Sweet Italian Sausage

I realized one of my culinary dreams today by making homemade sausage. A few years ago, before Jess and I started traveling, I started a list of things that I wanted on this blog and sausage was at the top of the list. It was an overwhelming success! I can't wait to keep improving. These were juicy and flavourful. I actually found this easier to execute than deep frying because it didn't stink up the apartment.
This procedure required some specialty equipment. I used my Kitchen-aide stand mixer with the grinder attachment to grind the meat and a LEM brand 5lbs stuffer to fill the sausage. These worked flawlessly.
I decided to make the safest (flavour-wise) fresh sausage and settled on the sweet Italian. I wrestled with the idea of trying the Kitchen-aid stuffer but decided against it after a little research. I saw the LEM stuffer at Bass Pro Sports but they did not have any in stock. I liked the all metal gearing and started looking online for stuffers. I found the same stuffer online for the same price but with a ton more than just the machine. For $200 I got a kit that included seasoning and casings for over 20lbs of meat as well as a book about sausage making.

Ingredients:

• 5lbs pork butt (boneless)
• 1 package Backwoods Sweet Italian seasoning package
• ~ 5 feet LEM Collagen Casings (32mm)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tsp fresh basil
• 2 tsp crushed chili pepper

Directions:

1. Trim your pork butt into 1 inch square pieces.
2. Freeze the meat for about an hour and thirty minutes.
3. Grind the meat with a medium blade. 
4. Refrigerate for 30 mins.
5. Add the garlic, garlic, basil and pepper to a food processor with 4 or five cubes of ice.\
6. Puree.
7. Mix the seasoning package in 3/4 cup of ice cold water.
8. Add the puree and seasoning to the meat and mix thouroghly.
9. Add the meat to the hopper and put the casing on a 3/4 inch stuffing tube. (I was amazed that the collagen casing did not need to be soaked).
10. Tie off the end of the casing and stuff. Try to avoid air bubbles and over filling the casing. I didn't have problems with bubbles but the sausages were pretty plump when I twisted them into links.
11. Grill on medium/low or until they are cooked through.