should I ???

[finspat]

Thinking about making my sausage out of my trimmings!

I do every thing else, why not.

Just kinda leeery though, any one else had this

thought of making your own sausage???

Love too hear your input??

Happy holidays!!

Fins

[vister]

i dabbled a bit with making deer sticks this fall from the buck i took with my bow. ground it myself and stuffed it into casings with a jerky gun. everything went better than i had planned, although cleanup was a bit more time consuming. be better if ya were in a setting where you could just hose everything off. excellent results though, tasted great, and i'd do it again. kinda fun, or rewarding, since we do all of our own deer and elk butchering ourselves, it's not such a hassle. oh yeah, cheaper by far, and jerky is like baking cookies, really

[Mark Christianson]

Absolutely give it a shot.

Last year I made brats, cheddarwursts, summer sausage, snack stix, jerky, etc....

I just bought the kits at Gander and Fleet Farm and it came out great.

Set aside a full day though. It gets to be time consuming for sure. And as noted above, clean up can be a pain.

Don't be afraid to play around with some additives. I used some tobasco and crushed red pepper in a few pounds of summer sausage, and that was a hit at work.

The kids really had fun though too.

[Wanderer]

You can pick up some good spices at a meat counter and get some pork trimmings too. If you use a small grinder like we have, you better trim that meat clean of silver skin or you'll be grinding forever.

I REALLY want to get one of those Cabela's grinders but I'm still in sticker shock! I've asked a couple different friends if they would split the cost and co-own one, but no takers.

There are several ways to make it, but we do some no skin/baked summer sausage, bulk breakfast sausage, and shoot both round and flat sticks. We dehydrate those. It takes some time but the flavor is better knowing you did it yourself!

[SM1]

I have been processing my own venison for 5 years now and I think the final product gets better each time. You learn more as you go. I hunt and process the meat with family members so we split the cost and bought a grinder, stuffer, mixer, meat tubs, etc.

I would say a very good place to start on seasoning is to buy some of the packets as mentioned above. I have done that multiple times and have been happy w/ the results.

Give it a shot, it may be easier than you think and you will know your meat has been taken care of.

[96trigger]

We make german sausage, polish sausage, summer sausage, and italian. My uncle has the cabelas grinder and electric stuffer, it works great. We mix the summer sausage 4:1 venison:pork and its great. For all other sausage its 1:4 venison:sausage. Each batch is 30lbs. You can go to search for High Mountain sausage seasonings and you'll find all the kits with casings included. People love those things and they are awesome on the grill. Good luck.

[phishhead]

I started making my own this year and saved a lot of money! I just took my scraps into a processor and paid to have it ground up and then bought ground pork and mixed them together with different seasonings and it turned out great! I would like to buy a grinder one of these years but I am going to wait until I can afford a commercial grade. I paid 35 cents a pound to have it ground so I couldn't see spending $400 on a good grinder. I made Italian, breakfast and, brats. I used a sausage stuffer for the brats but the rest I just wrapped up to make into patties when I am ready to eat. Good luck!

[Hammer Handle]

We make all of our own sausage. It tastes better when you make it!

Smoked well over 100 pounds of Summer Sausage. Brought 4 pounds to work today...and it was all gone in under an hour!

I recommend grinding the meat fine, then stuff into casings using a sausage stuffer. This works real slick and the meat doesn't get "mushy". Add spices, peppers, cheese, onions, potatoes, whatever. If done with a stuffer, these pieces can be added as chopped, not ground, for more flavor.

Add some pork or bacon also. It doens't have to be much. We add about 20%...sometimes more or less.

We make Summer Sausage, Rings (smoked and unsmoked), and many types of Brats.

Mix a little up, they fry it and taste it. If you like it, stuff away!