I did my first attempt at making pork sausage this past week with the help of my good friend, Rob. Rob has been making sausage since he was a kid with his dad and grandfather. So with his grandfather’s recipe in hand we settled on a day that we both had some time after work.
I have to come clean early here, I was pretty much just a second pair of hands in this whole process. Rob had all the equipment, pans, grinder, knives, spices, cutting board, bought the meat, and we used his kitchen. I just showed up and brought my vacuum sealer.
What we started out with was 4 pork shoulders with the bone in. I think it was around 37 lbs total, pre bone removal. The meat was purchased fresh and frozen over night, then thawed half a day. Why do I mention this? it is easier to cut the meat from the bone if the flesh is partially frozen.
Bones removed from the 4 shoulders
I cut the meat down into smaller pieces. This made it easier to run through the grinder
Grinding the easy way with an electric unit.
This is where we added the spices and mixed them in by hand. The meat was still very cold at this point. I was losing feeling on my fingers as I was squishing the meat through my hands to mix the spices in and evenly.
1 and 2 lbs. portions ready to be vacuum sealed.
Taste test!
In the end it took us about 3 hours to cut, grind, mix, portion, and bag the end product. We did all bulk due to our time constraint and used no casings.
I don’t know the “recipe” so I cannot share it with you here but I can tell you the sausage is very tasty! When all was said and done. Rob and I split 34 lbs of sausage and it came out to $1.70 a lbs. Not a bad deal for just a bit of elbow grease. I month or so ago we split a side of beef and the sausage now we have enough meat till this spring, hopefully.
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