Help with sausage making

There are many recipes out there but % of fat is important. I did a pure beef batch last year and used exclusively beef rib and following a basic andouille recipe in 42 mm casings (which is about as basic as you can get). Fairly pleased with the results but a bit chewy - beef fat is just not the same thing as pork. If doing it over I would have cured but kept them in the fridge until ready to smoke and serve (or added pork fat and done beef chuck).

Here is Bludawg's Hot link recipe.. Calls for Pork, not beef though.. This one has been on my to do list for a while..

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3109139&postcount=4

I make tons of sausage. You have to be more specific about things. Casings, meat, fat content, ingredients, smoking, curing, what kind of sausage and other things. There are a lot of things.

Don't get discouraged. All straight forward and easy to figure out.

I use hog casings for things that are relatively the size of brats.

I use sheep casings for things like breakfast sausage.

But you can use collagen casings as well. I'm not a big fan of them though. Snacksticks are ok though.

Do you have the sausage stuffer, grinder or anything related to food processing equipment?

Give me what you have and we should go from there. We can talk about other sausage styles as well if you would like.

Like SmokerPA said... need more details...

Have you made sausage before? If not, I suggest doing some reading on the topic before diving in. Not that its complicated, but you want to know what the next step is before you get there.... instead of reading step 3 after completing step 2.
Also, I recommend using pork for your first sausage if you're new to it...

I mean... if you want to get REAL simple:

5 lbs chuck, 20% fat (use ground chuck if you don't have a grinder, but if you don't have a grinder, maybe sausage making isn't for you....)
2 teaspoons granulated garlic or garlic powder
3 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon granulated onion or onion powder
3 tablespoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon red wine
1 teaspoon Prague Powder #1 or Instacure #1 (Optional, but your sausage will be more perishable without it)

Put all of your equipment in the freezer overnight, get it all real cold. Place your meat in the freezer for 45 minutes. You don't want it to freeze, but you want it COLD. Grind your beef through the medium plate of a meat grinder if you are using whole beef cuts, or just place your purchased ground beef into a large mixing bowl, which is sitting in a bigger mixing bowl full of ice.

Combine the spices and cure in a small container, shake or stir them, and pour them into your ground beef. Use your hands to mix things all together very well for at least a couple of minutes. You want the spices and cure evenly distributed

If you want to keep it loose, portion it and freeze it. If you want to stuff it, stuff it.

I love Central TX beef sausage and have just started tinkering with trying to replicate it. This is what I've used for a starting point. I still need to adjust salt & pepper. I've found that a coarse grind is a good thing. The KA grinder plates don't get coarse enough for what I'm looking for, but there are aftermarket plates for that particular grinder that get as coarse as you need.

If you're looking for an all beef sausage the one above is sbout right. Or,

12 pounds for ground meat (2/3 beef, 1/3 Pork) about a 20% fat ratio. You might want a little higher, but that's up to you.

7 TBLS paprika
2-3 TBLS black pepper-resturant grind
3 TBLS garlic powder
1-2 TBLS cayenne pepper
5 TBLS kosher salt
1 level tsp insta-cure #1 for every 5 lbs of meat
Water as necessary

Mix spices with ground meat and stuff into hog casings, dry and smoke. You can vary the amounts of spices to you liking. You can find the handeling and smoking instructions on line or you can buy one of the sausage making bibles..

Edit: bye the way, if you get into sausage making one thing you'll find hard to come by is extra beef and pork fat. If you trim the fat cap on your brisket or pork, vacuum pack the trimmings and freeze for making sausage later.

After you've done It and decide if you like doing it, LEM and the SausageMaker have some pretty good equipment at a fairly reasonable price.

MattG said:

I've never made sausagebefore but I love beef sausage and I've been reading up on it. I plan on using hog casings. And I do have a grinder with sausage attachment. SoI'm just looking to try to make something similar to what I found in Texas at Louie Muellers. So beef sausage and use pork to get my fat.

Click to expand...

Great post Matt because I'm interested in the beef sausage too :-D. I've made about 6 batches between home and the restaurant now (all pork) and still learning a ton. The process isn't that complicated (especially if I can do it), but finding a banging recipe is what I'm chasing now. Keep me posted on what you come up with :clap2:.

MattG said:

Thanks. We stop by Smitty's market while we were in Texas too. I just liked Louis Muellers better but it was still real good.

Click to expand...

I hear ya. I think my favorite was either Meyer's in Elgin or the sausage at Kruez. Have yet to go to Louis Muellers, but John Mueller's is fantastic. But I'd hit any of it at any time on any day! I think a lot of the recipes originate from the German and Czech butchers that settled that area, so looking around at those type of recipes is a good thing to do methinks. A lot of the ones that don't exactly nail it are still pretty dang good - much better than what you'll find in most grocery stores, anyway.

MattG said:

I've never made sausagebefore but I love beef sausage and I've been reading up on it. I plan on using hog casings. And I do have a grinder with sausage attachment. SoI'm just looking to try to make something similar to what I found in Texas at Louie Muellers. So beef sausage and use pork to get my fat.

Click to expand...

I don't know about Muellers, but I believe Blacks in Lockhart uses the 80% beef, 20% pork version in their sausage.

All this sausage talk is making me hungry. My question is this: If I plan on hot smoking the sausage anyway, is the cure necessary? Does it add flavor at all?

cpw said:

All this sausage talk is making me hungry. My question is this: If I plan on hot smoking the sausage anyway, is the cure necessary? Does it add flavor at all?

Click to expand...

It doesn't add flavor and it's not necessary if you going to completely cook it. The cure keeps the bad bugs away while smoking, since the temps are low. What you are talking about is "fresh" sausage. If you hot smoke it as you call it, put it on the coolest end of the pit. Try not to render too much of the fat. You only have to get it to 185 to call it done..

The curing agent in and of itself in my opinion does not add any flavor. However, while you are curing the product, you can add flavors to it. This would include, but not be limited to garlic, pepper, onion, paprika and other spices while the meat cures.

An example would be when I cure pork belly for bacon. I add spices to the mix after I put the curing agent on the meat itself.

With regards to curing the meat when you are going to cook it within a reasonable amount of time, no you do not need to. Curing the meat is the active process of preserving the meat. You would do this for a process such as making summer sausage with venison. Something that allows you to enjoy the product a little longer than just leaving plain sausage in your fridge. Sodium is the key component of any curing agent.

As far as getting it to taste like something specific, you would have to figure that out on your own. With regards to hog casings, do you how to soak them and clean them or are you getting pre-soaked? Might be able to help answer a question or two on that one depending on what you are getting.

Do you have a stuffing plate? Some grinders do not come with a stuffing plate. Just want to make sure before I go down that road.

With making sausage, someone else talked about it. Keep things cold. I use pork fat for everything when adding fat. I feel it has a more consistent texture in my sausage or snack sticks. Just my opinion though. There might be other people that believe fat is fat.

I'm open to answering more questions, but the recipe that is listed above is a base recipe. Play around with it.

Also, kind of an obvious tip... but you never know....

BEFORE you stuff all of your glorious sausage into the casings, saute some of it and taste it. You can still adjust the seasonings if necessary.

Nothing worse than having 10 lbs of sausage in casings that just pisses you off with every bite.

I've mentioned this here before, but if you're looking for the easy way out, you can get some very good sausage seasoning mixes. I like both Heinsohn's and Zack's, both Texas firms. My current favorite base (I add mustard seed and red pepper flakes, plus cure, and smoke over pecan) is the Bohemian Garlic mix from Heinsohn's:

http://www.texastastes.com/p77.htm

MattG said:

Lots of good info here, thanks. How hot is Hot smoking? I'm not sure if I'm going to cook all the sasuge that I make and vacuum pack the rest. But I'm definitely going to cook some up before i put it in the casing.

Click to expand...

I'd call hot smoking around 225-250. You're just cooking it. I normally run my pit at 250, but the firebox end is around 275, maybe a little hotter depending on the fire. That's why I mention the cooler end. If you're going to vacuum pack sausage, put in the freezer until it firms up, then pack it. If you don't you'll squash the sausage.. :sad:

Edit: On equipment, don't rush. I started with a kitchen aid mixer with the grinder/stuffer attachment. Made a lot of good sausage with that and still use it if I'm making just a little..

Good post Matt I am very interested as well. I went to Texas for work a few month back and was WOWed by the Texas style smoked sausages.
I have all intention of trying my hand at it soon myself.