Sausage Fest

What do you do when your husband plops 26 pounds of pork into your shopping cart at Costco? You roll your eyes and then you go home and make a lot of sausage!

A couple of years ago my dad and I decided to try making a breakfast sausage, like Jimmy Dean. (I personally looooooooooooove Jimmy Dean: it reminds me of my grandma and her wonderful Southern cooking. Whenever I smell it I think of her in the kitchen, baking homemade biscuits, stirring a pot of grits, and frying up eggs for a hearty breakfast. The best days start with crumbled sausage mixed into a serving of buttery grits. YUM.) My dad bought country-style pork ribs at Costco for about $2/pound, which we ground using a KitchenAid mixer attachment. We weren't too sure what seasonings to put in, or how much. Sage was pretty obvious and we just sorta added whatever we thought would be good: dry mustard, ground cloves, a little salt and pepper. The only cloves we had on hand were from my dad's college days (so they were from at least the 1700's right....?). Everyone knows that you should restock your herbs and spices annually, but my parents are "waste not, want not" folks so these cloves were a little, um, tired. We had to add quite a bit of the ancient cloves so we could taste them at all. The sausage was super delicious.

Then last fall we made another, larger batch of sausage with Dave. We'd run out of my dad's sleepy cloves and were left with a jar of whole cloves. Since my parents live out in the boonies it didn't make sense to drive all the way to town for more ground cloves. So Dave set to work grinding the whole cloves using the mortar-and-pestle. It sounds simple enough, but is hard work. (Adding an abrasive like a little salt or sugar in the mortar helps a lot.) In case you're wondering, freshly ground cloves are not tired: they are wide awake and spicy! Of course, we didn't realize their potency until after we'd finished the sausage. This batch of sausage was pretty potent, especially for my dad's sensitive taste, but Dave and I loved it. I think we finished our 6 pound ration within only 4 months.

The other day I realized that Dave and I didn't get sick at all this past fall and winter, which is unusual for us. I joked with my dad that maybe all those cloves in the sausage kept us healthy: we ate some every few days for breakfast and clove oil is an antiseptic (it inhibits the growth and reproduction of disease-causing microorganisms). Wouldn't that be crazy if our breakfast meat could prevent colds? We could sell flu-fighting sausage! Haha! In reality, getting plenty of sleep and having the type of lifestyle that allows us to sit down to eat a relaxing, hot homemade breakfast a few times a week is what really kept us healthy.

The pork Dave picked out at Costco this time was only $1.79/pound--the very low price resulted in the whooping poundage that is now in my fridge... Anyway, we decided to make half of it into my daddy's breakfast sausage and experiment with the other half. As you know from previous posts, we really like chipotle and Chipotle (the smoked jalapeño and its nameake restaurant, respectively). So when we got home I searched online for chipotle seasoning mixes and/or chipotle sausage recipes. Half the experimental pork was mixed with a Southwestern chipotle dry rub and the other half was made into a Creole-style chipotle sausage. The latter one was about 1/3 vegetables: bell peppers, Serrano peppers, white and green onions, celery, garlic. Since I'm a vegetable freak Dave said it was definitely a "Julie sausage."

Our babies were on raw protein patrol while Dave cut the meat into little chunks to fit into the meat grinder:
First you grind the pork chunks, then you mix in the seasonings with your hands. Then you regrind it so the seasonings get really incorporated. For the Creole sausage, the veggies when into the grinder the second time, too.
The only way to test the seasoning while you're making sausage is to fry up little pieces of it and taste it. The breakfast version was so good that we made extra sure the seasonings were right by frying up two big patties. (It was scrumptious.)
To let the flavors develop, I rolled the meat up into freezer paper and let it hang out in the fridge for 2 days.
The easiest way to clean the meat grinder assembly is to run chunks of bread through it to push all the little bits of meat out. Then you just toss the meaty bread bits down the garbage disposal. Except that we don't have a garbage disposal...so we fed it to the dogs. I love having my pooches around because they happily clean up anything and everything that I drop on the floor. When I'm cooking and they aren't around I just stand there looking at the spilled food for a few seconds before I realize that I have to stoop down to clean it up. (We just don't give them too much and make sure they never get walnuts, grapes, raisins, garlic, onion, chocolate, or other doggie no-no's.)


After thoroughly scrubbing and sanitizing all the cookware and the kitchen counters, it was already after midnight. I collapsed into bed, only to discover that my hands were on fire. At least it felt like they were on fire--they were burning so badly. I quickly turned on the bedside lamp expecting to see flames shooting from my fingers. It was those darned Serrano peppers that I chopped up. I had to take an Advil just so I could fall asleep. Two days later I could still feel the capsaicin under my thumbnails.

Last night we put the rolls in the freezer for a few hours to let the meat harden so we could easily cut the rolls into patties. The patties were stacked into gallon freezer bags between waxed paper squares. So now we have 5 gallons of sausage patties to enjoy...I wonder how long these will last us? I have big plans for yummy Southern breakfasts, steamed collard greens with browned sausage, and spicy sausage pizza. The possibilities are endless...

Here are the recipes for making 1.5 pounds of sausage (which is much more reasonable than making 26 pounds...):

Daddy’s Breakfast Sausage

• 1.5lb meat+fat
• 1t salt
• 2/3t mustard
• 1t black pepper
• ½t ground cloves
• ½t red pepper
• 1 ½ t dry sage (or double that amount if you're using chopped, fresh sage)

Creole-Style Hot Chipotle Sausage

• 1.5lb pork+beef+fat
• ½ each red, yellow, green bell pepper (roughly chopped)
• 1 capful liquid smoke
• 2 stalks celery (roughly chopped)
• 3 cloves garlic (smashed)
• ½ medium yellow onion
• 2 stalks green onion (sliced)
• 1 serrano pepper (minced)
• ¼ cups chopped, reconstituted dry chipotle peppers (or canned)
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley (chopped)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil (chopped)
• 1t black pepper
• ½t salt
  
• ½t garlic powder
• 1/4t cumin
• ½t chili powder
• 1/4t cayenne pepper

Southwest Chipotle Dry Rub
(This would be good as a dry marinade on steaks, shrimp, grilled chicken...pretty much anything! We mixed 2/3 cup with 2 pounds ground pork.)

• 1/3 cup chili powder
• 2 tablespoons dried cilantro
• 2 tablespoons cumin
• 2 tablespoons Mexican oregano, leaves
• 2 tablespoonsdried sweet basil leaves
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme leaves
• 1 tablespoon crushed/ground chipotle pepper