Maple Breakfast Sausage Recipe

One of our favorite things to do with our friends Nate and Stacey is to get a whole mess of pork and make sausage together. A couple months ago we got together and made our tried and true Sweet Italian Sausage recipe. This is a recipe that we've been formulating and perfecting over the years and I'm extremely pleased with the flavor and consistency of the sausage each time we make it. Everyone who tastes our sausage loves it and we've passed the recipe on to many of our friends and family.

As both of our household freezers were lacking again in the sausage department, we decided to hold another sausage making night. This time, we wanted also make Breakfast Sausage.

Zach and I have attempted breakfast sausage in the past and each time I haven't been happy with the flavor. But I feel like last night we made a winner!

The original recipe that got us going I found on a site called Coleen's Recipes. We were thankful to find her list of ingredients which we used most of. But after doing several taste testings, we changed the proportions, increased several herbal additions, added maple flavoring and made it our own.

Here's what we came up with:

Maple Breakfast Sausage

6 lbs ground pork (we used a shoulder cut)
8 1/2 tsp dried sage
2 tsp dried savory
2 tsp dried marjoram
5 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp ground cloves
5 1/2 tsp kosher salt (if you use sea salt decrease the amount)
3 1/2 tsp fresh cracked black pepper
2 tsp maple flavoring (we used McCormick brand found in the baking aisle)
breakfast sausage size collagen casings. (Tell the butcher how much meat you are working with and he/she can help with how many casings you will need.) We always get our casings and bulk spices at Great Lakes Butcher Supply.  

We started by trimming the skin from the pork and removing the meat from the bone. We removed the tough layers of fat and silver skin, and cubed the meat for easy grinding. (Sorry, I don't have any photos of this process, my hands were full of meat!)

Then we fitted the large grind on the hand crank meat grinder and did our first grind.

In a medium bowl whisk together all the spices, salt, sugar and flavorings.

Add it to the meat and work it by hand. We've tried several different ways to make this process more "civilized" but the best method is to just dig in with both hands and work the spices throughout the meat.

Fit the grinder with the smaller attachment and do a second grind. At this point, if your grinder has a small tube attachment, you can begin filing your casings. Our's doesn't so we had to use our Jerky Press Tube. It works best as a two person job, one squeezing the gun and another twisting the links.

When it was all done we finished with
90 Breakfast Sausage links plus extra for patties.
50 Sweet Italian links

Nothing was wasted in this process. I baked the skins and cartilage until much of the fat had rendered. The dried skins I saved for Oliver to chew as a treat and the bones I put in the crock pot with onions, celery, garlic, and parsley from the garden to make a rich pork bone stock.

DIY Chicken Sausage, Part 3:Smoked to Deliciousness!

Check out the final post on sausage making DIY Chicken Sausage, Part 3: Smoked to Deliciousness!

How to Make Smokin Snack Sticks, Part 2

(Read How to Make Smokin' Snack Sticks, Part 1, August 17th, 2010 Post) 

After we let the snack sticks cure over night , it was time to put them in the smoker. We washed our smoker thoroughly and plugged it in for 3 hours before using. We read that you should run your smoker before putting food inside because it burns off any fumes from the manufacturers materials such as paint, chemicals in the metal etc. You don't want to penetrate your food with carcinogenic smoke.
The heating element sits on porous coals, which in turn, heat as well and create the smoke effect.

We then soaked the hickory chips in water for about 30 minutes. There are many different "flavors" of wood chips you can purchase. I saw Maple, Apple, Hickory, Mesquite, and even Jack Daniels. They also have barrel chips that you can purchase that were once oak barrels that stored whiskey. The pan that's shown here can be used in the smoking process as well and it makes more of a smoky steam.

Then we laid the chips on the coals next to the heating element.

We purchased a Jerky Rack to lay our snack sticks on. This prevents the sticks from deep frying in their own seeping juices. The delicious oils and flavors drip through the rack, hit the hot coals then evaporate into smoke and rise to re-flavor the meat, so it continuously cycles with deep smoky flavor. Needless to say it smells wonderful!

We let the sticks smoke for a couple hours, don't peek for the first hour or so or your beautiful cooking smoke will fly out the lid and you'll have to wait for the temperature to build back up. then inserted a digital meat thermometer to see if a safe temperature had been reached for a beef product. It had!

At this pint you're supposed to let them cool before eating, but we couldn't wait and broke off pieces of the delicious snack sticks, burning our fingers, but just a little.
Even Ceddie had some, poor dog, he kept asking to go outside all day, and he'd wander around the garage sniffing the smoky meaty air.

(Just a note, we also made beef jerky that day, which is the same process only instead of piping the ground meat into smoked casings, you use a flat fitting on the jerky press and pipe it in strips along your Jerky Rack, everything went in the smoker together.)

How to Make Smokin' Snack Sticks, Part 1

I got Zach a smoker for his birthday and for our first venture we decided to make beef snack sticks.

We started with a 3 pound piece of beef chuck.

I trimmed some of the fat off and some of the tougher tendon type grizzle.

Then cut it up into 1 inch cubes.

After that, we ran it through the hand grinder for its first grind. We used the large hole attachment for this grind.

Then we seasoned the meat with Uncle Bucks Snack Sticks Seasoning. There are many different flavor combinations and recipes out there that we are excited to try. This time we played it safe and stuck to a pre-mix pack.

Be sure to weigh your meat after it is trimmed and ground, as the spice mix amounts are determined by weight.

Mix thoroughly. The meat will get sticky and turn a darker red.

Then we ran it through the grinder a second time, this time with the smaller hole attachment. This breaks the meat up into even smaller pieces and helps to evenly distribute the seasonings.

Then we fitted the jerky press with the tube fitting and filled the compartment with the seasoned ground beef.

Then we slid the entire strand of smoked casings onto the tube.

And tied the end into a knot.

Then we squeezed the press and out came a giant strand of snack stick.

We twisted it at even intervals to make the individual links.

And placed it in the refrigerator to cure overnight. Come back on Thursday August 19th, 2010 and I'll tell you about starting the smoker and finishing the sticks.