Special Feature! If you
have Microsoft Excel on your computer, you can download an Excel version of
the SausageMania sausage recipes file by clicking HERE.
(The file should download to your machine and then automatically open in Excel.)
Each recipe is set for one pound of ground pork; all you do is enter the actual
weight of ground pork you have on hand, and all the other ingredients will
be automatically calculated for you!
SausageMania
will also give you step-by-step instructions on how to set yourself
up for sausage-making, how to avoid common sausage-making pitfalls, where
to order fine-quality sausage paraphernalia and supplies... and many other
pointers that will help you make professional sausage from the get-go!
Sorry,
no game recipes...... all SausageMania Sausage Recipes call for pure
pork..... with 20 to 30% fat..... no preservatives other than good old NaCl...
that is, sodium chloride, A.K.A. salt..... which is the Latin root of the
word "sausage" itself! No veal, beef, fish, potatoes, tripe, mutton,
venison, moose, caribou, antelope, kangaroo, jackrabbit, armadillo, opossum,
rattlesnake, razor clams, wildebeest or elephant..... nothing but good, old
PORK, "the other white meat."
Another
Special Mention:Stuffer's
Supply Company, of Langley, British Columbia, has complied about 150 sausage
recipes in PDF format. To view them (or download them), click HERE.
TO
VIEW A PHOTO TUTORIAL ON SAUSAGE STUFFING, CLICK HERE!
If you
can get unseasoned ground pork, you really don't need a grinder to turn out
excellent sausage. Here in Alaska, Costco regularly carries unseasoned ground
pork, about 20-25% fat, at $0.99/lb! [10/6/01] That's a hard-to-beat price!
And if it's $0.99/lb in Alaska, you can probably find it for as little as
$0.69/lb in the Lower 48, as Alaska has no pork slaughterhouses of its own,
and all pork products must be barged up from Tacoma.
Remember,
store-bought sausage sells for $3.99-$6.99/lb, and sometimes even more, (at
high-end Yuppie merchants like Dean & DeLuca or Williams-Sonoma,
where it sells from $8.75 to $14.00/lb!) Even including the cost of seasonings
and casing, and amortizing the cost of your stuffer (and/or grinder), you'll
be getting custom-made sausage at bargain prices, plus you get all the excitement
of actually making it yourself. And..... last but not least.... you will
know
exactly what goes into your sausage!
But
if you insist on grinding your own meat, the grinder you need is really
dictated
by the amount of sausage you plan to make at each session. A Cusinart or
even
a small "Walmart special" grinder will suffice if all you are making
is four or five pounds in a session. But for quantities over 10-15 lbs.,
you
need something bigger and better.
Chop-Rite,
of Harleysville, PA, has been making cast iron hand grinders from the same
molds for more than 100 years (although the company changed hands twice in
the last century). Their #22 bolt-down hand grinder, which takes standard
#22 blades and plates, is a sturdy machine that will outlast you and your
kids. Chop-Rite sells a flywheel, by special order
only, to replace the hand crank, so
that the machine can be motorized. We've used a motorized
#22 Chop-Rite grinder for 25 years. It's over-powered, with a 3/4hp motor
(the manufacturer recommends a 1/3hp motor), but it will grind five pounds
a minute (that's 300 lbs/hour!) for hours at a time (we've used it for butchering
moose and caribou).
There
are various high-end home grinders, built like miniature commercial ones,
but in the $350-500 price range. Commercial grinders make no sense at all
for the home or hobbyist sausage maker. They cost thousands of dollars new
and are extremely heavy (like the Biro
1556SS 15hp 220-volt 3-phase grinder, which weighs in at 796 lbs and wholesales
for $5,800).
