Here is another family tradition that we have added this year. This will be made around Thanksgiving and will get better each year. Although this year was pretty darn good.
Joe David was home for Thanksgiving and helped make the sausage. We had a wonderful time making homemade sausage and it turned out so delicious. Very time consuming and don’t expect to eat right away! You’re supposed to refrigerate overnight before you cook, but we just couldn’t wait, so we cooked some up and ate around 11:30pm…not a real good idea to eat sausage before you go to bed.
You can download and print a copy of the sausage recipe, just click on the title hyperlink below:
Real Texas Homemade Sausage
Ingredients
4 lbs Pork Shoulder Roast
1 lb Pork Fat
¼ cup Kosher Salt
⅓ cup Sugar
⅛ cup toasted Fennel Seeds
1 ½ teaspoons cracked Black Pepper
½ teaspoon ground Nutmeg
1 cup fresh Parsley, minced
1 head Garlic, peeled and chopped
¾ cup Sherry
¼ cup Sherry Vinegar
1 package Hog Casings
*I use my KitchenAid with Meat Grinder and Sausage Stuffer attachments.
Directions
Watch the How to Make Sausage and a Real Texas Sausage Recipe and see how much fun we had!
Freeze your pork roast, then remove from the freezer. Place a bowl in another bowl that contains ice and a little water. This will keep the top bowl cold as you add your pork roast pieces. Place your meat grinder and another bowl into the freezer. All equipment needs to be kept cold during the process.
When the pork is almost thawed, you can start to work with it. Slice the pork roast into 1” chunks and place in the bowl that is in the ice water.
Slice the pork fat into ½” chunks and place into the bowl with the sliced pork. Add the toasted fennel seed, cracked pepper, nutmeg, garlic, parsley, sugar and kosher salt and mix. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and place the mixture in the freezer for 30 minutes.
In a small bowl, add Sherry and Sherry vinegar, stir and place in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Rinse the hog casings in warm water. Soak in a bowl of warm water for 30 minutes.
Remove the meat mixture, extra bowl, grinder equipment from the freezer and attach to the KitchenAid. Run the meat mixture through the meat grinder using the course disc, starting with speed 1 and progressing to speed 2 on the KitchenAid. Push the meat mixture through the grinder. You will want to move quickly, not letting the meat get warm. Place the ground meat into a bowl that fits the KitchenAid and put into the freezer while you clean the KitchenAid and place the dough hook on the Kitchen Aid.
Take the meat out of the freezer. Place the splash guard on the bowl and turn the KitchenAid onto level 1.
Slowly add the sherry mixture to the meat. After the sherry has been added, remove the splash guard. Using a spoon scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure that the mixture is mixed thoroughly.
Place the Sausage Stuffer attachment onto the KitchenAid. Rub olive oil onto the spout of the sausage stuffer, this will allow the hog casing to slide easier onto the spout. Carefully slide the entire hog casing onto the spout of the sausage stuffer. Once at the end of the hog casing, pull some off the spout to tie a knot in the end. Slide the hog casing back onto the spout just until the knot is at the end.
The hog casing could develop an air bubble. Using a safety pin (Sanitize the safety pin) carefully pierce the hog casing releasing the air.
Feed the sausage into the top of the sausage stuffer, while holding the hog casing. Use your hand to evenly distribute the sausage in the hog casing.
Coil the sausage onto the countertop. Use pressure in your hands as you are allowing the sausage to fill the casing. Squeeze the sausage to form an even width.
At the end of the casing, remove the casing from the spout and tie a knot in the end.
Place the coiled sausage on a plate and put into the refrigerator. Continue this process until all the sausage is used.
To make links, uncoil the sausage. Measure approximately 6”, squeeze the casing to pinch off the sausage and twist the casing two or three times. Continue making the links to the end. Coil again and place on the plate and refrigerate overnight.
To cut the links, twist the links several times to make the twist tight. Using scissors cut in the middle of the twist and it will seal the sausage end.
In the comment section, please let us know what your favorite sausage recipes are….we might publish in our Real Texas Recipes Book!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks very tasty David. I have been looking on the internet for a while now for a good Chipotle Pepper Adobo sauce recipe. Well, I found one today and I’m going to give it a try. I love chipotle adobo sauce on just about anything.
Can’t wait to try your sausage recipe!
Stephan Marc,
The Impulsive Texan
Great looking sausages Ramona, Joe David and David! Did I get that order of importance right?
We just finished making our sausage for the year. I took the hard sausage out of the smokehouse last week. My Dad and I [and now Miss Jan] have been making sausage for about 40 years. We have gone through a lot of different mixtures of meat and spices. For about the last 10 years we have settled on one recipe:
We usually make 100 pounds of sausage [50 pounds of whitetail and 50 pounds of wild pig]. This year the timing was perfect because I caught and cleaned 5 pigs [2 sows and 3 shoats] and hung them in the walk-in cooler. Then I shot 2 whitetail bucks and cleaned them and hung them in the cooler. So when we butchered them we made our sausage with fresh meat that had never been frozen. We have a 4X8 sheet of plywood covered with plastic that we use and we cube all the meat and spread it out and then season it and mix it by hand 4 times and then grind it all up. This year we put up 35 – 1 pound packages and 6 – 2 pound packages in sealed plastic pouches. Then we stuffed 75 links in pork casings and hung them in the smokehouse. We build a fire in the barn and then take the coals to the smokehouse. We use mesquite bark and sawdust to put on the coals. After 2 days we took 30 links off and packaged them up for boiling or for grilling. The remaining 45 links we smoked for a little over a week until it was hard and then we packaged it up.
I pushed the wrong button so I have to continue on in another response.
The spices that we use are:
Bolner’s Fiesta Venison Sausage Mix [one jar per 25 pounds of meat – throw away the plastic package of preservatives]
Course ground pepper
Garlic powder
Comino
Seasoned salt
David: Send me your snail mail address and I’ll send you a link of the hard sausage. You can carry it around in your saddlebags for a couple of weeks without any trouble. Once you get it, slice it real thin and pop a beer or pour a shot of tequila and dig in. You can keep it in the fridge sliced or not for another month or two.
Is the amount of salt correct? It is about twice the amount used in most recipes.
First this an Italian sweet sausage recipe. Second 1/4 cup of kosher salt is almost twice as much needed. I’m just saying.
how much pepper,seasoned salt, garlic and comino do you put apart from the fiesta mix per the 25 pounds meat
i like italian sweet sausage
Instead of grinding my own pork I Bought pork mince from the supermarket and it seems to have right fat ratio. Also tried one lot with 1 cup bread crumbs and it gave sausages a nice texture. Nice recipe