Best Homemade Sausage
If you are serious about making delicious homemade bratwurst, you’ve come to the right place. This recipe can be used to make ground sausage that you can crumble and cook or stuff into casings and smoke. Either way, it’s delicious! There are a lot of tips & tricks that make your life easier and we’ll include all of those here in the blog, below in the recipe, and in the video.
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What Equipment is Needed to Make Homemade Sausage?
To make this, I’m using a meat grinder, a sausage stuffer, natural hog casings, and a scale. All the items that I’ve used, you can buy at my amazon page: Cowboy Kent Rollins’s Amazon Page
You don’t have to spend a dime to make this sausage, though. You can ask your butcher to grind the meat for you, and you can cook the ground meat as a loose sausage or form it into breakfast patties.
If you want to make link sausage, you will need to buy sausage casings at the very minimum. The sausage stuffer will make your life so much easier it’s worth every penny if you go this route – I’m not kidding when I say that stuffing sausage links by hand is no fun at all.
Which Meats Make the Best Sausage?
I’m using a combination of beef and pork. The most important part of selecting your cuts of pork and beef is selecting those with high fat to meat ratio. For this sausage, I’m using a pork butt, a rib-eye, and a pound of thick-cut bacon.
Tip: Freeze the meat and the grinder for 45 minutes before grinding! Keeping everything cold will make a better sausage.
Once the meat is out of the freezer, immediately slice into chunks. Feed them through the meat grinder, freeze for ten minutes, and then feed them through the meat grinder one more time. Now you’re ready to season.
Season the Homemade Sausage
Add your seasonings and incorporate them well. Mixing the meat and seasonings is important so the flavor will be consistent throughout the link of sausage. Now – you can add all different types of things to the meat to add flavor. Y’all know the cowboy is going to add some Hatch chilies. I’m using some from the Fresh Chile Co and I do recommend them highly.
Sausage does need a binding agent, and for that, use powdered milk. Powdered milk is a popular emulsifying agent that will bind the ground meat together while retaining moisture. That’s a lot of fancy talk to say that it’ll make every bite of the sausage delicious and juicy.
Once all of the ingredients are well blended, you’ve got yourself ground sausage! If you’re going to form into patties or crumble and cook, you’re well on your way. If you are going to stuff the sausage into casings, hang around for a couple more paragraphs.
Filling the Sausage Casings
Soak the casings in water and rinse well before stuffing. Carefully fit the casing all the way around the sausage stuffer and slowly fill the casing.
Tip: Check the filled sausage casings for holes. Use a toothpick to pop the air hole and reseal by pressing the casings together.
How to Smoke Homemade Sausage
Set the smoker to 250. Smoke for around 45 minutes or until the internal temperature of the sausage is 165 degrees.
Tip: Cherry wood gives smoked sausage a delicious flavor.
When the sausage is done, slice and serve! These are excellent in a pot of beans, or on a hoagie roll with some grilled peppers and onions.
Use Homemade Sausage in These Recipes
- Franks and Beans – Kent Rollins
- Smoked Mac and Cheese – Kent Rollins
- Savory Sausage Casserole – Holiday or Camping Breakfast | Kent Rollins
Best Homemade Sausage - Cowboy Kent Rollins
Ingredients
- 3 pounds pork butt cubed
- 1 pound bacon sliced in 1 inch pieces
- 1 ½ pounds beef (brisket, chuck roast, steak), cubed
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon coarse ground black pepper
- ½ tablespoon dried minced garlic
- 2 tablespoons dried ancho chili powder
- 4 teaspoons ground mustard powder
- ½ tablespoon mustard seed
- 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
- 5 teaspoons onion powder
- 3 teaspoons marjoram
- 8 tablespoons powdered milk
- 6 to 8 tablespoons Hatch green chiles Fresh Chile Co preferred
Instructions
- Place the beef and pork meats in the freezer for at least 45 minutes to chill. Meanwhile, if you are making link sausage, soak the casings in cool water for 45 minutes.
- In a medium bowl combine the salt, black pepper, garlic, ancho chili powder, ground mustard, mustard seed, smoked paprika, onion powder and marjoram.
- Remove the meat from the freezer and run it through the grinder. Place the meat back in the freezer for 10 minutes, then grind again.
- Place the ground meat in a large bowl and add the spice mix. Mix well with your hands. Mix in the milk and green chiles.
- If making links, rinse the casings inside and out well, and then place on the sausage stuffer. Tie a knot in one end of the casing and begin to fill slowly with the sausage.
- When all the sausage has been stuffed, remove any air bubbles in the casings by pricking with a toothpick.
- Preheat the smoker to 250 degrees F. Place the links on the smoker and add cherry wood. Smoke for about 30 to 40 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the sausage is around 160 to 165 degrees F.
- Place on a wire rack to cool slightly then slice and serve.