Meat Grinders and Homemade Pork Sausage

There is a variety of small kitchen appliance Meat Grinders on the market, from electric grinders with sausage stuffer attachments to the crank by hand style for basic meat and other grinding.  This last model usually comes with a selection of grinding heads from fine to coarse grinding.  You can even buy packets of seasonings ready to use for various sausage types.

Choose the small kitchen appliance meat grinder that suits your pocketbook the best.

You’ll find a substantial difference between homemade and store bought breakfast sausage.  Once you’ve tasted homemade, you’ll never buy the commercial type again.  Commercial sausage can contain up to 50% fat, which you’ve probably noticed in your frying pan.  That can be avoided with homemade, because you choose the amount of fat you wish included in your sausage.

What is especially nice is you can start out with simple sausage patties and graduate to actually making sausage with a small kitchen appliance sausage stuffer.  Again, there is a variety of styles available which are suitable to your pocketbook.

Sausage types vary from fully cooked and smoked which are ready to eat, fresh and ready to cook either in patty style or link  style.  You can also make them in a loaf pan, stuff them into casings or mesh nettings.

A pork shoulder butt is the best cut for making sausage.  Be sure to remove as much fat as you can, leaving some for flavor.  Also remove any glands, bone chips, tendons and ligaments as you cut the meat into 1 ½ inch strips for ease in feeding into the grinder.

Grind the meat the first time on a coarse grind, then mix in your seasonings and grind again on a finer grind.  If you aren’t satisfied the that grind, grind it again!  Make patties or roll into links and cut to size.  Form and place patties or links on squares of freezer paper, place them in a freezer bag (quantity depending on your family needs) and freeze.  Frozen breakfast sausage should be used within 6 months of freezing, which is the standard for any frozen meats.

Good luck….and have fun!