Have not delved into the summer sausage yet, but I have been playing with my kitchen-aid meat grinder and sausage stuffer a little. My first go at grinding was making some loose breakfast sausage. I bought a bone-in Boston Pork Butt that weighed just 3 1/2 lbs, and I got 3 lbs out of it after trimming the bone out. In that first effort I learned the value of cubing the meat into smaller 1" cubes (no larger) with the kitchen aid grinder as longer tendons got fetched up in the grinder about 1/2 way through.
The good news was that the sausage was very tasty grilled up as patties for breakfast, and perhaps even better crumbled in the pan for sausage gravy to pour over biscuits. Yeah, I'm a Yankee, but those biscuits and gravy could make a guy want to move south.
Because I didn't add any extra fat-back to the pork shoulder, the sausage was a bit on the lean side. But it still made a very fine gravy, and maybe not such a heart attack waiting to happen as normal. We have about a 1 lb log of it left in the freezer, but I'll surely be making this one again real soon.
Here's the recipe I used from the Food Network website:
16 ounces
ground pork
1 teaspoon
salt
1⁄2 teaspoon
dried parsley
1⁄4 teaspoon
rubbed sage (or more)
1⁄4 teaspoon
fresh coarse ground black pepper
1⁄4 teaspoon
dried thyme (or more)
1⁄4 teaspoon
crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
1⁄4 teaspoon coriander
1⁄4 teaspoon
msg (such as Accent flavor enhancer)
The sage and other spices really come through, and that 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes was just the right amount to keep it interesting without being obnoxious, IMO. Its about as spicy as any breakfast joint up north makes their sausage gravy, usually it's considerably milder. I did use the MSG as proscribed, but if you are sensitive to it you could ditch that easily.
I ordered some natural pork casings and stuffed up some Sweet Italian links today. Got two boneless Pork Butts at the local discount market that weighed ~ 3lbs each. These were considerably fattier than the bone in Butt I'd bought earlier, which I think will be a good thing for the links. Grinding the meat went easy-peasy since I cubed the meat up smaller this time, but it took some quality time to learn the ways of the stuffer attachment, and a second set of hands. We stuffed up 6 lbs of sausage casings, but it took us a couple of hours to do it. Haven't tasted it yet, but with the recipe we used from the "Let's Make Sausage" web site, I'm confident it will be delish!
Gina's Sweet Italian Sausage
6 pounds boned pork shoulder, we like it about 80% lean
5 teaspoons cracked fennel
1 tablespoon salt (or to taste)
1 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper (medium grind)
1 1/2 tablespoons granulated garlic (or 4-6 fresh cloves)
2 teaspoons rubbed sage
1 cup very cold, good quality white table wine
This one is a bit more complex in the spicing than most other sweet Italian sausage recipes, and I like the idea of the sage. I can see a possibility of a few of these bad boys ending up on the smoker some day...
It's nearly April. Those smokers will be coming out of hibernation before you know it!
Should've taken a pic. At that point, you're done. Refrigerate what you want to eat, and freeze the rest. I used half mesquite half apple chips to smoke. Total smoke time was around 6hrs.
