Homemade Sausage Making

Just got back from Meijer (grocrey store) picked up 4 ,12 pound Pork picnic roast for $1.09 per pound , vacuum pack , what cuts do you guys use for your sausage making .

I use pork shoulder butts, also known as Boston butts.
Price depends on where I buy it. Sam's club is o.k. restaurant depot's is even better.
Also some time it's on sale, and there are differences in quality too.

Those work and that is a good price. Remove and cure the hock. You can make a reasonable bacon from the skin side and still have plenty of good meat for sausage. . Currently I can get butts for 1.29 per pound and I consider that a better portion for sausage and rolled hams.

If they're bone-in and skin-on picnics at that price, they're more work, more waste (as far as general sausage making goes) and not a great deal.
You'll be better off with good Boston butts at a decent price.

There are some sausages that call for the skin and collagen that comes in picnics but the yield in good usable meat for sausage is rather low.

ssorllih wrote:There are some sausages that call for the skin and collagen that comes in picnics but the yield in good usable meat for sausage is rather low.

There's no doubt about that!

I've gotten skin on bone in picnics a few times and agree that the meat yield is low. I smoke the bones with some meat left on them, and use them to flavor beans. But my favorite is the boneless butt. I cut the coppa off and use the rest for sausage. Since they are pretty lean, I buy fat back separately and add that to the grind.

During deer season I can buy 50-50 pork trimming from a local butcher shop that processes a lot of deer.

I have the biggest problem to get extra fat, around deer hunting season. They need it for the deer sausages. And places who don't make deer sausages, need them for themselves, for Italian sausages. You see by law, 50 % of Italian sausage can be fat.......(hmmmmm...or just white (?).......that looks like fat.....(?)

For what it's worth, 50% fat is permitted in commercial breakfast sausage and fresh pork sausage, but commercial Italian sausage is limited to 35% fat, regardless, to some, that's still quite a bit of fat.

§ 319.143 Breakfast sausage.
"Breakfast sausage" is sausage prepared with fresh and/or frozen meat; or fresh and/or frozen meat and meat byproducts, and may contain Mechanically Separated (Species) in accordance with §319.6, and may be seasoned with condimental substances as permitted in part 318 of this subchapter. The finished product shall not contain more than 50 percent fat. To facilitate chopping or mixing, water or ice may be used in an amount not to exceed 3 percent of the total ingredients used. Binders or extenders may be added as provided in §319.140 of this part.

§ 319.145 Italian sausage products.
(a) Italian sausage products are cured or uncured sausages containing at least 85 percent meat, or combination of meat and fat, with the total fat content constituting not more than 35 percent of the finished product. Such products shall be prepared in accordance with the provisions of paragraph (a) (1), (2) or (3) of this section, and shall contain salt, pepper, and either fennel or anise, or a combination of fennel and anise. Such products may contain any or all of the optional ingredients listed in paragraph (b) of this section.

Befriend a good butcher, it's sometimes possible to get good pork trimmings free of at a very reasonable price.

An online search for slaughter houses shows them rather few and far between and almost all of them have learned the value added benefit of making sausage and smoking meat. We may have to go with the fat replacer and use vegetable oil or rendered poultry fat.