The Beginner’s Guide to Making Sausage at Home

Last September, I attended From Field to Table, a wild game butchering course hosted by Outdoor Solutions, an all-in-one training and outfitter referral service for people who want to get started hunting. After conservation, the purpose of hunting is to put the healthiest, most sustainable, and ethically harvested meat on your dinner table. So when I got the chance to elevate my butchering and cooking skills to the next level, I jumped at the opportunity.

Whether you’re hunting, or just want to stretch cheap cuts of meat as far as possible, making your own sausage is an easy way to stock up on healthy, tasty protein. I’ve been making my own at home for the last 15 years or so. Let me show you how.

Why Sausage?

Sausage is a way to make use of excess trim that’s left over when you butcher your own animals. As you separate muscle groups into their component parts, you’ll invariably end up with chunks of good meat that don’t look good enough to use on their own. Turning those—or affordable commercial cuts like pork shoulders or beef chuck roast—into a form that’s not just useable, but delicious, ensures that you’re getting the most out of every last bit of animal you harvested. Plus, you’ll end up with large quantities of great food, no matter your budget.

I wrote about the lessons I learned about butchering in an article last October. The pronghorn antelope I harvested then produced the off cuts I’m using today, and I’ll incorporate tips from Outdoor Solutions’ Chef Albert Wutsch throughout this piece.

What Is Sausage, Anyway?

Sausage is simply ground, seasoned meat that’s ready to cook. You can absolutely stuff that into sheep intestines if you want to create nice links, but even with Chef Albert’s instruction, I find that process time consuming. I don’t typically end up eating the casings anyway, so I prefer to make sausage in bulk. Packing it into vacuum bags one pound at a time makes it easy to store in your freezer, quick to defrost, and simple to cook with.

Wild game is much leaner than industrially farmed meat. So while there’s no need to use extra fat if you’re turning a pork shoulder into sausage, you’ll want to buy a source of fat for anything you’ve hunted. I’d always visited a butcher for frozen piles of pork fat, but not every butcher has those, especially during hunting season. Chef Albert recommends simply using bacon instead—it’s cheap, readily available, and works just as well. That’s what I plan to do from now on.

How to Prepare Your Kitchen to Make Sausage

First, you’ll need to defrost the trim you plan to turn into sausage. Chef Albert cautions against forcing a defrost in warm water, and instead recommends thawing what you plan to use overnight in your fridge. Doing that helps preserve the meat’s texture, and won’t turn it gray.

Thirty minutes before you plan to get started, it’s also a good idea to put all the pieces of your meat grinder (except the motor) into your freezer. Grinding produces heat, which you don’t want entering your meat until you’re ready to cook.

For that same reason, you’re also going to want an ample stash of ice cubes on hand.

Supplies you’ll need:

• A meat grinder
• At least two large mixing bowls
• Ice
• A scale
• A sharp knife
• A large cutting board
• Nitrile gloves
• Defrosted meat, trimmed of silver skin and connective tissue
• 20 percent of the weight of that meat in bacon

You should also decide how you want to season your sausage. Today, I made a simple hot Italian, which I find brings out the natural flavor of venison or antelope, and is versatile in use, working as well in a pasta as it does with eggs.

For each pound of the hot Italian spice blend you’ll need:

• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/4 cup red wine

If you’re making large quantities of sausage after, say, harvesting a bull elk or more than one deer, you may find it easier to use bulk quantities of a pre-made spice blend.

You’ve Seasoned Your Meat. What’s Next?

Fit your meat grinder with the plate with the large holes, and start dropping strips of meat through it, interspersing the occasional strip of bacon.

Once that’s done, you’re ready to add seasonings to your ground meat and thoroughly mix the sausage meat by hand.

Chef Albert strongly recommends wearing nitrile gloves while handling game meat, especially when grinding. Ground meat is sticky, and will pull in any dirt that may exist in your cuticles and under your nails. You don’t want that stuff polluting the taste of your meat. But also, you should be washing your hands, regardless!

After that first grind and the hand mix, fit your grinder with the plate with the small holes, and pass the mixture through it again.

If you feel your grinder start to heat up while processing large volumes of meat, Chef Albert recommends dropping a few ice cubes into it. This cold water will also add moisture to your sausage.

At this point, you can pack the sausage mix into a press and extrude it into casings, or simply vacuum seal the bulk meat one pound at a time.

You’ve Just Made a Mess. Here’s the Easiest Way to Clean Your Kitchen.

You’ve just thrown raw meat all over your kitchen, and into a high-powered mixer. Make sure you leave plenty of time for the mopup. Even after careful trimming, game meat is still going to contain some tendon and fascia, and that tough connective tissue loves to wind itself around the auger inside your grinder. I’ve always carefully picked it apart by hand, but Chef Albert showed me an easier way: simply run ice cubes through the grinder until they come out clean.

Then disassemble all the grinder’s parts, rinse them off, and run them through the dishwasher or wash them by hand. Take care to thoroughly clean cutting boards, countertops, knives, and of course, your hands.

How Should I Cook My Sausage?

What do you do with your new sausage? I like to taste my game meat, so I try to incorporate it into as simple a dish as possible.

Here’s a recipe for a very basic hot Italian sausage pasta. I invited my now-wife to come over and enjoy this for our second date, and the rest is history.

Ingredients:

• One box of good quality pasta. My wife has celiac disease, and we’ve found BioNaturae to make gluten-free noodles with the best texture and flavor. Cook that for one minute shy of what’s recommended on the box.
• Kosher salt
• Freshly cracked black pepper
• One 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes—I like Bianco DiNapoli
• Yellow onion, diced
• Fresh garlic to taste, crushed
• One pound hot Italian game sausage
• Fresh basil
• Parmesan
• A good quality olive oil. I only use Olio del Cardinale, which is produced in Umbria by our friends the Tega family and imported by our buddy David Dellanave.

Directions:

1. In a large dutch oven, heat a good amount of olive oil over medium high heat
2. When oil is shimmering, add sausage and sauté until brown and crisp
3. Bring a salted pot of water to boil and cook pasta
4. Add the onion and sauté until clear
5. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant
6. Season with salt and pepper
7. Add tomatoes, breaking up with your hands or wooden spoon
8. Bring tomatoes to simmer then reduce heat
9. After 15 minutes, stir and add a pinch of salt
10. After another 15 minutes, add pasta, sausage, parmesan to sauce and serve
11. Top plates with ample amounts of torn basil leaves

Delicious food really is that easy, especially when you’re working with the best meat possible.

Wes Siler grew up on a horse farm in England. That’s where he learned how the sausage gets made. Wes now writes about important topics like politics and vehicles on Substack, where you can also talk to him about those topics and more.