breakfast, hot italian, and chicken sundried tomato

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uzikaduzi

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Sep 9, 2016
205
31
I had some fresh picnics in the freezer that I've been wondering what to do with so I decided to make some sausage.


they were so much more of a pain to cut up than butts... filled with tendons, huge veins, connective tissue... the other 2 in the freezer will not be made into sausage because of how bad it was... maybe try a ham? idk I'm in san antonio and the weather likely won't allow me to do one the way i'd like to. also had very little fat i could save... had to beg the butcher to give me whatever he could.



the dog is going to be real happy with these


~5 pds to breakfast sausage

10 tsp of kosher salt (should be a little more than 2% but i always use 2 tsp/pd of sausage because it's where i like it and why it's in tsp's)

2 tbsp fresh cracked pepper

2 tbsp dried sage (not the more leaf like stuff)

1 tbsp ground mace

ground with the small plate on a kitchen aid twice

(i was going to try to convert all this to percentages, but my scale isn't trustworthy enough to work that way so i don't and i''m not sure my math is right)





the other 5pds went to a hot Italian

meat on the coarse plate, fat on the fine

same 10 tsp of kosher salt as above

3 garlic cloves (i just skin them and run them through the grinder on the fine plate before the fat gets ground)

2 tbsp toasted and cracked fennel (i toast it in a pan till my kitchen starts to smell like rye bread then crack them on the counter by rolling a rolling pin on them... my wife and kids will complain about them sticking in their teeth if i don't crack them and there are no complains when it's cracked)

2 tsp red chili flakes

1 cup NFDM

2 tsp cayenne

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp of ground pepper

1/2 cup chilled red wine (I don't drink room temperature anything so i do commit the sin of chilling red wine... i don't know if this makes much of a difference but i frequently see the addition of cold ice water to sausage recipes so maybe it's important to be cold?)

1/2 a bunch of fresh parsley coarsely chopped

(it's on the edge of heat to where my kids and wife may or may not mention it but doesn't seem overly hot to me)





i also like to leave it in the fridge over night before freezing... i don't have a vacuum sealer and i get less freezer burn on freezing meat if i dry out the surface in the fridge and i like to let sausage sit for a day before freezing anyways to let the spices mingle better (that last part might be my imagination)

i didn't get many pics of my chicken sausage, but i use boneless skinless thighs

i only tried chicken because my wife is very very picky and used to hate pork for some reason... i came up with this and like it enough that we sill make it even though she will eat pork now

5 pds boneless skinless chicken

10 tsp of kosher salt

1 cup NFDM

8 oz's of the pre-shredded mozzarella

2 tsp of cayenne

1/2 a bunch of coarsely chopped parsley

~6 oz of coarsely chopped baby spinach

8oz container of sundried tomatoes drained of the oil and ran through the grinder before the meat

1 tbsp of of ground pepper

3 cloves of garlic (peeled and ran through the grinder before the meat)

1/2 cold white wine


next day i cooked one of each in the oven till 165 (i normally like to grill it but it was raining)

left is the chicken and right is the italian



lastly i baked the bones for a few hours for Reagan and let them cool


 
Looks like you made some great sausage!

I love the chicken sausages, but hadn't thought about the sun dried tomatoes in them before, I think I'll try that!

Looks like the pooch is pleased as well.
 
I think I must have only had chicken sausages with health in mind and they always seemed bland to me... this, even though I think i have a bit of strong flavored ingredients, you can actually taste chicken in a good way to me. Thanks for looking
 
Everything Looks tasty! I have a thai chicken sausage that I make that really is good. Probably one of the only ones that I make with chicken that isn't too bland.
 
man a thai one sounds good... mind sharing the recipe?
 
Good looking sausage!!!
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Nice Job!!
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Pup looks Happy too!!
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Bear
 
man dirtsailor, that looks really good... i think post #10 sold me looking at that chili, garlic, and ginger ground up
 
Nice looking sausage, UZ! You've convinced me to never buy a picnic lol! Everything with sausage is supposed to be cold, including the wine. I use Sangria for Hot Italian because we didn't have red wine once and we liked it so well we just stuck with it...
I wait until just before stuffing to mix in the cold liquid. I think it makes the stuffing smoother.
Points for a multi-sausage post!
Dan
 
do you have to heat them up that day i read that you leave them out for a couple hours to bloom, then refrigerate for next day then cook, I've also seen where they cook them and then put away 
 
For fresh sausage I bloom overnight and freeze... Imaybe not 100% bloom is the right word, but if you skip that step and freeze right away, you'll get freezer burn from the wet casings but also the flavor doesn't really meld together.

When I smoke sausage, I make it, stuff it, let it sit overnight (might not be 100% necessary but it allows the cure to work and dry out the casings), smoke then, let them bloom (pretty sure this is the right way to use the term) overnight in the fridge and then freeze.



There is no reason. To pre-cook fresh sausage, but I would say it needs time to meld before freezing
 
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For fresh sausage I bloom overnight and freeze... Imaybe not 100% bloom is the right word, but if you skip that step and freeze right away, you'll get freezer burn from the wet casings but also the flavor doesn't really meld together.

When I smoke sausage, I make it, stuff it, let it sit overnight (might not be 100% necessary but it allows the cure to work and dry out the casings), smoke then, let them bloom (pretty sure this is the right way to use the term) overnight in the fridge and then freeze.



There is no reason. To pre-cook fresh sausage, but I would say it needs time to meld before freezing
thank you i will have to get sausage equipment and try it out 
 
Awesome!!!!... I am not anywhere near an expert here but my few pieces of advice I wish I looked into.

Don't use a grinder stuffer combination... you 'can' make good sausage from them, but they are beyond a pain and take forever and the auger heats up the meat in general let alone sending meat through it a minimum of twice... I use my kitchenaid grinder attachment which isn't super fast but acceptable. I use the kitchener vertical stuffer... it looks to be a rebranded lem or cabela's but it's awesome. Don't buy casing from places like bass pro or cabela's... butcher-Packer, sausage supply, Syracuse sausage... they are exponentially better and the same price for a whole hank which can stuff 120pds of sausage as it costs for the packs that will hold 25# at these hunting places... they are also much longer. I can fit 5-7 pounds in one length from the better places and from bass pro it's 1-3 pds
 
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