Breakfast Sausage.. everyone should make it

[bbally]

I wanted to discuss the importance of your own quality standards for food. The quality of the food you serve is very very important in the commercial cooking world. It is "Who You Are" and what market you are going to serve.
One of the things I have concentrated on for years with the catering business is the development of specific items that can only be had from our organization. Be it the cured smoke salmon, the hams, or in today's case our sausages. I
am not cooking at the commercial operation this weekend. My wife and I purchase whole animals from other farmers or trade for them with our beef. I don't care for butcher sausage, as I know what they do... minimal seasoning,
maximum profit. So I have all the pork ground to 24 percent fat content and bagged in 10 pounders. This allows me a nice size batch to make homemade sausage. If you don't have that kind of room, you can make a two pound batch by dividing this recipe by five. Home made breakfast sausage
allows you to speak to people. They will know immediately they are eating something different. Something that was not made in a vat designed to hold 300 plus pounds of ground meat. Home made sausage also allows you to explore other meats. I like pork, but if for religious, dietary, medical,
or personal reasons you wish to use beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, fish or vegetable you can do so.

Many of you might think, I don't have a stuffer machine or a way to case the sausage..... enter the world of Pan Sausage. Which is what we will explore today. But I warn you like most things... this hobby can start out as a
"gee I will make some sausage" and lead to hundreds of dollars worth of equipment, lots of supplies and much bulk ground beef out in the garage stored between sausage adventures. So go slow or bankruptcy looms!

First we need the recipe for the 10 pounds of ground meat at 24 percent fat. (you can adjust the fat for all the same reasons as well. But 24 percent makes the "pork fat rules" kind of sausages. You need 5 Tbsp of Salt, 2 Tbsp white Pepper, 2 Tbsp poultry seasoning (or 1 tbsp Sage, 1 Tbsp Thyme, and 1 tsp marjoram) 2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional) 1 pint (2 cups) ice cold water. And your 10 pounds of ground meat.





Most people that have trouble with making sausage try and do it in two small of a container. I went and purchased a storage tub 12 years ago and never looked back! It allows me to mix without making a mess, cure bacon (next week) without having to wrap it (has a lid) and all manner of things meat curing!

Get the meat spread out in the mixing tub and lay down the seasoning in layers, salt last! Then dump the water evenly over the top of it. And get your hands dirty start to mix it up.



Once mixed it should look a little darker and you should not see and collected concentrations of seasonings. Pack it into a corner of your mixing tub and let it sit for half an hour. While that is happening you must do the most important step in sausage making. That is to cook and
taste the sausage you are making.





You can not adjust the seasoning to sausage once it is package, so will the seasoning is marinating into the meat, cook up an ounce or so and see if you need more of anything. In my case I added in 1 tbsp of Cardamom, this
north African spice is really nice and I think it lets a little more spice pop into the sausage.

Once you have the sausage made up and the spice adjusted you can start to package. I like to use my scale and select different ice cream scoop sizes until I hit the 1.5 ounce size every try, then I rock N roll til it's all packaged. I do freeze overnight prior to vacuum packaging with my Food Saver so it does not squish all over the bags.





After the overnight stay in the freezer they are packed.



'til we speak again.... purchase a couple pounds of ground meat and make up some nice breakfast sausage.  You will be hooked from the first bite!

Chef Bob Ballantyne
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering
Grand Junction, Colorado, USA

[AndyG]

Nice presentation! Got me wanting to make my own for sure.

[teamfat]

I'll chime in with the benefits of homemade sausages. If you get your own grinder you can use fresh, whole cuts of meat - you can control the quality, fat content, seasoning levels of the resulting product. And it doesn't have to be strictly sausage - have you ever had a grilled burger made from a chunk of chuck you ground up earlier that afternoon? Meatloaf and meatballs, chili, taco fillings, et cetera, are all better with fresh ground meat. And one of the best stuffed pork loins I ever did was with some homemade smoked kielbasa tucked inside.

And gee, wasn't that major beef recall for meat that was ground at a factory and shipped around? Grinding your own really reduces the risk of contamination, if you take some simple steps to keep a clean ship. You can have a big, juicy, rare burger if you so desire without having to worry about poisoning yourself from some contaminated, store bought ground meat-like food product.

Gee, this reminds me, I need to consider upgrading my trusty but tired little hand cranked meat grinder this spring...


mjb.

[bbally]

Let's not forget the virtues of ground buffalo burgers that are home ground!

[Mezzaluna]

I just put the first beef through my KA meat grinder and will make burgers from it for dinner tonight. It was pretty easy to use and clean. Except for the chintzy plastic pusher (they don't have the wooden ones any more), it did a creditable job.

On to sausage!

[bbally]

Originally Posted by Mezzaluna

I just put the first beef through my KA meat grinder and will make burgers from it for dinner tonight. It was pretty easy to use and clean. Except for the chintzy plastic pusher (they don't have the wooden ones any more), it did a creditable job.

On to sausage!

Go forward, be fruitful and make sausage!

[tmk]

Thanks for the interesting post, Bob. I've played with home-ground meats and sausages every now and then since first getting a Kitchenaid with grinder/stuffer attachment. I hope you don't mind a little thread hijack, but I dearly love (oh, I hate to admit this) McDonald's breakfast sausage. Boy, that hurt to say. Does anybody have any clues to a spice mix that might get me close to Mickey D's?

Thanks,
Tom

[bbally]

Make what I have listed above and then add 3 tsp of Corriander and you should be real close.

[onesipforme]

wow, you made it look so easy! The pics really helped.