bubbles. Bubbles bad. It is important to do it now because the brat will continue to set as time goes by making the stuffing more difficult. Attach the casing loaded stuffing tube.

Bring the sausage mixture to the end of the tube. Tie the end of the sausage casing. Begin stuffing the sausage with a slow steady pressure. The casings should be nice and plump and evenly filled. How full the casings become is dependant on how fast the casings come off the stuffing tube in relation to how fast you are cranking the stuffer. It takes a little feel and a little practice. The stuffed casings can be wound onto a wetted sheet pan. As you come to the end of each casing, simply tie off the end of the full casing and tie the end of the empty case that you are going to fill. Once the stuffer is empty tie off the end of the casing, and link the links into the size you want. Pinch at the length you want the sausage to be and then again. You will have the second sausage in line pinched at both ends. One end with the right hand and one end with the left.  Twist away from you for three or four turns. Repeat. It goes very fast once you get the hang of it. Next prick the sausages to remove any air bubbles. Store the sausages uncovered in the walk-in for at least twenty four hours. The surface needs to dry out so it won’t burst upon cooking.

The Italian sausages can be slowly browned in a pan over low heat or grilled.