Homemade Sausage

[not2late]

I've been playing with a pork sausage recipe every weekend. This weekend's batch is probably 'the one'!

Basically, you need a 2 to 1 ratio of meat to fat. Alot of recipes called for pork fat---like I can find 1 pound of pork fat in the supermarket??? So I substituted a product called 'pork fat back'. I did have to grind the pork fat back in my food processor, but that was really all the 'work' I had to do.

Most recipes say to let the sausage mixture 'rest' in the frig for at least 3 days before using, in order to let the flavors develop and mellow.

Anyhow, I mixed a pound of ground pork with 1/2 pound of the chopped fat back. Added a mixture of fennel seeds, rosemary, sage, marjoram, dried hot chile pepper flakes, and black pepper. Mixed it up. Put it in a container. And put that in the frig. I did this on Thursday night.

But I did fry some of the sausage this morning for breakfast. It was very good!

[not2late]

Re: Homemade Sausage

Okay, this stuff improves the longer it sits in the fridge. Last night I made "Scotch Eggs"---hard boil eggs, peel them, then cover them in the sausage meat and fry them. Delicious!

[ValidRouge]

Re: Homemade Sausage

Oh, that sounds good

[HeidiE]

Re: Homemade Sausage

we had a sausage making party one time ..it was really fun ...opened up the kitchen ...bleached everything then got the grinder out and went to town ..everyone took brats home and home made Cajun sausage ...

your recipe sounds yum I am going to try it for sure!!! I am ok with ground meat if I grind it myself or if the butcher will grind it in front of me ...

[not2late]

Re: Homemade Sausage

I ground this stuff by myself....I got a deal a few months ago on pork shoulder. So I've been trying to find ways to use it.

Just a note on the pork fatback: it's salted. It's salty enough (for my taste) to omit adding any more salt to the sausage mixture. So you need to rinse off the salt and cut away the rind. I use the rind for other things like flavoring broths and cooking with veggies.

In one of my cookbooks, I saw a recipe for a 'low fat' chicken sausage that used ground chicken breast (of course ) and eggplant---the eggplant added moisture to the sausage. It looked interesting. So I'll give that a try in the summer when I can get fresh eggplant at the farmer's market or my garden.

[boonie stomper]

Re: Homemade Sausage

Wheter it's from bacon, fat back, or a big piece of pork, any fat left over from the cooking, I pour off to save for cooking other things. It pretty much keeps forever, the colder, the longer. I usually get water and sediment out once it cools, then put in old coffee jar with lid. The water and sediment from cooking gets used separately, sooner, in a soup, marinade or stir-fry. The plain pork fat can also be cut from larger pork cuts before cooking, but is not cured and will go rancid if not used fairly quickly or frozen.

I'm having ribs today from a rack I froze in Dec. 2005, that got accidentally thawed twice in power failures, and they are fine. Been eating them since last week.

[MaggieBE]

Re: Homemade Sausage

I swear that I can cook but low carb cooking is still new to me! So if I cook bacon could I save the butter mixture that is leftover in the pan and use that in my homemade sausage? I do have fat back in my freezer though!

I think boonie might have given me the answer I needed in the above post but I wanted to clarify.

[not2late]

Re: Homemade Sausage

I don't know if rendered fat would work. But you could try it. The non-rendered fat has some cellular tissue in it, so the tiny cubes of ground fat help to keep the sausage moist and it prevents the fat from melting too quickly and 'cooking out' of the sausage as it cooks.

I did read a sausage recipe that used a bacon as the fat source for the sausage. I'm sure that will taste just as yummy.

[boonie stomper]

Re: Homemade Sausage

YES! It's also great for cooking eggs, veggies and any dry/lean cuts of meat!

One question -why do you have butter in your bacon grease?

[MaggieBE]

Re: Homemade Sausage

Er, because that is the way my mother in law does it! Though mostly she cooks bacon in rendered(sp?) bacon fat. Perhaps she is a freak?

[dotsamantha]

Re: Homemade Sausage

I save the rendered bacon fat for other cooking all the time. I don't cook the bacon in anything though, interesting. I often use it when scrambling eggs and lean meat also.

[boonie stomper]

Re: Homemade Sausage

I imagine bacon cooked with added butter would be good - I'll have to try it. When I use the rendered fat for cooking veggies, I often add butter or olive oil to the pan as well.


Does it change the texture of the bacon to add butter?

[MaggieBE]

Re: Homemade Sausage

I think my mother-in-law doese it in extra butter so there is more "sauce". In the old days(well a lot of people even do it today) they would eat the bacon and then dip bread in the bacon/butter fat. It is actually silly to cook bacon in butter especially if you have good pans. Actually I think my mom cooked it in butter too. Though my mom would always have eggs in the pan as well as the bacon.