Homemade Sausage Making

I kinda sorta struck out on the fermented sausage effort but tonight I made 5 pounds of Breakfast sausage by the Book recipe. Nancy declared that the patties I fried were great and said I should place a star beside that recipe. Over the years we have found that there is more versatility in the use of our sausage if we package it loose and not linked. So that is how I did this batch. At some point I will make another flavor and I may link that for a special occassion.

Hi Ross,

When you make breakfast sausage patties and pack them for freezing, do you pre-freeze them, then vacuum pack so they retain their shape?
I also like the idea of sometimes forming a Patty rather than stuffing sausage.

I bulk freeze in pound packages and thaw as I need them.

I sometimes like to make patties for breakfast. I will simply layer 2 or 3 between saran wrap and pop them in a ziplock and into the freezer. It's easy to bust off a single layer of frozen patty and way less expensive than individual vacuum bags.

Dave Zac

Many of us have gone to vacuum packaging for meat that goes into the freezer. I can see the benefit when you have sausage linked and bent like a horseshoe.
For fresh meat and sausage I still use coated freezer paper. The cost is attractive at 8 dollars for a 150 roll and if a careful wrapping job is done it is as tight as vacuum packing. I unwrapped a boneless chicken breast just now that was put by a year ago and stored at minus 5 F. There is no freezer burn and no frost inside the package.
True you can't see what is inside but you can write on the paper.

I use the 2lb plastic meat bags and I have the taping machine to close them. The short term sausage goes straight to freezer, the others go to freezer and then 3 to a bag vacume packed for longer storage. I make patties from the bulk as I use it.

Agreed. I wrap ALL of my venison in freezer paper. As you said, quick and cheap.

Lowpull, is your long term packaging, belt and suspenders or does it really extend the storage life? My observations of freezer storage is/has been that voids in the wrapping promote the growth of frost and product drying. No voids, no drying. I get better results with tightly wrapped meats with freezer paper than with zipper freezer bags. I don't have a vacuum packaging system.

I use the 2 lb plastic meat bags that you twist up and then run through the taping machine to seal. the twisting up helps get any air voids out, and it works pretty good. But for longer terms, I then put those in vacume seal bags and really pull a vacume on them. Because after about 6 months of just the bags the end starts to get a little freezer burn. You can cut that tip off, but I just like the combination of the tubes and vucume seal bags.

We often freeze fresh fish in water to prevent freezer burn and oxidation. I guess that we could freeze meat and then dip it in water and freeze it with a coating of ice on it. That is how we get individually frozen shrimp.