How to Make Homemade Sausages

By: Paul Godfrey

Have you ever tasted a homemade sausage? If you have you will want to make your own and here is how to do it.

Ingredients
Meat - We use pork belly diced into half inch cubes but other cuts such as the hand are also widely used
Rusk - This is the seasoning which can contain a variety of herbs and spices to give the sausage flavour. A traditional rusk is mate up of pepper, salt, thyme and hops. Rusk is mix is available to buy or can be made to suit your own sausage style and taste.
Skins - Natural skins are intestines and will be in brine when bought, you will need to soak your skins overnight to remove the salt or you will end up with one very salty sausage.

Measures
5.5LB of meat
2 .30 cups of rusk

Preparation
Soak skins overnight to release salt which has been absorbed when kept in brine, hang ends off skins over the bowl so it is easy to find when you start. (Do not forget to cut these off and throw away before use)
Dice your pork belly or meat cuts into half inch cubes, it is important that the cut of meat you have chosen has a reasonable fat content, this is essential to hold the sausage mix together and to add flavour
Mix dry rusk mix with water and stir well with a fork, rest and allow the mix to expand. Once the water has been absorbed mix again to add air and make sure there are no big lumps of rusk mixture.

Method
Put diced meat through course mincer
Add rusk mix into first course mix. This is best done on a large flat tray or in a large mixing bowl. Mix in batches to ensure an even spread and no lumps of rusk mix are formed.
Pass the sausage and rusk mix through the course mincer again.
Dismantle mincer and give everything a thorough clean. Once clean reassemble the mincer with the Sausage nozzle on.
Pass some mix through the mincer until a small amount comes out the end of the nozzle. Take this on and discard. We do this to form resistance in the mincer and nozzle so it does not come lose hen the skin is on.
Thread previously soaked skin onto nozzle, the best way to do this is to open the end of the skin and dunk in water to allow some water into the skin, this will make the skin easier to load onto the nozzle and fill more smoothly with the sausage mixture.
Load the skin onto the nozzle until full and allow part of the sausage skin to overhang nozzle by two centimeters.
Feed meat/rusk mix through to fill sausage skin and form one long sausage. You may find it easier to have two people do this bit, one to feed the mix into the mincer and one to hold the sausage and lay onto the tray once formed. A good tip here is to make sure there is a constant flow of mix going through and the mincer never runs dry.
Form long sausage into traditional bunches of three. (See separate instructions)
You will be enormously proud of what you have just achieved you will not be able to resist the temptation to cook and eat a sausage. Go for it, they are amazing!
Hang in a chilled space for 24hrs to allow excess moisture to drain.
Once drained cut and freeze (Never re freeze your sausages).

My name is Paul Godfrey, I have a passion for healthy, organic fresh farm food. I have been producing my own foods for many years now and would love to help inspire more people to start doing the same. Find out all you need to know about sausage making and lots more information about how to start producing organic food.