Recipe of the Week: Homemade Beef Sausage
Two of my favorite Christmas gifts this year? A KitchenAid stand mixer and an attachment that grinds meat and stuffs sausage. I have been experimenting with different mixes, have a couple of recipes still to try, but overall have enjoyed the process of making the sausage and stuffing it into hog casings.
Somewhere around 5000 years ago, the Mesopotamians experimented with stuffing the meat from animals into the animals’ own intestines. This made it easy to store and to cure — the process of preserving through salting the meat. Intestinal lining breathes a bit, allowing the salt to draw moisture out while allowing just some of that saltiness in. That made a huge difference for the cradle of civilization, which was able to store food, allowing them to become less dependent on day-to-day hunting and gathering, or eating spoiled meat. Thus, the craft of sausage-making began.
On my list of things to master are boudin, andouille, and summer sausage. I am also eventually wanting to work with some cured sausages. And eventually, build a smokehouse (but that requires my wife’s permission and I have thus far been unable to obtain that). In the meantime, I will continue working on some easier flavor combinations, like the one I’m sharing with you this week.
Smoked Beef Sausage
NOTE: If you are grinding the beef yourself, it needs to be just thawed enough to dice, and you need plenty of fat. If you are new to this, get already ground beef and regrind it. It’s good practice, has enough fat in it already, and it loosens the meat enough for the spices to really mix in. But, having a cold grinder and nearly frozen meat is key, as it will smear in the grinder if it is not cold enough and you don’t want that.
4 lbs. beef
1 tbsp. fine sea salt
1 tbsp. black pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
2 tsp. rosemary
2 tsp. fennel seeds
2 tsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. Instacure #1 (Prague Powder) (NOTE: Only if smoking the sausage)
1/2 cup red wine
Hog casings
Put the meat grinder/attachments in the freezer for one hour. If your beef is not frozen, put it in the freezer as well. If it is frozen, let it thaw about 20% in cold water.
Dice the beef, then put it in the refrigerator while you assemble the meat grinder (if necessary).
Grind the meat with a medium or small die into a large bowl.
Add the spices and Prague Powder and mix well by hand.
Re-grind the meat.
Add the wine and mix well by hand. Put the mixture in the fridge.
Clean the meat grinder and if you’re using one that converts into a sausage stuffer, then put in the freezer for 20-30 minutes to get cold again.
Assemble your sausage stuffer and slide the hog casing onto the stuffer tube, leaving about 3-4 inches hanging off the end.
Start running the meat through the stuffer. When you have a few inches stuffed, tie off the end of the casing. Continue slowly stuffing the casing until you’ve run out of the meat mixture.
Using a sterilized needle, poke a hole or two in any air bubbles you see in the casing. Air bubbles leave space for bacteria and you don’t want that.
Tie off the end of the casings when done and twist the links every 6 inches.
If you didn’t use the Prague Powder and plan to roast, saute, or boil the sausages, you can cook immediately. Otherwise…
Put sausages in the fridge to dry overnight OR hang in a dry, humid place in the house, maintaining airflow and keeping the room temperature down at around 70 degrees.
On the day you plan to smoke it, get your smoker up to about 200-225 degrees.
If you are hanging the sausages to smoke, tie them with butcher twine at every twist. If you are just smoking them on racks, you don’t need the twine.
Smoke the sausages until they reach an internal temperature of about 150-160 degrees (about 3-4 hours depending on the temperature in your smoker). I used cherry wood to smoke the sausages, which gives off a slightly sweeter smoke flavor.
And that’s it. It’s been a fun hobby so far, and I’m really hoping several of you will give it a shot. If you have any good sausage recipes, be sure to send them my way.