For those of you who have never ground meat or stuffed a cased sausage, this guide gives you a brief overview of the process. These two steps are typically pretty consistent from recipe to recipe- the only real variations you’re likely to see are whether you grind the fat and meat together or separately, and whether additional liquids or seasoning are added with the grind or afterward.  

Our recipes assume a baseline knowledge of the steps below.

To Grind:

Start with clean equipment- Wash your hands, cutting boards, knives and bowl. All components of the grinder should have been disassembled and cleaned. It is best that they are completely dry as well, because we recommend placing the grinder head in the freezer before you begin. You can also place your bowl and any utensils in the freezer to chill.

Start with partially frozen meat and fat. Cut meat into grindable size. This size will depend on the size of your grinder. Cut fat small enough that you don’t have to shove it down into the grinder- this helps prevent smearing. Remove sinew, glands, and most of the silver skin from the meat. 

Weigh the trimmed meat. You will use the weight of the meat to scale out the other ingredients. Put the meat and fat back in the freezer while you are scaling out the recipe and measuring ingredients. To scale out the ingredients, first note the weight of the meat you are about to grind. For example, you might have 1000 g of venison, but our garlic sage sausage calls for 1575 g. Divide the weight of your venison by the amount called for in the recipe.

(1000/1575=0.635)

You will now multiply all the other ingredients by 0.635 to get the scaled-down recipe for your batch of sausage. Here’s what that looks like in real life:

(This works the same way to scale up)

Some recipes will call for grinding the fat and meat separately; others will call for you to grind them together. At this point, the recipe may call for you to mix in seasonings as well. Combine whatever ingredients will go through the grinder together in a large chilled bowl.

Grind through selected die indicated in the recipe. Use a chilled container to collect the grind, or better yet, keep the bowl on ice. (We use a hotel pan set inside another hotel pan with ice when making big batches. We’ll use the stand mixer bowl with smaller batches)

When you’re done grinding, use the paddle attachment on the stand mixer or a wooden spoon to mix the sausage for a minute or two, this helps bind the proteins and distribute the seasoning more evenly.

Taste test your sausage. Cook a small portion of the loose sausage in a pan and adjust seasoning if needed.

To Case:

If casing the sausage, flush the casings with water and then allow to drain. Fill up stuffer with sausage grind and load casing all the way onto the stuffer tube. Tip: use a light coat of cooking oil spray on the stuffer tube, this makes getting the casing on the tube easy and seems to prevent binding and tearing.

Pull a few inches of casing from the stuffer tube and lightly pinch the end before you start cranking the sausage stuffer. Work slowly and consistently, allowing the casing to feed naturally off the stuffer tube. When you’re close to the end of the casing, ease up and make sure to leave a few inches of casing unstuffed so you can tie off the ends.

When you’ve cased all the sausage, you’ll want to twist every other link into the desired length. Use a sterilized needle or sausage pricker to poke holes wherever you see air pockets. You can use a knife or pair of scissors to cut the links apart, or leave them together. Refrigerate or freeze to store.

And if you haven’t read them yet, check out our sausage making basics below: