We made sausage!

Ever had one of those Tom Hanks moments? You know the moment he had in the movie Castaway when he made fire? That is the feeling I had when we got finished making sausage. :)

Yesterday, we spent about 3-4 hours cutting (well, The Man cut, he doesn't trust me around sharp objects) and packaging the wild hog that he shot in Texas. As he cut the meat, I washed it and put it into packages. I did do a bit of cutting to get rid of the excess fat from some of the cuts of meat. We had a huge pile left over for sausage making. We decided to wash it and then refrigerate it until today because we were pretty tired of looking at all of that meat.

I put a roast in the crock pot when we got finished last night and let it cook all night long. I cooked it in 2 Tbs apple cider vinegar, 3 Tbs Worcestershire sauce, and 1 Tbs chili powder. I woke up around 7am and took it out of the crock pot. It was falling apart and smelling delicious! We'll pull it and add BBQ sauce for dinner. The Man likes Buffalo Wild Wings mango habanera sauce and I like their honey BBQ sauce.

I woke up this morning thinking I'd savor my coffee and enjoy my morning. Hmmmm, the reality was I woke up to a funny noise that I hadn't heard in a while. The Man was in the kitchen. He was already grinding meat with my Kitchen Aide and the meat grinder attachment. He was also cooking up some fresh sausage patties while he was grinding. We made toast and had homemade red pepper jelly, a gift from one of his coworkers, and sausage patty sandwiches. I think I'm in love.

So, we still had 8 pounds of ground pork to make into bulk sausage (we didn't attempt to stuff it into casings). So, I made a spice blend of:
8 tsp sea salt
4 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground red pepper flakes
4 pinches ground cloves
8 tsp ground rubbed sage
4 Tbs brown sugar

Then, I added it to the ground pork.

Finally, I put on my rubber gloves and mixed it all together.

Then, I got out the food scale and measured out 1 pound packages.


We left 3 pounds of ground pork unseasoned for other recipes, and we made 8 pounds of bulk breakfast sausage. I didn't count how many packages of loins, chops, steaks, and roasts we got, but we won't have to buy meat (we have 1/4 side of beef in the freezer) for a very long time. It was a lot of fun to do.

When we were finished, this was our conversation:
Me: Hey, Hon? Let's raise hogs so that we can do this all. of. the. time!
The Man: Seriously? Do you know how bad hogs smell? I could smell this wild hog before I even saw it! No way!

So, no raising hogs for us, but it sure was fun while it lasted. :)