Skip to main content

Foray into Sausage

For Christmas I got the meat grinder and sausage stuffing attachments for my Kitchen Aid mixer (I love that mixer). Before you go and say that is a horrible gift, I actually asked for them due to the sausage making class I took earlier in the year at Sur la Table. Also making sausage is not that hard if you have mechanical help.  I would not be making sausage if I had to use a hand grinder, because that would be too much like work. 

Meat grinder attachment grinding up the pork

So today I made my first batch of sausage. I made one pound of sage breakfast sausage.  The recipe called for pork butt (I used pork stew meat), fat back (I got rid of that since the stew meat had plenty of fat), sage, parsley, black pepper, thyme and salt. I also added some garlic and some cayenne pepper it to give it some kick.  I cut the meat up into 1 -2 inch cubes mixed the meat and the spices together then ran it through the grinder twice, the first time through the course the second time through the fine.  I then took some and made a small pattie to cook so my husband and I could taste it.  It is rather tasty but I’ll probably refine the recipe a bit for the next batch.  I then took the meat and sandwiched it between two pieces of wax paper and rolled it out to get a uniform thickness then used a large glass to cut patties. That is the simplest way to make sausage patties. I got 18 patties that are about 3 inches in diameter about ¼ inch thick which are now in the freezer.  The whole process took a bit over an hour from start to finish. 

Sausage patties ready for the freezer

The next thing I’ll be making is sausage in a casing. The hard part of that one is going to be finding sausage casings they just don't sell them around here.  I already have a recipe for Italian Sausage what I need to find is a recipe for Kielbasa.  Sadly neither my great grandfather (who was a butcher) nor my grandparents wrote down their kielbasa recipe it was all done by taste.  Thus I will have to find a recipe for a base and go from there. 

I may not make sausage everyday,  but I think I'll make it for special occasions like holidays. However, I'll have to work on perfecting my recipes till then. I just need to find willing volunteers to taste and eat my sausage creations. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae .   The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand     The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time.  I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...

Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

On October 19 th I drove down to Richmond, VA to attend a Central VA Cosplay Photoshoot meetup on October 20 th at Belle Island.   I wanted to go to this event because it was in an interesting location, and I wanted to meet some new cosplayers.   For this session I used: Canon R6 2 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Camera Settings: For this shoot, I was transitioning back and forth between being inside an old, dark, abandoned building to bright, sunny woods.  Due to the transitions, my settings varied greatly.  I mostly shot at ISO 100 except for when I accidently bumped the nob to “Auto” and didn’t notice, so I also took shots at ISO 2500, 3200, 4000, and 6400.  The shots at the high ISO actually look fairly decent, and not as grainy as one would expect.  My shutter varied between 1/100s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being 1/250s.  My aperture varied between F5 to F11 with the most common ap...