Making Sausage

[kirra]

Making Sausage

While most folks in my neck of the woods are busy barbecuing during the last leg of summer, my thoughts are wistfully drifting to autumn and the brand new hunting season it’s about to bring. It’s round about this time of year when lingering whiffs of smoke whet my appetite for a feed of delicious homemade sausages, and I can’t think of a better time to free-up the freezer in anticipation of another lucky season. Turning game meats or domestic buys that are about to expire their prime frozen shelf life into an array of spicy, mouthwatering sausages is an excellent way of putting old trophies to good use.

Sausage making is a rewarding Old World craft that has been made easy by modern day contraptions like electric meat grinders, kitchen scales, portable smokehouses, and the wonderful convenience of readily available casings, premixed cures, and seasoning kits.

There are two main categories of sausages—fresh and cured. Fresh types must be cooked prior to eating and are usually commercially sold in casings but when made at home are often formed into patties and conveniently fried like traditional hamburgers. Fresh sausages will keep in the refrigerator for up to about a week, after which time they must be frozen for safe keeping.

Cured sausages are drier types made out of meat that has been cured by methods used for centuries as practical ways of preserving meat before days of refrigeration. Such methods include the use of salt, fermentation, drying, and smoking which renders sausages that will keep indefinitely when hung at pantry temperature.

One of the most confusing aspects of sausage making is the topic of cures. In earlier times, meat was cured with plain table salt and some old diehards like myself still use heirloom recipes with success. However, novice home sausage makers today have the option of using premixed cures and binder mixes that contain sodium nitrite, a chemical agent that safeguards against the growth of organisms that can cause sausages to go bad. Commercial cures can be bought at meat shops, larger grocery stores, and from sausage making suppliers. Using such mixes will take the mystery out of curing and ensure success, especially for beginners.

The basic ingredient for tasty sausages is good meat. Now that doesn’t mean that you have to grind up choice cuts like sirloin or top round, which I find are usually long gone by the time my sausage making season rolls around, but you must use meat that is in good condition. If your cuts are starting to show signs of frost bite, be sure to trim it off and discard. Properly wrapped meat will last for up to two years in the deep freeze, but I like to use mine up before it has a chance to get nipped.

Since I find the less desirable cuts are always the last to go, these are what gets made into my sausages. Trimmings from ribs, meat off shanks, flanks, stew, and ground are ideal choices for sausages, and you can use moose, deer, beef, pork, or mix and match any game or domestic meats you wish.

In the olden days, traditional or natural casings (obtained from pork, sheep, or calf intestines) had to be hand cleaned after the animal was slaughtered, and this, I can vouch, is no easy task. Today, gut casings can be bought salted or brined and need only to be soaked to remove salt before using. They are most commonly obtained from pork and sold by the “hank,â€