Sausage

As home butchers we end up with little extras - small pieces of loin that just didn't make it into the original roast, edges of hams, and parts that probably should have been bacon or a rolled roast but got cut too small when we put our pork into the freezer.  Not ones to let much go to waste the decision was made to try and make sausage this year.

I remembered my grandmother grinding up meat for her meatloaf when I was younger and I knew somewhere in the house - her house for which I am now the caretaker - I had seen that grinder.  Retrieved from the far reaches of the baking cabinet and given a bath, I attempted to put it back together and secure it to the table.  Some 30 years ago now I sat beside her watching the juices drip from the grinder onto the paper towels she had placed on the floor.  An old book was wedged in between the table and the grinder to either protect the table or provide a more stable surface for the grinder.  Assembly and mounting complete, so began the journey into sausage making.

Ground pork: Insert meat into top of grinder and turn handle.  Not as easy as it looks.  The pieces of pork don't stay in the grinder very well.  It is a delicate balance of inserting meat pieces and not loosing a finger whilst turning the meat out through the blades on the front of the grinder.

Onions: They go right the grinder too.  Each one sent onion juice pouring out of the back and down the handle onto the paper towels on the floor.

Garlic: Check.

Spices: What ratio?  What spices?  On to the internet, recipes galore.  We settled on a sage sausage recipe, not realizing until after we were done that it was a turkey based recipe and the spices were a little too heavy, beating out the subtle deliciousness of the fresh pork.

Anything else?  Salt.

We use a lot of sausage in everything from spaghetti to stuffed mushrooms to breakfast and meatloaf.  It turned out OK but I will certainly be looking out for some new ones.  There are thousands of recipes on the internet for sausage so I will not recreate the wheel here.  Making our own will not only save some money but allow us to try some unique flavors.  I am thinking Apple Sage might taste pretty good.