Anyone make their own sausages?

[Mitch schiffer]

I recently tried to get a deer processed into hot dogs, brats, and sausage but I couldn't fund anyone to do it. I just invested some money into the Meat! Branded processing equipment to do it myself. Im wondering if anyone on here does something similar and can give me any tips or advice.

[Steve Demuth]

I used to. Since my wife has become a Buddhist nun, more or less, we don't eat meat in our house any longer.

For that kind of sausages made from venison, the most important thing is to get some fat into the mix. Most deer don't have nearly enough fat to make good sausage (although the corn fed ones around here give it a good try) and you end up with the dryest brats you can imagine. We used to keep pork fat from pig butchering to mix with the venison. A pork belly from from a meat counter would do as well.

Back when we still did this we could also get natural pork casings from the local meat counter, which was a nice advantage. Packed in salt water, they keep forever in the freezer, so a few bucks for a hank of those would last us several years.

After the fat and casings, the critical things are the grind and seasonings. Both to your taste, obviously. Mine run to coarse ground, and simple seasoning - although we generally made a few chains hopped up with ample hot red peppers for a change of pace.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

I once made a lot of sausages. I had a cheap source of pork and a second hand electric grinder/stuffer. I purchased the casings cheap at a store that catered to ethnic groups. I would mix up my own mix of spices and cut the meat into half inch chunks, mix everything around and let it sit over night in the fridge for the spice flavors to seep into the meat. I would grind the sausage and stuff it the next day. I never got real fancy. mostly just salt and pepper, sometimes some sage or Old Bay seasoning. (Folks near Baltimore put Old Bay on/in almost everything.) Had an uncle that added cheese, smoked his own sausage, etc.

[Ron Citerone]

I made venison sausage 3 or 4 times and made pork sausage quite a few times with m parents who made it from my Italian Grandparents lessons. They also made pork sausage with liver. And also pork sausage with pork heart.

For Venison sausage:
I used 1/3 pork to 2/3 venison which I liked best. I also did 1/2 pork to 1/2 venison which was good too but felt it was not that much different from pork sausage. I used a course grind on the meat.

[Stan Calow]

Yes BIL and I make some Italian sausage most years. He has some industrial grade equipment for grinding and filling the sausages, so that makes it easy. I understand that there are attachments for Kitchen Aid mixers for making sausage. We use pork butts and sheep casings. What Steve said about fat is right. You need a mix with hard and soft fat included or it will be too lean and hard. My tip is to take a straw and insert into the casing and blow it out before sliding it onto the nozzle, so the casing will fill easier.

Once you've done one recipe, the basics are pretty much the same. Different seasonings and sometimes liquids (like beer or cream) and you have different sausages. Start with a good recipe and it seems best to measure spices by weight, not volume.

[mike calabrese]

Yes BIL and I make some Italian sausage most years. He has some industrial grade equipment for grinding and filling the sausages, so that makes it easy. I understand that there are attachments for Kitchen Aid mixers for making sausage. We use pork butts and sheep casings. What Steve said about fat is right. You need a mix with hard and soft fat included or it will be too lean and hard. My tip is to take a straw and insert into the casing and blow it out before sliding it onto the nozzle, so the casing will fill easier.

Once you've done one recipe, the basics are pretty much the same. Different seasonings and sometimes liquids (like beer or cream) and you have different sausages. Start with a good recipe and it seems best to measure spices by weight, not volume.


Wow brings back memories.I grew up in the family grocery store in the 50s and 60s.
My father was also a pretty successful deer hiunter.
I had many jobs as a little wipper snapper there but the most fun one was making Italian sausage both hot & sweet .
In the same process I would take what was a gallon sized cardboard tub, (Armour Star packing co.) with the intestines packed in salt pull each one and run warm water throught them to open the casing.
The meat components , not venison for the commercial product, were as discussed above. The seasonings I remember were Paprika, Fennel seeds salt oregano, black pepper and maybe one or two other spices depending if we were making hot or sweet sausage.
Had a big steel tub that sat on an empty wooden oilive barrel to catch the coarsely ground meat .
Mixed it forever in that big tub,(we made tons of it) and pumped it through a hand cranked press, I threaded on the casings to the aluminum nozzle and my father turned the crank.
Coiled the finished sausage on a board used a sharp pointed fork to remove any air pockets in the casing and into the display counter and meat cooler it went.
WOW what a great time.
calabrese55

[Clint Baxter]

Just produced over 175# over the weekend. A combination of brats, polish, sweet Italian sausage, breakfast sausage, chorizo as well as ground bulk. We typically add pork shoulder roasts or Boston butt to the venison. Used two to one, venison to pork, for the link sausages, chorizo and Italian and increased the pork to 60/40 on the breakfast sausage. We usually pick up seasoning mixes but will sometimes add some garlic powder and coarse ground pepper for additional flavoring. Can be a lot of work but very rewarding each time you put it on the table.

One suggestion is to cook up a bit after mixing in your spices to see if you need to adjust. The sausage usually changes flavor a bit with time, so be careful if you think it needs a lot of modification.

Good luck and let us know how everything comes out.

Clint