Sausage Making

[bluemoon]

Does anyone make their own sausages? We buy some lovely ones from the farmers' market, but it always makes me want to make some of my own and experiment with ingredients. Where can I buy the equipment and less common ingredients such as rusk (which I believe is a large component, but is not the stuff we used to give to babies!!!)?

[SarzWix]

Sausage Making.org

Although we bought the mincer & sausage-stuffing attachments for the Kenwood Chef which works a treat

[bluemoon]

Oh, thanks, Sarz. That looks brilliant, exactly what I was after.

[LostGoddess]

I can also recommend that website, very informative. Sausage making is addictive for sure and great fun, as you can see from me and my dad showing off our wares...



As a footnote, I don't know what other people recommend, but I used my own breadcrumbs instead of bought cereal. This was because I needed them to be gluten-free, but it might be useful info.

[LostGoddess]

me again, just to say that I found this book really useful for the basics and recipes

The Sausage Book: Amazon.co.uk: Paul Peacock: Books

[Seahorse]

Lidl are doing an electric mincer from this monday (13th). No idea of quality or value but I've had other cooking stuff from them thats been great:

Lidl Online

[amandaandherveg]

Last year I got some lovely organic pork from a local farmer and decided to make sausages.

I borrowed my neighbour's Kenwood Chef, bought a stuffer attachment and enlisted my OH. I read the recipe wrong and put in 8 times the seasoning so had to then multiply the pork by 8 to even it out. We couldn't do anything for laughing - but they were the tastiest sausages we ever tasted, the freezer was STUFFED!

[bluemoon]

Thank you everyone, plenty to think about. Unfortunately I've just bought a new food-processor and it isn't a Kenwood, so I'm going to have to buy the machine specially I think.

[SMS6]

We have an electric mincer - It's the Antony Worrell Thomson one and it also does sausages. We always make our own now.

We never use rusk - we use bread crumbs and as we make our own we don't really have cheap white bread so we use bread sticks, crush them up in a plastic bag using a rolling pin

[TEB]

Showed this thread to OH because she keeps on saying that she wants to make her own, upshot instead of ordering the bits for her hand mincer she went to Lidl and bought the one mentioned by Seahorse (there were only 2 left and someone had hid them), then a trip to the butchers for meat and sausage casings and last night we had our own bangers and they were lovely. My question is, not including the cost of the mincer is making your own cost effective from say buying quality sausages from a butcher.

PS Today OH has denuded the freezer of meat, done a stock take of the spices and has that "gleam" that says shed loads of sausages

[amandaandherveg]

It depend on what price you are paying for your meat/pork, etc.

I have a farmer near me that keeps free range Goucestershire Old Spot pigs. When he has any available he sells it the meat at £2 per pound. It's wonderful stuff and makes amazing, cost effective sausages. He also sells the bacon, roast, chops, gammon, etc at £2 too - hmm, I feel a phonecall coming on.

[SMS6]

Showed this thread to OH because she keeps on saying that she wants to make her own, upshot instead of ordering the bits for her hand mincer she went to Lidl and bought the one mentioned by Seahorse (there were only 2 left and someone had hid them), then a trip to the butchers for meat and sausage casings and last night we had our own bangers and they were lovely. My question is, not including the cost of the mincer is making your own cost effective from say buying quality sausages from a butcher.

PS Today OH has denuded the freezer of meat, done a stock take of the spices and has that "gleam" that says shed loads of sausages

Do remember that if your meat has already been frozen and you make it in to sausages you shouldn't then freeze the sausages. It would be the same as refreezing raw meat.

As for cost effectiveness that depends on the quality of the meat you use. We did a weigh/price up once using half belly pork and half shoulder and we reckoned that lb for lb our own made ones were just slightly cheaper than the butchers best

[TEB]

Do remember that if your meat has already been frozen and you make it in to sausages you shouldn't then freeze the sausages. It would be the same as refreezing raw meat.

As for cost effectiveness that depends on the quality of the meat you use. We did a weigh/price up once using half belly pork and half shoulder and we reckoned that lb for lb our own made ones were just slightly cheaper than the butchers best

Hadn't thought of that very good point thanks, thats what we are using belly and shoulder.
Cheers