Sausage Day

We have officially designated the day after Thanksgiving to be Sausage Day.

So yesterday morning, while we waited for many pounds of meat to thaw, Mick developed his recipes for breakfast sausage, rosemary goat sausage, offal sausage, summer sausage and bratwurst, and he set out all the non-meat ingredients.

For each sausage, we combined all the ingredients in a large bowl.

The offal sausage includes organs from two goats and many birds as well as ground beef, some pork sausage, and plenty of spices.

Then Mick fed each sausage mixture through our grinder twice until all was ground and mixed.

The second grinding of the rosemary sausage.

Mick used a silicon spatula to help feed the meat through the hopper.

While helping Mick grind the summer sausage, I illustrated the advantage of a silicon spatula over a wooden spoon for helping the meat along through the hopper.

My favorite part of the sausage-making process (I was quick to remind Mick of this part if he seemed to overlook it): sampling the final product. Every single one we tried yesterday was phenomenal, first try! He did a great job with the recipes.

After being ground and mixed, the summer sausage will cure in the fridge for a couple of days before it is stuffed and smoked.

After grinding, the sausages waited in the fridge until stuffing time. Here, the breakfast and rosemary sausages wait their turn.

Then we stuffed the breakfast, rosemary, and offal sausages. Here are the breakfast sausages. Don't they look delectable?!

Mick cleaned out the stuffer after we stuffed the offal sausage.

Happy Sausage Day!