introduce you to the art of sausage making now

charcuterie has always been a big part of my life I used to have a little farm we

kept

animals we had pigs and we used to make a lot of different cured products

and today I want to show you one of the simplest and easiest ways to get into

that

by making homemade sausages which are absolutely delicious

you don't need to keep pigs in order to do this but you will need some basic

equipment

now if you're interested you know what sorts of sausages we're going to be making today

got a batch here we're going to make a nice simple herb

sausage and you can tinker with it and make it your own

come on let's get started now when you come to make sausages

this is a fantastic attachment you get them on the stand mixers

it's actually a mincing machine they fit on the front here you can get them

independently as well

but this is a wonderful machine I've used this for doing great big batches of

sausages

got a hopper in the front now we're going to be using the largest plate for

the first grind

just come down here when we're talking about meat

fat is your friend you cannot make

now if you don't like fat I'm sorry about that but you cannot make good

sausages without fat they'll just be dry

and tasteless and the ones you buy in the supermarket probably have a lot more

fat in them than

we're going to be using here now bear that in mind when you're

choosing the cuts for making sausages you want the cut that has plenty of fat

in it

so you'll be looking at shoulder cuts

leg is good belly is good and with alot of the pigs now in this

supermarkets they don't have

a lot of fat on them so you may have to ask your butcher for some extra fat

this is what I call backfat it's a very lardy fat would sort of melt

and it's fantastic for sausage making now I'm going to cut this meat up into

small cubes

going to feed them through this hopper and get our first batch of

sausage meat going before we introduced our herbs

and flavors Now just quickly when you're cutting up your meat

I would either use a chef's knife to cut it up into cubes and we want things

probably about that big pop them in there

but another great knife is a boning knife you could use a butcher's knife as

well

and this is a great knife for just cutting up the cubes

and it's a knife you probably going to use a lot if you're preparing meat

okay time to put the meat through the grinder as I said to you before I've got

the large die on here later on once we've added our seasoning I'm going to put it

through again

on this slightly smaller die you've got the meat here all cut up into big cubes

we turn on our stand mixer nice and slow

now most of these machines come with some sort of safety pusher

and you use that just to push to meat down through and get this wonderful minced

pork coming out the bottom and they work really very very quickly

before very long you're going to have a whole bowl

full of minced pork now a great tip when you come to the last piece of pork

that's gone through your mincer

is just to turn it on and pop a little bit of bread

through there what that will do is the bread

will force the last of the meat out of the chute and although we don't want to

put a lot of bread

into our sausage it won't harm for it to be in there

and you going to end up with this wonderful big bowl of sausage meat but don't forget that

is not seasoned yet

I'll actually put up on the side here on this side all the ingredients I'm going to add

I've got two

kilos thats four pounds of meat I'm putting some sage and thyme and black pepper and

salt

into the mix using a spoon or using your hand

we're just going to roughly mix the seasoning through

now you could use this meat

as it is and start to put it into your sausage casings but I like to pop it

through the grinder again on a slightly smaller setting and that'll get you a

finer sausage meat which

I think for this particular recipe makes great sausages

so let's get on now we're going to feed this back through until we get that

finer mince now when your sausage meat is ready like this I've got a big pile

of it here

before we go to the trouble of popping that into sausage casings

I want to take a small piece of it pop it into a frying pan

or skillet and we're just going to cook that off and then you can taste it

now if that tastes great cooked now it's going to taste fantastic

in sausages now there it is off of the fryer

and now you want to taste it because now is the last chance you have

to add seasoning and don't be afraid to experiment this goes really well with

bits of chilli and paprika they

even work really well with Apple so here goes

that's just perfect time to get these

in the skins now we need to get the sausage meat into the sausage casings

now with this grinder here it has an attachment wonderful nozzle on here they

work really well

you pop the skin casings onto there and as you grind it down through it

comes in you fill the sausage up

now of course I'm doing things on a bigger scale when I used to produce for myself

so I got this beautiful beast now these are a little bit expensive not everybody

will want

a machine like this but I have one so I'm going to use it

if you have only this don't worry it works just as well

a little bit slower and a quick word about sausage casings as well

traditionally sausages were made with the intestine of the pigs

or lambs

and they used to clean them out and salt them and brine them

and then you would use those and I've used those many times before I can't get them

where I am at the moment but these are a great substitute

they're still a natural product they're a collegen sausage skin

and they're pretty much what you would have on any name brand

sausages they would use this sort of casing the great thing about these they

last for years years you can store them

and if you don't happen to have intestines these are ready to go

so what you want to do is you want to thread this on

to the sausage nozzle like that pull a little bit of the

excess off and then over this side of the machine

we've got cranking handle and this handle allows us to crank the sausage meat

down the tube it'll start coming out you'll see it coming through here

and then we need to actually get to this end and I'll show you in a moment how we

fill the sausage casing

now I've got a little tray below here now as the sausage meat comes out the end of

the nozzle

we're just going to twirl it round and pop it onto the tray below here

and this is really something you just get used to after time

occasionally you might get a bit of an air bubble and obviously you're going to need

somebody on the cranking handle

I've got an assistant with me here now you can see I've end up with this

massive sausage here which is great that is the end of the mixture in that

particular batch

I'm just going to take the skin towards the end like this

tear it off with a little bit of excess and what we'll do

is tie a knot in the end of that and then our sausages are

going to be ready to start to loop now look I made two batches of sausages these are the

herb sausages

these are a spicier one I put chili in that and I colored it with paprika

so you can see what they are and now what we need to do is turn these

into sausages now it's a little tricky you do get used to it just pinch your

sausage like that

give it a little twist take another length and it's really a time

you get used to doing this turn it the opposite way

bring these sausages up and you have a loop of 3

I'm going to take another bunch now here give it a little twist that way

come to the next one little twist back

a third sausage like this and a third twist

but this time I'm going to take that those first two sauces let me just see

if I can

get this on camera so the first two Sausages and the third one I'm going to

push through like that a little twist

and there you've got a group of six sausages

I hope that's not too difficult it is just a way

of practicing and when you get perfect at it you'll be able to whip with them out

really quickly

now I hope you've enjoyed this basic

introduction to sausages these also

they freeze really well so make big batches don't waste the time doing small

batches

have a lot of fun making them I'm probably not going to be able to answer

too many comments about ingredients there are many different sausage recipes

out there

I'll put my ingredients down below please share the love give the thumbs up

now I just want to share with you this beautiful big batch of sausages I managed

to do the whole batch

in one time now they will split occasionally as I say it's a little bit

of a knack

that you get used to but the beauty is with these sausages you know what's in them

it's all pure pork they are going to taste

absolutely delicious I urge some of you if you're into this sort of thing

give this a try at home and it may start you on a journey

which I started many years ago of loving home cured meat

see you next time so there we have it how to make your own delicious

sausages at home little bit of fun little bit of something different

from Steve's Kitchen now I'll leave some links here to some other videos as always I

love to hear your comments

and I will see you next time be good