Wednesday, March 16, 2011

They Say You Shouldn't...

... witness laws and sausage being made but I have had a hankering to make some for a few years.
Sausage, that is.

When I was very young, I remember watching my morfar make sausage and then again years later, I helped my mormor do it as well. We lived in Alaska some 25 years later and a good friend and I made a slew of them one winter but since then, nothing. AND I have this KitchenAid with the hopper/grinder and tubes, to boot. So, what was the hold-up? no venison. I wanted to make a lean venison sausage as anything else is available to buy so what is the incentive there, other than knowing exactly what goes into each link?

John went (successfully) deer-hunting for the first time last winter and brought home (well not home exactly) a doe. This went to a processor way up in Spearsville so I lost out there.

However, Steve heard about our (my) plight, took pity on us (me) and offered to share some of his stash of deermeat if we'd get together and whip up a pile of dogs.

So. I bought 10 lbs of pork necks from Service and lamb's casings for slender breakfast links and they came over this afternoon.

Here is John cutting up the meat for the grinder.......


and Steve grinding with me catching and twisting the links......

We used one prepackaged spice mix from Bass Pro Shop, Uncle Buck's Breakfast Blend and were very pleased with the flavor. Yes it has MSG as well spices so if that is an issue with you, you might want to go with a home-mixture.

Which is what we did with the rest. There, we used a recipe Vickie found at Cooks.com for Italian deer sausage and it is AWESOME!!!!! I was a little worried with the required amount of black pepper and we backed off by 1/2 a Tablespoon and I, for one, am glad we did. It is delicious but I think I would have had a hard time swallowing that extra helping of pepper.


Breakfast Links


Italian Sweet and Hot




Here are John and Vickie packaging the links for the freezer. We'll be smoking some of the large links tomorrow and I'll add a photo of them later.




Smokin'!
Now, about laws....... I believe what we ought to know what's in THEM before we get to eat, also!

1 comment:

Rachel said...

oh my goodness. i leave and look what i miss. boo.
Looks DELICIOUS.