Homemade Sausage East Texas Style

I belong to a blackpowder shooting forum that is mostly just a bunch of good ole do it yourself country boys. Now don’t get me wrong there are a few city dudes and even a few foreigners but we all pretty much get along with just a flare up once in a while. I guess what I am trying to say it is more than just a forum where you go to ask questions and get answers on anything related to blackpowder shooting. It is kind of like a family group. If you ever heard the old saying “hang around old guys cause they know stuff” there are a lot of old guys that are members of this forum. If you would like to visit and see if you fit in feel free to stop by, you might even learn something.

One of my buds on the forum goes by the alias of ET or East Texas. He has lots of gardening, canning and general homestead living skills and is always sharing them with others. A lot of good information is available that ET has placed in the Do it yourself section and I got his permission to pass on one of his best to you guys. You know how well I like to BBQ and how I love smoked sausage. Here is East Texas version of homemade sausage written as only ET would tell it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, Wild Ed



HOMEMADE SAUSAGE, DO IT YER OWNSELF
By East Texas



Well, I like sausage! It can be made out of just about any meat you want, chicken, beef, pork, or venison, or out of any combination of them! Now my favorite is venison and pork! A pigs ass is always gonna be pork, but some pork, is leaner than others! I like to use the wild hogs, because there is less fat on em! If your doin venison yer gonna need some pork, because the venison is very lean also, practically no fat on em, so the meat will be very dry unless ya add a little pork to keep it a little juicy! Now don’t get me wrong I like my sausage to be a little dry, I hate greasy sausage! Like what you city slickers with yer skinny city shoes buy at the wally world! So heres how I make mine.


Now first thing I do is break out the meat grinder, I have one of Cabelas, one of the best 100 dollar bills I’ve ever spent! I also have a couple of the old hand grinders in different sizes as back up and grind up the meat of choice!

My [perfect] mixture is usually gonna be 75% venison to 25% pork.    Now while I’m grinding all this meat I take my sausage casings, and start soaking them in warm water.  You can get a package of sausage casings at most meat markets and a lot of grocery stores carry them also they usually run between $3.50-$5.00

While the casings are soaking I grind all the meat and keep sticking it in the fridge until it’s all done!

Now let me pause right here fer a second to say, GERALDO, GET YER EYES OFFIN MY PUDDIN' CUPS!  Now when it’s all been ground up, I break out the meat mixer, again Cabelas seein the trend here?  You don’t have to use a meat mixer, you can do it by hand but believe me, it’s worth the money to have one.

Now I use the highly accurate and scientific method of gettin the proportions of meat correct, its one handful of pork to three handfuls of venison! When it’s mixed up to my likin, I start adding seasoning. I sprinkle it in while turning the meat in the mixer and get it all mixed in, now seasoning is something ya kind gotta do to your taste, I like the basics,salt,pepper,[coarse ground!], and garlic, lots of garlic!

Now if ya want to make breakfast sausage or pan sausage as we poor folks like to call it, you might want some sage or whatever seasoning suits yer taste! Fer pan sausage you won’t need the casings either. Anyway you can experiment on yer own!

I added Sage and Red Pepper flakes to mine. Wild Ed

 

Now you should have a pile of sausage ready to stuff!

 

So now I break out my sausage stuffer, nope not Cabelas   harbor freight! It’s a 5 lb stuffer, meanin it holds 5 lbs at a time. It comes with different size nozzles but I like the largest one cause I like big ol fat sausage, not the skinny city slicker sausage that ya buy in town!   grab a tub of butter and grease up the nozzle good then start feedin the casings onto the nozzle

Now just sos ya understand, ya keep shovin the casings up on the nozzle till ya get to the end, then tie a knot in the end. Start pushin the handle of the stuffer down and it will start filling up the casings, you’ll develope a feel fer how fast or slow after ya bust a hole in em a time or two! (?^ when yer finished, you should have something that looks like this!

Now let me pause again fer a second to say, GERALDO! QUIT EYEBALLIN MY COLD BEER!  now I had a few pounds of sausage left over  after I ran out of casings, so I’ve got some sleeves that I get from the meat house I use to put my ground meat in and I just marked them pan sausage and fill them up with what was left   I use green zip ties to seal them up and red ones fer ground so in the freezers, I can easily tell the difference!   

Now I got a couple of holes in my sausage too, I had my buddy Rob helpin and he had never done it before, so we had a little learnin curve goin, but all in all we did pretty good! I figger we made between 80-100lbs of sausage!  Now it’s ready to put in the smokehouse, or the freezer, and can be smoked when it’s cooked!   yo can figure a 1 lb sausage pack at the store is gonna cost ya about 3-4 bucks, I got about 50 cents worth of lead and powder, 5 bucks fer casings and about 7 bucks worth of seasonings fer a total of roughly, 13-15 bucks fer say 90 lbs of sausage, that’s pretty cheap, btw, its GREAT tasting sausage and you can DO IT YER OWNSELF!