Everyone loves sausage. Sausage is not just a ridiculously good breakfast food; it is also a mainstay of grills and tailgates and everything that is great about eating.
You can find stellar sausage products at establishments ranging from local mom-and-pop diners to fine-dining restaurants. Tastes range from mild and succulent to savory, rich, and filled with spicy flavor.
If you want to make your own sausage for your establishment, that’s great – sausages go well with anything and are terrific on their own. To help you in your endeavor, and to ensure you get the best sausages fit for a king’s royal plate, here are a few excellent sausage manufacturing tips.
Grinding Your Own Meat
You can buy pre-ground meat from a butcher, but if you have the capability of grinding your own meat, you should do so – it just adds to the authentic sausage manufacturing experience. One of the biggest headaches during the grinding process is dealing with bones. Thus, to make for a more efficient process, choose a cut of meat that doesn’t have as many bones to deal with. Pork shoulder roasts are great; they usually contain only 10 percent bone by total weight, so there’s less to deal with. You can also get spare ribs done country-style.
Choose the Right Meat
When picking the meat for your sausage – whether or not you grind it yourself – don’t go too lean. We all need to be healthy – especially us, because we love food too much – but using a meat that is too lean will result in dry, crumbly sausage that could fall apart once you slice it.
Beef and Pork Sausage should be at least 30% fat. Chicken Sausage will be around 15 to 20% fat.
When It Comes to Casings, Quality Matters
You may not think the quality of the casing really matters – after all, who pays attention to the casing over the savory goodness of the meat – but the opposite is true: casing matters. Using a poor-quality casing can result in your sausage bursting, which is never good. It’s also slower to manufacture sausages with bad casings. Instead, find solid, all-natural casings like hog and sheep. Thirty-two millimeter hog casings are recommended for dinner sausage. Twenty-one millimeter sheep casings are perfect for breakfast links.
Temperature Matters Too
When stuffing your sausage into the casings, make sure your mix is at the right temperature. For example, if you use your grinder with a special attachment to fill the casings, you want to make sure you first chill the mix. This is to help your grinder’s feed better push it through into your casing. Just below 32 degrees Fahrenheit is great. Cold heat will result in superior particle definition and prevent smearing.
Use Meat Seasoning to Spice Up Your Sausage
As a provider of fine food seasonings, our hearts ache whenever someone makes sausage without spicing their meat mixture beforehand.
Folks, sausage is meant to be seasoned. It’s meant to be savory and succulent. A sausage needs to have that extra kick to it that makes it pop with flavor. That’s why we strongly recommend using a meat seasoning blend to make your sausage full of flavor and stand out from the crowd.
Have questions? Need more sausage manufacturing tips? Contact us and we’d be glad to help. After all, it’s all about the sausage.