Meat in Tubes, Chapter 1

First, a bit of background: This past Christmas I got a meat grinder. Shortly thereafter, I made a huge pot of chili, which kicked off my Week of Ground Meat. During the Week of Ground Meat, I used the meats of a few different animals and genuinely enjoyed doing it, both because it resulted in yummy food and because I got to play with my new toy. But, another motivation was to get more familiar with the meat grinder, leading to the next step in what I planned to do with said grinder. After the weak of ground meat, I began surfing around and talking to my chef brother about stuffing ground meat into tubes. My birthday was last month, and I just received my final birthday gift (it had to be ordered and took a bit): Charcuterie, by Ruhlman and Polcyn. This book was recommended to me by Gavin and I was very excited to get it and it is ABSOLUTELY my favorite cookbook (right now).

OK, on to Chapter 1:

For my first adventure in sausage-making, I picked a fairly straightforward,fresh sauasage. (The main types of sausage, as far as I've determined, are cured, like a salami; emulsified, like a hot dog; or fresh, like the normal artisanal sausages you'd buy from the grocery store, the ones in the deli case or with an expiration date that can't be measured by presidential election cycles.) With a fresh sausage, you simply grind everything up and stuff it all into casings.

In this case, I was making a Polish kielbasa. Granted, it's not the smoked beef in a long ring that comes to mind when you hear "Polish Sausage" or "Kielbasa." That one is an emulsified sausage, using beef, that has been smoked. In truth, "kielbasa" just means "sausage" and this one is a fresh sausage, using pork, garlic and marjoram. Thursday evening, I cut up five pounds of pork shoulder and tossed it with the garlic, marjoram and some salt and pepper and put it in the fridge overnight


Friday afternoon, my 10-year-old (almost 11) daughter and I got to work.

First we ground the meat


Then, after adding some water and mixing it into a paste, rather than the strings of ground meat, we put it in the fridge and made a couple of patties for a test taste.


While the meat chilled some more, I cleaned out the grinder and got it set for stuffing. That included getting rid of the blade and grinding die and replacing it with the stuffer tube and loading up the tube with casings.


With Colleen feeding the meat down the grinder and me handling the casings (trying to figure out how much to stuff into the casings so they'd be just the right amount of full, no pictures were taken. Plus, it goes well with the old adage about sausages and laws.

After feeding all the meat into the casings, I began twisting off the links, with a break to show some pre and some post twisting sausage.


Ultimately though, the true test is in the eating and Colleen and I both agreed they were delicious. On the one hand, we made them, so there's some bias there. On the other, we can both be pretty hard on ourselves, especially when it comes to cooking. Plus, three more people have since tried the sausages and echoed our approval.

Oh, and I mentioned I was uncertain as to how full to stuff the casings...well, the recipe said that it would yield 10 feet of sausage. We ended up with 10' 1".

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I'm very excited to make more and look forward to chronicling all these experiences here. Next time, I plan to make two different sausages. I want to make a cured sausage, though the frustrating thing will be the waiting while it cures. However, I'll temper that by also making another fresh sausage, which I'll get to eat immediately!