I've said before how much I love my
Kitchenaid mixer. Not only does it serve in its primary function as
a mixer, it has oodles of attachments to play with. By far, the one
I use the most is the meat grinder. Often, there are cuts of beef on
sale for cheaper than ground beef (and without the potential presence
of the dreaded “pink slime”). Even better, it has a sausage
stuffer on it, enabling us to make our own bratwursts.
Making bratwursts is remarkably simple:
grind the meat, add seasonings, and stuff into casings. The hardest
part is finding the casings...and that's as simple as going to your
closest meat market. If you're squeamish about using natural
casings, you can also order collagen casings online.
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| Enough hog casings for 100 lbs of bratwursts |
How the casings come packaged will vary
based on the store selling them. At one of the markets near me, they
just cut off a length from what they have soaked and prepared for
their use that day...if they have enough out, they'll cut some off
and put it in a baggie. The other only sells it by the hank –
which is enough for about 100 pounds of sausages. Luckily, it can
be sealed up with a Food Saver – making 100 lbs of sausage in one
shot would be difficult! Regardless of which store I go to, I've
never paid the same price twice for casings. I think the person
working just guesstimates a price based on...something. The hank is
more standardized in price – $25-30, and is much more economical in
terms of per-pound cost; the shorter length tends to run about
$1/pound. This time, the hank cost us $30.
We've been slowly buying meat to turn
into bratwursts for the past few months; every time we go shopping,
we buy a pork shoulder or a turkey. This month, we had trouble
closing our freezer after we got back from shopping, so knew it was
time to get to work making brats (and time to get a bigger freezer!)
Before we started, though, we had to
strategize – this much sausage would take a while to make, and with
a toddler and an infant, we just weren't going to have the time to
get it done in one shot, unless we stayed up all night, sacrificing
precious, precious sleep. Since that
wasn't going to happen, we decided to spread the process out over
three days (if we were making a smaller batch, we would have made it
in one day).
DAY ONE: Cutting and Grinding
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| Gotta sharpen the blade! |
We decided to focus on pork for the
simple reason that one of our pork shoulders was thawed and we
couldn't fit that and all three turkeys in the fridge. I think they
were the same cut of meat, but they were labeled differently – one
was called a “pork picnic roast” and the other was a “pork
shoulder roast”. The only difference I saw was the pork picnic
roast had more bones. In the end, $45 of pork shoulders yielded
29.25 lbs of ground meat.
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| One of three hunks o' pork |
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| All cut up |
Randy cut the meat into strips small
enough to feed through the grinder (the instructions call for 1”
chunks, but I've found that strips work just fine, as long as the
diameter is not too large) and ground it all up. He then packaged it
in gallon Ziploc bags – five pounds per bag. This process took two
hours and three beers.
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| Get your grind on! |
When all the grinding was done, we
threw the bones in the crock pot and let it simmer overnight both to
make stock, and to get some more meat off of the bones. This sounds
a little penny-pinching, I know, but we ended up getting nearly two
pounds of additional meat, which we drenched in barbecue sauce for
sandwiches. We also got three quarts of stock.
DAY TWO: Seasoning
While Randy cut, ground, and packaged
the meat on day one, I had child duty and looked up recipes in our sausage book
this wonderful book. Luckily for my decision-making abilities, I was limited in my
choices by the ingredients we have on hand. Plain bratwursts were a
guarantee, as was a spicy version – we made double batches of both
of those. However, with nearly 30 lbs of meat, we wanted to try some
new variations as well. I settled on Garlic Sausage and Southwest
Sausage.
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| Just a touch more heat, please! |
That meant on the second day, we were
ready to season the meat. We were not precise in our measurements
according to the recipes, since most of them called for four pounds
of meat and we had five pounds for each recipe. Also, we wanted to
make the spicy sausages much spicier than the recipe (we had made it
before).
Randy had the pleasure of mixing the
seasonings into the cold meat. I was excited for him to do it;
usually it's my job and I know how much it hurts after a bit...at
least until your fingers go completely numb! By the last couple of
batches, he had figured out how to minimize the time required. He
spread the meat out in the bowl as thinly as he could and evenly
sprinkled the seasonings over it so there were fewer clumps of
spices. It still requires several minutes of mixing to get
everything evenly distributed.
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| Randy before he mixed the meat. That joy left about 20 seconds later |
At that point, we put the ground meat
back into the bags to sit overnight. This was mainly because it's
much easier to stuff the casings when you have two people, so we had
to wait until Zoey was asleep. It's too much to hope that both kids
will sleep at the same time at this stage, but Parker is at least
more or less stationary. The thought of chasing a toddler down with
sausage hands is not fun.
A secondary, but also valid, reason was
to let the spices meld and develop the flavors in the sausages.
Given our general lack of patience, we were going to cook the brats
the day we stuffed them; if we had seasoned and stuffed on the same
day, the flavor wouldn't be the same.
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| This doesn't adequately show the loss of feeling in his fingers |
The final step for day two was to prep
the casings. They come packed in salt, which has to be rinsed off
thoroughly. We pulled one long strand of casings out of the hank and
rinsed it under cold water, then put it in a bowl of cool water to
soak for 30 minutes. Then we put the casings in a Ziploc with fresh
water and put it in the fridge to wait for the next day.
This process took one hour and one
glass of wine to complete.
DAY THREE: Stuffing and cooking
This started with putting Zoey down for
her nap and convincing Parker that he liked his swing. Once both
kids were contained, we rushed to action. Sadly, this meant we didn't get any pictures of the process. While it is tempting to
use the longest strand of casings possible – both to maximize the
look of the final product (who doesn't want a 30-foot string of
sausages?) and to minimize the times I have to tie a knot in slippery
casings, I've learned that anything over around six feet makes it
difficult to twist the sausages into links.
Stuffing the sausages takes quite a bit
of patience and a little trial and error in the technique used. The
ground meat feeds through the stuffer quite slowly. To complicate
matters, if you push too much meat through at a time, the plunger
gets stuck and pulling it out creates an air pocket, which turns the
casings into a balloon. Randy has mastered this end of it; he pushes
the plunger down 2/3 of the way and then feeds more meat in. This
ensures a steady flow of meat into the casings with no air pockets.
Yet again, patience is the key – if you rush this, it will end up
creating more work and frustration. If you do end up with an air
pocket, just pop it with a toothpick and keep going.
The other aspect is holding the
sausages as they are stuffed. Because our stuffer is an attachment
to the Kitchenaid, it's about a foot over the counter. This means
the weight of the stuffed sausages drags down the casings, resulting
in thin, sad sausages unless someone supports the sausages as they
are stuffed. The trick is moving the casings along so the sausages
are full but not overfull; overfilling means the bratwursts will
burst when twisted into links. We were reminded the hard way of
this, as I overstuffed the garlic brats and had several split open
while I was twisting them into links; I had to remove some of the
sausage and try to tie off casings that had already been stuffed.
Profanity ensued, and I ended up relegating those sausages to
immediate cooking.
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| Casualties of over-stuffing;See the meat exploding out of the end? Tragic, but still tasty! |
It's also important to remember to
leave a few inches of empty casing at the end, so you can tie a knot.
Thankfully, this is easy to remember, and I didn't have to swear at
this stage! It's better to leave a little more room than you need
than not leave enough. Twist the stuffed casing into 4-5 inch
lengths – you want to give it three or four turns. When you cut
the links apart, the ends will stay sealed. I really don't know how
it works, but it does – I suspect magic.
Some meat will always be lost – what
is left in the tube of the stuffer. Because we had so many different
batches, we didn't bother to clean the stuffer after each one;
instead, we tried to sequence our stuffing to flavors that would
match well, as we knew we'd have some blended sausages.
Spicy-Southwest, Southwest-Garlic, etc. This way, we ended up losing
the least amount of meat possible – maybe enough for one bratwurst.
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| Totally worth all of the effort! |
The stuffing process took the two of us
(in varying degrees of cooperation due to necessary child wrangling)
three hours and three beers.
We ended up with 111 bratwursts. Even
with overestimating the cost of the seasonings at five dollars, that
comes out to a price of $0.54/brat, or $2.00/lb. The WinCo brand
bratwursts sell for $3.99/lb and have who knows what quality of
ingredients. I couldn't find an ingredient list for the WinCo brand,
but Johnsonville (which costs a little more) has the following
ingredient list:
Pork, water, corn syrup and less
than 2% of the following: salt, dextrose, monosodium
glutamate,
flavorings, BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid.
I like the vagueness of “flavorings”; it lets me use my imagination!
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| Zoey and her grandpa waiting for bratwursts |
Aside from knowing exactly what
“flavorings” are in my sausages, I discovered – completely by
accident – another health benefit. My dad has breathing problems,
and some additive in the store bratwursts messes up his breathing.
These don't. Needless to say, he likes the freshly made version a
lot better. We are making him about 15 pounds of them – enough to
keep him in stock for a while!
Some of these recipes call for
differently ground meat – some call for a double grind (coarse,
then fine), some call for one grind on fine, some for one on coarse.
We did one coarse grind for all of it – the batch was big enough to
make switching out the blades a pain in the butt - and didn't double
grind any of it. I didn't notice a difference between these and the
previous batches where we did the double grind.
My favorite of the four variations was
the spicy, followed by the garlic because of their stronger flavors.
The other two were also tasty, but it's hard to beat a good spicy
bratwurst, and I believe garlic should be one of the main food
groups, so that's an automatic win. Actually, with both the spicy
and garlic recipes, we doubled the quantity of the main seasoning to
enhance the flavor a bit more.
We also altered the directions that
call for the meat to sit in the freezer for a short stint between
steps. Since we refrigerated the meat overnight between steps, we
didn't need to freeze it. All this does is chill the meat so it
travels through the grinder better. A long stay in the fridge has
the same effect. When making a smaller batch, I include
the freezer step.
RECIPES
Process
for all variations:
Prepare
the casings if needed, by rinsing off any salt, then placing in a
bowl of cool water for 30 minutes. Run cool water through the
casings before stuffing.*
Cut
the meat into 1-inch cubes. Freeze for 30 minutes to firm up before
grinding.
Grind
meat through the coarse plate of a meat grinder
In a
large bowl, add seasonings and mix well, using your hands.
Stuff
mixture into prepared casings, prick air pockets, and twist into
4-to-5-inch lengths. Cut the links apart with a sharp knife or
scissors.
Refrigerate
for up to three days or freeze.
Bratwurst
6
feet hog casing
5 lbs
ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)
1 t
white pepper**
1 t
kosher or coarse salt
½ t
crushed caraway seed
½ t
dried marjoram
¼ t
allspice
Garlic
Sausage
6
feet hog casing
5 lbs
ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)
½ c
white wine
3 T
minced garlic**
1T
plus 1t kosher or coarse salt
2t
sugar
1t
black pepper
½ t
ground ginger
¼ t
allspice
¼ t
cinnamon
¼ t
nutmeg
¼ t
ground thyme
Sicilian-Style
Hot Sausage
6
feet hog casing
5 lbs
ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)
2T
kosher or coarse salt**
1T
black pepper
2T
habanero chili powder
¼
cup crushed red pepper
Southwest
Pork Sausage
6
feet hog casing
5 lbs
ground pork shoulder or butt (make sure there is some fat!)
1T
plus 1t kosher or coarse salt**
1 T
black pepper
2t
crushed red pepper
1t
coriander
1t
cumin
½ t
chili powder
4
cloves garlic, finely chopped
*If
desired, you can soak the casings again, this time adding 1T white
vinegar for each cup of water. This softens the casings and makes
them more transparent so the end product looks nicer.
**all
measurements are for rounded spoons, as the base recipe was for four
pounds of meat rather than five
