Sausage making has become more than just a tasty treat over the years, it has also been art and science for centuries. It was art in the sense that you were taking scraps and creating something beautiful and delicious with it. There’s even some math involved when it comes to cooking and creating sausage, but we can talk more about ratios later.
When you’re still a beginner at sausage making, it’s normal for things to seem overwhelming and intimidating (it happens to all of us!), but don’t let it stop you, instead, let it challenge you. One of the best things about sausage making is that you’re able to choose from a variety of ways to cure and cook, as well as a variety of types of sausages to make.
From breakfast patties to hot dogs, bratwurst to jerky, you’re bound to tickle someone’s taste buds with sausage. Of course, first and foremost, you must figure out exactly what type of sausage you’re going to cook and create before you even begin prepping.
Basically, it’s a much smoother process to have in mind the exact sausage making you’ll be doing today before you just go at it on a whim. Unless you like to surprise yourself, the more power to you!
Table of Contents
What Type of Sausage are You Making?
There are many types of sausage you are able to choose from, italian sausage, to chorizo to andouille, it’s all up to you what you wish to cook as a beginner at sausage making. It also depends on your taste buds. Here are a few of the most popular sausage types you could make.
Chorizo (Mexican)
Chorizo sausage is typically called the mexican sausage here in the United States, bursting with lots of flavor – chilies, spices, and garlic. If you like hot and spicy, this is the type of sausage you’re looking for.
Hot idea
Remove the chorizo sausage from the casing they are usually stored in and simply sprinkle it in with your tacos, enchiladas, burritos, or stews.
Italian (Italian)
With italian sausage you can choose spicy or sweet, making it one of the few versatile sausages on the market. The only difference is that the sweet italian sausage removes those red pepper flakes while the spicy sausage obviously wouldn’t.
Sweet idea
Cook your sausage on the grill or by frying it, then cut up into small round pieces. Throw the meat into either a soup with your favorite italian veggies, or onto a plate with some pasta and a roll!
Andouille (Cajun)
Andouille sausage is your go-to when you need a smoked, cajun treat. Usually this meat is pre-cooked upon arrival, so you can just open them up and serve them as snacks.
Smoky idea
Cut your andouille sausage into small round pieces and lightly brown the edges to add a little extra flavor. Since it has a smoked cajun flavor, this sausage is absolutely perfect for jambalaya or gumbo.
Kielbasa (Polish)
This sausage is a pork country sausage, that you can find either smoked or unsmoked. Coming from Poland, it’s typically served with something like sauerkraut or cabbage.
Tasty idea
Serve kielbasa sausage on a bun with some mustard and a side of potatoes, or you can cut up the pieces and put them in your favorite soup. You could also try out the Polish way of eating kielbasa and serve with sauerkraut.
Bratwurst (German)
One of America’s favorite sausages, the bratwurst is best known in America for being a great tailgating meal at your favorite football game or at the racetrack. Seasoned with salt, ginger, and nutmeg, the bratwurst sausage gives you just about every flavor a sausage can give.
Yummy idea
Try either grilling or sauteing your bratwurst, depending on the flavor you’d like to achieve, and then cut your pieces up into small round slices. You can mix in with your favorite veggies or you could even make a shishkabob with some of your other favorite meats and veggies – up to you! You can also serve bratwurst on a bun with some mustard and be just as satisfied.
Again, you can find many other types of sausage to make, it all just depends on your taste buds, budget, and what you can find. Other popular types of sausage you can make are hot dogs, breakfast patties or links, and jerky.
What You Will Need in the Kitchen for Sausage Making
Recommended ingredients and tools
- The meat
- Curing salt
- Seasonings
- Sausage casings
- Meat grinder
- Meat thermometer
- Sausage stuffer
- Smoker
- Drying chamber
- Kitchen scales
- Food processor
- Freezer
Please note: not all of these tools or even ingredients (besides the meat of course) are needed to make a delicious sausage treat, we’re only recommending these as they are the best that we know to use personally and from popular opinion.
Sausage Making Checklist for All Beginners
- Purchase meat with some fat on it, no fat means dry, flaky sausage.
- Sanitize the area, the grinder, the tools you’ll be using and the counter you’ll set everything on. The best sanitization method is to use a gallon of cold water mixed with a tablespoon of bleach and clean the absolute heck out of everything before using it.
- Find a recipe that you like and can follow deciding exactly what type of sausage you’re making, if you’re casing it or making patties or hot dogs. Are you drying it or smoking it? Having everything prepared in your mind allows you to prepare much easier in the kitchen.
- Soak your casings in warm water overnight to keep them soft. Before using them, rinse them out with cold water.
- Have all of your equipment and ingredients ready to go and cooled, this includes mixing seasonings together.
- Cut and season the meat, then place it into the grinder.
- Put the meat into a sausage stuffer if using casings, otherwise you’ll make patties or balls, and then cook to eat!
How to’s of Sausage Making
- Preparation
First and foremost, you’ll decide exactly what you’re going to make, chorizo, hot dogs, jerky, andouille, etc (it helps to know your side dishes as well). Then you’ll gather all of the needed ingredients and equipment, preferably cooling it all overnight. If you’re using casings, it’s best to prepare these the night before by soaking them in hot water as this will make them soft. If you’re experimenting with different spices, you could mix and make your seasonings either the night before or the day of, by combining different flavors together.
Now remember, everything needs to be chilled and the meat partially frozen. You never want your sausage to get warm so always keep everything, even the equipment, chilled. You could always make your sausage meat an ice bath to sit it in while waiting to be chopped and cooked, so that you’ll never have to worry about it becoming too warm.
- Mixing/Grinding
Your next step is to begin cutting up the meat, you’ll need small pieces about 1” in size and don’t get rid of the fat! You’re going to need the fat to keep the sausage juicy in the end. Once you’re done cutting the meat, you can mix it with your seasonings, salt, and any extra fat or fatback you have in a bowl. This is when you will use your hands to mix, and not a mixer. You could also mix while your meat is in the bath so that it stays cold the entire time you’re mixing.
When you’ve finished mixing your meat and seasonings, wrap the bowl with plastic wrap and put back into the freezer for about 30 minutes, allowing the meat to be chilled once again. However, don’t freeze it.
Next, it’s time to grind it all up in your meat grinder. After those 30 minutes in the freezer (but not freezing it), pull the meat out and load up your grinder with the sausage mixture. There are a few plates you can choose from, fine, coarse, or somewhere in between. You’ll then want to place a chilled pan at the opposite end of the grinder, where the meat will come out once grinded.
During your grinding process, it is best to alternate back and forth between meat and fatback (if you’re using extra fat), and it’s always best to grind at a slower speed than a faster one. Once all grounded, you can add any additional seasonings or salts that you’d like to add. Then, we suggest freezing it again for another 30 minutes. Maybe use this time to clean up a little bit?
- Casing/Stuffing
After freezing the grounded, mixed meat and seasonings again for another half hour, it’s time to pull it back out and start stuffing! Now, if you’re choosing to make something like breakfast patties or sausage balls, you won’t need to case or stuff any sausage, you’ll just want to hand make the patties or balls, then fry or grill them up – and you’re done, ready to eat! You can even choose to freeze those patties or sausage balls by putting them in containers to keep them fresh while they freeze, instead of cooking them right away.
However, professional sausage making tends to be a bit more extravagant than this in the sense that you’ve got plenty of extra, tedious steps to create some really great sausage (and flavor) Remember how we asked you to soak those casings in warm water the night before to soften them up? We suggest now running water into each one to open them up a tad, and also over the casing itself to remove any extra debri or salt. Next, you’ll need to put each casing over your sausage stuffer, leaving about one to two inches of the casing hanging off the end and you’ll want to tye the end of the casing into a knot to keep the casing secure and to create links if needed.
Now it’s time to pump the meat through the stuffer, and you’ll want to do this part as slowly as possible as well, helping the meat feed into the casing and then tying off that end too once finished. When you feel that you have a better grip on how to use the sausage stuffer, you can possibly crank up the speed depending on how you feel and how uncomfortable you are. Each time you tye a second knot in the casing, remove that link and tye on another casing. Continue doing this until you have all of your sausages in casings.
The last step is to link the sausages together, which is surprisingly much easier than you would think. It’s all about twisting the ends together, and alternating each twist, much like hooks in links and how they alternate. So, essentially what you will do is measure about 6” of sausage, twist the ends together to create a link, and with the next 6” sausage link and twist, you’ll do the opposite twist direction that you did before. Wah-lah! You now have sausage links like the professionals!
As I’m sure you guessed it already, your last step is to freeze the links or the sausage once again but this time uncovered and overnight to achieve the best results possible. You don’t have to do this, but as we have said a few times, it’s almost imperative to keep the sausage chilled at all times to keep the cell structure and the juiciness of the sausage while cooking.
Sausage Making: After Freezing
Cooking it
Once you’ve chilled your sausage overnight, it’s now time to pull that art project out and cook it up. You can grill it, fry it, however you’d like to cook it, just don’t forget to cook slow and steady, at a lower temperature than a higher temperature.
Smoking it
In order to complete the smoking process, you’ll of course need a smoker, but you’ll also need about 2-3 days to even be able to eat the sausage once you’ve prepared it and spent a lot of time on it already. If you have the time and money for this, we say go for it, smoked sausage is absolutely delicious. You can even choose to hot smoke it or cold smoke it, depending on your preference. Hot smoking is cooked with heat then smoke is added, whereas cold smoking it involves drying it afterward.
Drying it
You don’t need a drying chamber to dry your sausage, if you’re making something like beef jerky, you could also hang them over a drying rack which works just as well. Choosing to dry your meat is a super tedious process, make sure that your humidity is at about 70%. Your room temperature can not exceed 50 degrees F or fall below 40 degrees F, so make sure you’re at a nice temperature for drying.
Tips for Making Sausage: Beginner’s Commandments
Texture is key
Remember, sausage consists of four main components: meat, salt, liquid, fat. Each ingredient, if used in different ratios, creates different textures. Find the master ratio for each texture to achieve the type of texture you want to achieve, such as using more fat than anything else if you want a smooth hot dog texture.
Cut pieces small
Basically, you’ll want your pieces small enough that they will fit down the grinder without getting stuck or caught, and land into the auger smoothly. Stuffing the grinder will only cause the meat’s cells to break down, and make it much harder to use the grinder altogether. No point in having large pieces that you’re just grinding down anyways.
Keep meat cold
Keeping the meat (and tools) cold will actually preserve the meat’s cells, which give you that juicy flavor and texture later on, even keeping your utensils (grinder, stuffer) cooled allows for better sausage and sausage making.
Don’t keep the grinder too cold though, it could freeze
However, you don’t want your grinder to freeze up, one of the hardest things to do is to grind meat through a frozen grinder. The blades can’t move to even grind up the meat, and the meat will even get stuck, so it’s best to keep it cool in the fridge or in the freezer for just a little bit. To be completely honest, you don’t want anything to freeze up when it comes to the equipment or ingredients – only chilled.
Have the right tools for the job
It’s important to have the right tools for sausage making because each step is so super vital, and anything you do to the sausage that isn’t deemed “OK” could potentially ruin the flavor. It’s important to keep the cell structure of the meat, so buying the perfect grinder with sharp blades (preferably one you can replace) is key here.
You’ll need to consider a sausage stuffer also if casing and sausage linking is your thing. You’re not going to be able to case them by hand, it’s far too difficult, so having a stuffer is key for this step.
Having all of the right tools at every step of the way is going to allow you to create the most perfect sausage and with the most perfect flavor, juicy at that. So make sure you’ve got all of your equipment ready the day before the sausage making.
Hand mixing is best, it’s better to take your time
Earlier we mentioned that getting the meat warm could potentially break up the cells and the fat off the meat, which will ruin the flavor and even the texture of the sausage. This can happen also with the mixer, it could become too warm and begin breaking down the cell structure, basically ruining the process of making sausage altogether. It’s best to use your hands and keep the meat cold at all times. If it does get warm, stop and put the meat back in the fridge or the freezer to cool it back off again.
As always, cook it properly
No matter how you wish to cook it, you want to cook slower and lower – not fast and high. Cooking slower and lower will allow the meat to be juicy and the texture to be tender and moist, yet still firm and allowing that ‘snap’ when you bite into it, whereas cooking it high and fast could cause the sausage to expand and burst. It can also cause the sausage to become dry once finished, or worse, too burnt.
Helpful tip: Never cut a sausage while you’re still cooking it!
Do’s & Don’ts of Sausage Making
Do:
- Make sure you choose meat with at least 20% fat, you aren’t going to be able to create a delicious sausage out of the meat with no fat on it. In fact, 20% is still not that much but just enough, hey, to each his own, and there are other choices for those who can’t eat fat.
- Gather up some good spices to blend together for seasoning your meat! You can always use a recipe here or make up your own blends. I’ve found personally that coming up with your own blends from time to time is refreshing, keeps you feeling like you could still be in that culinary game, mixing and cooking with the best.
- Continue to keep the meat cold while you’re prepping and preparing. As soon as the meat gets warm the fat could start to separate from the meat and trust me when I say, you don’t want that.
Don’t:
- Use iodized salt, or sea salt, even that beautiful Himalayan Pink fruit goddess mountain stuff…this typically can ruin the flavor of the sausage due to the minerals found in these types of salts.
- Speaking of salt, don’t use less than 2% of the size of the meat you are making, such as a 5lb sausage needing at least 2% of that weight of 5lb (0.1lbs) of salt, but no more than 3% (which would be 0.2lbs) of salt. Each 2% would be different of course, depending on the weight of the sausage. Somewhere between 2-3% is perfect.
- Buying fat substitutes is a huge no-no! Don’t do it! Sausage is basically fat’s best friend and they really need each other to thrive and have the best flavors possible. You can certainly compensate in other ways, but no substituting!