Those Who Love Sausage and the Law...

...should never watch either being made. So true.



This weekend, my old buddy Bert will be coming down from Raleigh and we will be making loads and loads of homemade sausage. I expect we will start with 30 lbs of pork butt, and make about 5 kinds of sausage to freeze and use all year.

I got a new grinder attachment for my stand mixer for Christmas, and I can't wait to try it out. (We once had an unfortunate accident with the hand grinder, but Bert still has 9 fingers left. The sausage that year tasted pretty good, actually. Just kidding.)

We'll grind up the meat, divide it into batches, season each batch differently, and squeeze it into casings. (and, yes, we use real casings made from pig intestines. If you don't want to know, don't ask.)



We'll make some German sausage (ginger and garlic), Hot Italian (red pepper), Breakfast (maple and brown sugar), Southern (sage and herbs), and Chinese (hoisin and cinnamon). Then we divide it all up and freeze it.



The best part of all this is the seasoning and tasting - you season the batch, then make a small patty and fry it, taste it, decide whether it needs tweaking, then repeat.

This is actually quite fun, and there's nothing like throwing a coil of homemade sausage on the grill on July 4th!