Home Made Italian Sausage

Well, we actually did it! We made our own Hot Italian Sausage! 

I wasn't going to blog about this at first but I was so pleased with how it turned out I just had to show the results.

We got all the ingredients yesterday, including an 8 pound pork shoulder (bone in) and a lengthy portion of pork intestine (for the sausage casing). The other ingredients include dry red wine, fresh parsley, fresh garlic, salt, pepper, red chili flakes, paprika, fennel seed, caraway seed, powdered cayenne pepper, and powdered chipotle chile pepper. I know I spelled chili/chile differently...that is how it is spelled on the respective jars.

Anyway the meat was cut into chunks and put through the course grinder. Then all the spices and seasonings were added to the red wine, mixed well and poured over the ground meat. Then that was thoroughly mixed and spread out over a sheet pan and placed in the freezer for about an hour. After that it was run through the grinder again, this time on a finer setting. The casing was put on the machine and the meat mixture was sent through the tube and into the casing. 

Here is the sausage as one giant piece.

Then I carefully made links (it tore a little on my first attempts) and packaged them for the freezer. There are five packages with four links and one package has three links. HM (Home Made) Hot Italian Sausage. YUM.

One of these days I hope to be able to make it with Home Grown pork, but that will be for another time.

The recipe came from a book called The Complete Guide To Sausage Making, Mastering The Art Of Homemade Bratwurst, Bologna, Pepperoni, Salami, And More by Monte Burch.