eatbensmeat

I will freely admit that this is something that most people can’t do at home. But if you have a good stand mixer, you can get a meat grinder attachment for it and make your own!  It’s fun!  and it tastes DRAMATICALLY better than anything you can buy in the stores.

Now, I’ve only made this once, so I’m still dialing in the recipe.  This is what I did, and it worked great, but it could probably be better.

Couple notes:

1. DO NOT run your dry spices through the meat grinder.  It seems like it would work, but it doesn’t.  Then end up jamming the thing so hard that it took me and my dad and a foot and a half long monkey wrench to get the thing apart and clean it out. Basically the fennel seeds are too small to get ground up by the machine, but large enough to clog the grate where the meat comes out.  So…don’t do that.
2. If you google around, you will eventually find recipes that say that you should chill the meat grinder in the freezer for an hour and the pork for 20 minutes before you start to grind anything up, warning you about horrible danger if you don’t get everything cold enough.  These people are full of shit.  You can do it with everything room temperature, it’s fine.
3. One of the nice things is that since you’re grinding it yourself, you can control the fat content.  Don’t like greasy food?  You still need some fat to bind everything together, but you can use pork chops which are much leaner.  Want the full experience?  Go nuts and use shoulder.  It’s up to you

Ingredients

2 pounds pork, bones removed, cut in to 1-2 inch pieces

2 tablespoons fennel seeds

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon onion powder

1-2 teaspoons garlic powder (or go nuts on the garlic, I’m certainly not going to criticize)

1 tablespoons kosher salt (supposedly there is some chemistry here, technically for 2 pounds of pork you want 15 grams kosher salt, something about getting the meat to bind together right.  This measurement should get you pretty close.  It’s what I used and it worked out fine)

2-3 tablespoons dry red wine

2 teaspoons paprika

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper (optional, if you like spicy)

Directions

Okay, so turn on your meat grinder and grind that pork on the finest setting in to a good sized bowl, one you will be able to use for mixing later.  If you are using the kitchenaid, you probably have a coarse and fine plate, use the fine one (the one with the smaller holes).

Okay, now take all other ingredients, add them to your mixing bowl, and mix everything up.  You can use a spoon if you want but it’s a lot of work, and honestly it’s easier and just a lot more fun to use your hands.

Once it’s well mixed (it should smell amazing, by the way), you need to wrap it up in a log so it sets.  You can use aluminum foil or plastic wrap (or sausage casings, of course, if you want to use a real sausage stuffer, but I don’t own one of those yet).  Either way, cut off a big piece of whatever you’re wrapping it in and do the thing.  Wrap it up into a tight log and put it in the refrigerator.

You can think of this as a really aggressive marinade.  Let it sit in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours before you cook with it.

So…yeah, you just made italian sausage.  Go do something with it.