<p>Hanging the sausages to dry.</p>

Within the past couple of years, some of my friends and family began making sausage. After a few samples, I began taking notice. I dabbled in sausage making in chef school, but was never really all that impressed with or interested in the craft.

The first one we made was a seafood sausage in the International Cuisine class. It was a bonus ingredient for a paella we were learning, but I wasn’t impressed with the texture.

In Garde Manger class we focused primarily on fancy-pants forcemeats such as duck gallantine and various pates en croute. You know, the real-world practical lessons we’d all use … as soon as we were granted that internship in Paris.

Somehow I got it into my head that all forcemeats (including sausage) were as difficult as some of the terrines and pates we fussed over at school.

When my brother brought me several pounds of different links he’d made at home with reasonably priced equipment I knew I had to delve deep into the world of sausage. After all I was the chef in the family and wasn’t about to be shown up.

I now inhabit a world where the imagination is the only limit to what can be done. Not every idea is a good one (the beef frankfurters I tried to inject with my homemade catsup and mustard, the Thanksgiving sausage containing turkey, sage dressing and dried cranberries), but it’s nice to know the envelope can be pushed.

Making sausage can be very inexpensive. Sure, you can spend a lot of money at the outset, but I recommend starting with little and adding tools as you go along.

Supermarket butchers will grind the meat you buy into whatever size you like, so take advantage. Also, sausage doesn’t need to be cased (linked). You know that pork sausage or Italian sausage you buy loose to make spaghetti sauce with? You can make a much better blend with your own spices. But there is something special about biting into a juicy sausage you made yourself and experiencing that snap. This is why you’ll eventually want to spend the onetime fee to outfit your kitchen with a motor grinder and a piston stuffer.

Once you bring a nice string of bratwursts to a barbeque (and at less than $2 a pound, you can afford to) and they’re quickly deemed “the best ever,” you’ll be a lot more popular on the summer circuit.

The first few batches of homemade sausages I attempted were a little disappointing. People liked them, but I wasn’t happy. The texture was either dry, crumbly or mealy, and my assumption was that commercial sausages had a lot of chemicals I didn’t want or have access to, and therefore home sausage making had its limitations.

Then I decided to do a lot of research. Real books stress the importance of small details while how-to websites fall short. The best way to learn, of course, is by doing. Through trial and error – plenty of both – came a better understanding of making great sausage.

I’ll outline the steps.

Gather all ingredients and equipment. Soak your casings in water at this point, if using.

Place all equipment that comes into contact with meat in the freezer. Keeping everything as cold as possible is of paramount importance. Warming from friction or any other cause can result in the smearing of fat. Smeared fat makes for a most unsatisfactory mouthfeel.

Measure and prepare all ingredients needed for mixing.

Cut your meat and fat into strips. Dicing it is the advice you’ll usually see, but it’s an unnecessary step. The grinder handles strips as long as you can fashion.

Partially freeze the strips of meat.

Grind meat into an ice-cold container sitting in ice. Again, cold. If you have a walk-in refrigerator, that’s the place to do everything.

Return ground meat to freezer.

When ground meat is stiff but not solid, it’s time to mix. Remove mixing equipment from freezer, add meat and spices, mix. You now have sausage. Mix your sausage until it is sticky and in one mass. It is at this point that you can continue to the stuffing phase or use what you have for cooking or making patties, your choice. Should you continue on to stuffing:

Make sure your stuffing equipment is ice cold and fill it with the sausage.

Feed the casing onto your stuffer’s nozzle and tie a knot at the end.

Crank or pump the sausage through the nozzle, using one hand to monitor the casing and filling pressure. Sausage tubing should come out onto a wet surface. Your countertop or a sheet pan will work.

Coil the sausage as it accumulates. Soon the stuffer will be empty and the casing will be full.

Go along the coil and squeeze where necessary to even out any inconsistencies.

Measure off the size you like and pinch on either side. Roll the sausage several times. You now have your first link. Measure again and twist in the opposite direction. Continue until finished.

Prick any air pockets with a tack or pin. Don’t use a knife.

Hang the sausages on a rack for about an hour to solidify the twists between the links, and to dry a little. Refrigerate overnight.

Now you eat it. There are many methods of cooking, but make sure you don’t overcook. Get an instant-read thermometer and wait until it reads – This Just In: Special Bulletin – The USDA finally dropped pork’s recommended cooking temperature to 145 F (from the ancient 160 F). Of course you’ll still want to cook poultry sausages to 160 F or so.

There you have it. Likely you’ll inspire your friends to take part in sausage making, and that’s when the real fun begins.

I happen to belong to a small “club” of sausage makers. We share tips, ideas, occasional misfires and of course sausage. A few of the charter members of our chapter will see their tips here and perhaps expect credit, but moreso I think they also expect me to share our knowledge to help out the new sausage-maker. Happy Sausaging!

Bonus Tips:

Recipes often call for water or crushed ice. Never use water. A good stock or mild beer will work much better, and either can be frozen.

If not freezing your liquid, mix all of the dry ingredients in the liquid. This will more evenly distribute the flavors while you mix.

Recommended Reading:

“Charcuterie,” (2005) by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

“The Professional Garde Manger,” (1996) by David Paul Larousse