Grinding And Mixing for Breakfast Sausage and Brats

[processhead]

Well its -3 degrees here today with some wind. Not a good day to play outside so I played inside instead, by grinding and mixing for some fresh sausage.

The lug shows the basic building blocks for my meat block. Coarse ground lean venison, pork butt and pork fat

For the breakfast sausage meat block I used 60/15/25 venison/butt/fat. The seasoning is Holly H 110 C

For the bratwurst meat block I used 50/30/20 venison/butt/fat.
The seasoning is the Blue Ribbon brat seasoning. You can really smell the nutmeg when you open the package on this one.

Here is a picture of the mixer at work combining coarse ground meat and seasoning.

After mixing, a small sample goes through the 1/8 inch grinder plate for the all-important taste test.

Fried up a small sample of each. Mainly looking for right level of saltiness, seasoning balance, and general edibility. Both seasonings were very tasty in the recommended amounts. Guess I got the meat and seasonings weighed out correctly. Pretty happy with the fat to lean content as well.

Went ahead with the rest of the grinding, cleaned up, and put the meat away in the frig for tomorrow’s stuffing.

[Jonathon]

processhead First, good identification of the nutmeg, it is by far the strongest taste I take from Blue Ribbon Brat. The Walton’s are enormous fans of that seasoning and it is our best seller, but if you don’t like nutmeg you are gonna hate it! The H110C is one of my favorite breakfast sausage seasonings so good choice!

Also, we should push this more but making a patty before you stuff to make sure it is the strength you want is a good idea and people should do it, especially when they are trying a seasoning for the first time.

[processhead]

Jonathon
I am a fan of aromatic spices like nutmeg, ginger and cardamom . Like you say, some folks like them, others not so much.

The brats will get stuffed in hog casings and the breakfast sausage will get split in to sheep casing links and bulk packed in tubes.

[processhead]

Got the brats and breakfast sausage stuffed and linked this morning. Opted not to do any bulk packages of breakfast sausage so all 12.5 lbs are done as fresh links. I like to let them partially freeze before packaging. Seems to make it easier to get them in the bags.

[craigrice]

looks like A good job of linking

[Jonathon]

This is a good thread to see how most people prefer linking, do you twist every link, every other link or does anyone do the butcher’s knot method where you end up with 3 sausages in a group?

[PapaSop]

Every other 99.9% of the time. Have done all three.

[processhead]

Every other link for me.

[John Belvedere]

I twist every other one. I just find this easier. I always wanted to do the butches knot but so far I’ve decided to do what I’m used to and what works for me.

[craigrice]

I have a wood burning kit and I thought about burning in measurements for linking on my cutting board

[YooperDog]

Every other is my standard, if smoking it depends on the sausage