topic Re: Homemade Sausage in Kitchen

Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:23:10 GMT

We have been buying homemade sausage from the local meat market. They changed it so we stopped buying it. It's full of fat now. Something else about it is off. It's hard to make sausage patties with it?

I picked up a 4 lb half butt from Aldi to start with.

DH made sausage patties with it. He also left about 1 lb to make some sausage gravy. We have tried both. YUM!!!

All the sausage we have tried from the grocery store has too much fat. The pic below is one sausage we bought which looks like 100% fat IMO. Gross. We aren't eating that? In the trash it went. The frying pan shows after cooking 2 sausage patties.

Re: Homemade Sausage

deepwaterdotter — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:32:27 GMT

My husband makes his own breakfast sausage from this recipe that his mother passed down. He fries the patties in butter:

2 lbs ground pork

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tbsp maple syrup

2 tsp sage

1/2 tsp thyme

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp pepper

Re: Homemade Sausage

Carmie — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:32:40 GMT

My family has always made homemade Italian sausage for their restaurant and they sold it buy the pound too.

We use pork butts. You do need some fat, but too much fat is not good at all.

Homemade is always better than store bought.

We have a local butcher who makes all types of sausage. We buy smoked sausage there. It is good and they do a great business. People order from all over the US....mostly people who have moved away.

Food is so expensive. Businesses are cutting the quality to save money, but they still charge an arm and a leg.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Goldengate8361 — Mon, 05 May 2025 18:57:35 GMT

Fat makes it good. It's not good if it's too lean.

Re: Homemade Sausage

PA Mom-mom — Mon, 05 May 2025 19:21:20 GMT

DH and his best buds used to butcher every year. They made sausage, scrapple and bacon. It was delicious because they used such great ingredients and could control the amount of fat.

They don't do it anymore, but our local ShopRite makes store made sausage which is quite good and is $3.89 per pound. My favorite is their sausage with provolone and broccoli rabe. It's wonderful. One of the butchers showed me the spice mix and provolone they use. I love to sear it and add fresh broccoli rabe and garlic. Yummy!

We also go to Lancaster once every 5 or 6 weeks, and we pick up bacon, scrapple and ring balogna.

Re: Homemade Sausage

SharkE — Mon, 05 May 2025 19:41:50 GMT

"Fried in butter " !!!!!!!!!!!! I 'd have to double up on my Prevastatin pill.

cholesterol nightmare ! fat and butter. I tried turkey sausage threw it out. Do like turkey bacon though.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:08:40 GMT

@deepwaterdotter wrote:
My husband makes his own breakfast sausage from this recipe that his mother passed down. He fries the patties in butter:

2 lbs ground pork
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pepper

@deepwaterdotter

That sounds really good. I did see some recipes online with maple syrup.
We will try that with the next batch.
It has Sage, Thyme, salt, pepper, brown sugar, crushed red pepper flakes in it.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:21:18 GMT

@Carmie wrote:
My family has always made homemade Italian sausage for their restaurant and they sold it buy the pound too.

We use pork butts. You do need some fat, but too much fat is not good at all.

Homemade is always better than store bought.

We have a local butcher who makes all types of sausage. We buy smoked sausage there. It is good and they do a great business. People order from all over the US....mostly people who have moved away.

Food is so expensive. Businesses are cutting the quality to save money, but they still charge an arm and a leg.

@Carmie

I bet after you eat your families homemade sausage it's hard to eat anything else.

When I made a couple more patties it did have a little more fat in the pan. I need enough fat to make the sausage gravy with.

The local meat market here also makes different sausages. They also have smaller snack size beef sticks in all different flavors. I like the maple bacon flavor.

They were renting one building when they first opened. When the nieghbors moved out they removed the wall to have a larger space.

I have read a few articles about how restaurants are working to change their recipes. We don't eat out much. We did notice last time we went out to eat they have a 2 course meal now instead of a 3?

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:23:51 GMT

@Goldengate8361 wrote:
Fat makes it good. It's not good if it's too lean.

@Goldengate8361

We will get the right amount of fat after we make it a few times. At least the frying pan isn't full of fat with the homemade.

My stomach gets messed up if I eat too much fat.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:27:06 GMT

@PA Mom-mom wrote:
DH and his best buds used to butcher every year. They made sausage, scrapple and bacon. It was delicious because they used such great ingredients and could control the amount of fat.

They don't do it anymore, but our local ShopRite makes store made sausage which is quite good and is $3.89 per pound. My favorite is their sausage with provolone and broccoli rabe. It's wonderful. One of the butchers showed me the spice mix and provolone they use. I love to sear it and add fresh broccoli rabe and garlic. Yummy!

We also go to Lancaster once every 5 or 6 weeks, and we pick up bacon, scrapple and ring balogna.

@PA Mom-mom

We have not tried making our own bacon. DH has been wanting to do that.

What is scrapple?

We are waiting for our local meat market to sell all the breakfast sausage before we will buy anymore. We will try it when a new batch comes in to see if they have fixed their issue. Might be what they are selling now.

It went from pretty good to really good to full of fat.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:31:54 GMT

@SharkE wrote:
"Fried in butter " !!!!!!!!!!!! I 'd have to double up on my Prevastatin pill.

cholesterol nightmare ! fat and butter. I tried turkey sausage threw it out. Do like turkey bacon though.

@SharkE

DH uses too much butter when he cooks.

We buy regular bacon from the meat market or a local ice cream store that also has a small market inside. Beats running to the grocery store.

We used to eat butterball turkey bacon. It's not bad but it's not bacon. Never have tried any of the other brands.

Re: Homemade Sausage

PA Mom-mom — Mon, 05 May 2025 21:10:00 GMT

@Nightowlz Scrapple is using the leftover scraps from the pig - bits of meat, face and lip meat, organ meat, snouts and ears (everything except the squeal) cooked down with onions and parsley coriander, salt and pepper. Then the bones are removed and all is strained, then add white flour, whole wheat flour, buckwheat and corn meal and continue to cook for about 45 min. Then you pour it into pans (look like loaf pans) and allow to cool to solidify.

DH had a friend who had a smokehouse, so his bacon was wonderful, but I've made bacon here at our house. You just need a pork belly and some simple ingredients. I cut the belly in thirds or 4ths to make sure it will fit on our smoker racks. You use a tiny amount of saltpeter (see recipes) along with brown sugar, salt, pepper and other seasonings of choice. I wrap the sections tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about a week, flipping it every so often. Then we smoke it on our electric Masterbuilt. It's pretty good.

ETA: You can buy commercially made scrapple all over the mid-Atlantic states. You slice it like you would slice meatloaf, and you fry it in a frying pan or deep fryer.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Mon, 05 May 2025 21:14:56 GMT

@PA Mom-mom wrote:
@Nightowlz Scrapple is using the leftover scraps from the pig - bits of meat, face and lip meat, organ meat, snouts and ears (everything except the squeal) cooked down with onions and parsley coriander, salt and pepper. Then the bones are removed and all is strained, then add white flour, whole wheat flour, buckwheat and corn meal and continue to cook for about 45 min. Then you pour it into pans (look like loaf pans) and allow to cool to solidify.

DH had a friend who had a smokehouse, so his bacon was wonderful, but I've made bacon here at our house. You just need a pork belly and some simple ingredients. I cut the belly in thirds or 4ths to make sure it will fit on our smoker racks. You use a tiny amount of saltpeter (see recipes) along with brown sugar, salt, pepper and other seasonings of choice. I wrap the sections tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about a week, flipping it every so often. Then we smoke it on our electric Masterbuilt. It's pretty good.

ETA: You can buy commercially made scrapple all over the mid-Atlantic states. You slice it like you would slice meatloaf, and you fry it in a frying pan or deep fryer.

@PA Mom-mom

Very interesting. Never heard of Scrapple. I don't think I would eat it knowing what's in it.

I guess now we need to buy pork belly to make some bacon.

Re: Homemade Sausage

River Song — Tue, 06 May 2025 02:14:58 GMT

The recipe for breakfast sausage sounds great!

I grew up in the Midwest and there are some things I just won't eat: scrapple, head cheese, tripe, blood sausage, beef liver (tough and stringy), fried perch. I have had beef tongue, it's like lunch meat if sliced thin but it's disgusting simmering the whole tongue in the pot. You have to peel off the skin before slicing the cooked meat. Ugh.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Tue, 06 May 2025 04:08:22 GMT

@River Song wrote:
The recipe for breakfast sausage sounds great!
I grew up in the Midwest and there are some things I just won't eat: scrapple, head cheese, tripe, blood sausage, beef liver (tough and stringy), fried perch. I have had beef tongue, it's like lunch meat if sliced thin but it's disgusting simmering the whole tongue in the pot. You have to peel off the skin before slicing the cooked meat. Ugh.

@River Song

I wouldn't eat any of those things either. Don't even want to try tongue. There's a whole list of different foods I won't eat. A lot of foods I have never tried.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Pooky1 — Tue, 06 May 2025 12:12:18 GMT

My mil use to make her own sausage uusing a big pork shoulder and cutting it in small pieces that took a long time and she would season it and stuff it into thes e casing. Make tiny holes with a pin and she would hang some in the fridge to dry for dried sausage .it was really good. She's 81 now and hasn't made it in a few year's anymore.

Re: Homemade Sausage

cindyNC — Tue, 06 May 2025 12:51:30 GMT

I grew up in a family meat business. My father would go to the cattle auction on Monday and slaughter on Tuesday.

He had a reputation for purchasing only healthy cattle. There was only once that a cow was condemned by the meat inspector as cancer was found upon slaughter. He used to cringe when I moved away and started buying grocery store meat.

I remember one man who would come in the day we slaughtered to buy the old liver. And my father would occasionally save beef hearts and tongues for the locals who liked to pickle them. My mother did it once w/each and never again. Occasionally we would have creamed "sweet breads" on toast for breakfast. Loved it..........never knew it was a delicacy.

Re: Homemade Sausage

wagirl — Tue, 06 May 2025 13:22:14 GMT

I buy ground pork to make my own breakfast sausage--store bought is way too salty for me. I like the recipe from another poster here--will try it. thanks!!

Re: Homemade Sausage

Nightowlz — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:40:53 GMT

@Pooky1 wrote:
My mil use to make her own sausage uusing a big pork shoulder and cutting it in small pieces that took a long time and she would season it and stuff it into thes e casing. Make tiny holes with a pin and she would hang some in the fridge to dry for dried sausage .it was really good. She's 81 now and hasn't made it in a few year's anymore.

@Pooky1

I saw a recipe online where she was making sausage links instead of sausage patties. I thought oh more work. Seems like we are in the kitchen a lot since we hardly ever go out to eat. We are getting older too so wondering how long we will be able to keep up with all we do. Not interested in eating prepackaged processed foods.

Re: Homemade Sausage

Zhills — Tue, 13 May 2025 20:25:11 GMT

We made our sausage using Leggs seasoning!

Better than anything you can buy! I miss it!