Memorial Day Weekend Sausage

In an effort to "get my head out of the wood fired oven," I wanted to make some sausage. I made the trip out to Henry's Meats in Waterford. Nice store. It was pretty busy so I didn't waste the counter person's time asking questions. I'll save those for another visit when the store is less busy. I liked the market. Had a nice feel to it. There were a number of specialty sandwiches available and they sounded good. Unfortunately, there was a lot going on that day and I didn't get to spend the amount of time in the store that the place deserves. I bought about 7 pounds of bone in pork butt and a few pork chops for the grill later in the day. I broke the pork but down into 1 inch cubes. When I was done trimming, I had about 5.5 pounds of pork. I divided it into 2 bags - one for sweet Italian sausage, the other for a kielbasa.

Thursday night, I seasoned the meat for the kielbasa - salt, pepper, garlic, and marjoram. On Friday, after everyone went to bed, I got to work. It was a little after 9:00 - and yes this is about as exciting as my Fridays get. I seasoned the meat for the Italian sausage - salt pepper and toasted fennel seeds. Then I rinsed out casings. Ground the Italian seasoned meat and stuffed it into casing. I over stuffed a few and cracked the casing. Nothing major, just a little less pretty. Cleaned that up and ground the kielbasa meat. Once it was ground, I fried a little and tasted it. It was pretty good. So some water gets added to the meat and it gets whipped with the paddle attachment of a mixer for a minute or two. Then I stuffed it into casings. I left myself enough casing on to tie it into a ring. Looked like you could buy it in a store. My older daughter has started taking digital pictures of the occasional rabbit that hops through the yard. On Friday night, I had no idea where the camera was, so instead of pictures of grinding pork and stuffing sausage, I'll offer you this:

At 10:50, I was almost done cleaning up. Not bad time - I think the cold beer I was nursing helped. I was at the sink with just a few more things to clean and then...the lights went out and I heard a pop. Shit. I got some candles and finished cleaning up. Moved the sausage I had just made to the chest freezer - I wasn't losing those. The lights came back on around 7:30 the next morning and I was glad I had put the sausage in the freezer. They had a slight freeze, but were not frozen solid. And later in the weekend, they hit the grill.

They all came out pretty good. I will definitely be making that kielbasa again. In the end, I still think Cardona's has the best pork butts and I will find my way to Henry's again.